With the advent of blockchain technology, the way transactions and records in the digital world are handled has been revolutionized. Rather than being dependent solely on the central authority, blockchain technology allows multiple parties to manage and verify shared records using the decentralized nature of the blockchain network.

While a lot of applications have been built on existing blockchain platforms, some require an extra blockchain due to technical reasons or for other concerns. While there are advantages to creating an extra blockchain, certain aspects must be considered.

It is important to understand the pros and cons of using an independent blockchain to determine its viability.

What Does Running Your Own Blockchain Network Mean?

Running one’s own blockchain network consists of setting up a blockchain protocol that has its own settings, validation system, and operational principles. Depending on the type of blockchain network, a token of its own, special validators, and governance system may be part of it as well.

In general, blockchain networks are based on various participation types. In public blockchain networks, anyone can participate, whereas in private networks, only approved entities participate in the network operations. In consortium blockchain networks, various organizations operate the network.

Different participation types bring various challenges in terms of transparency, management, decentralization, and security. The correct approach depends on the application area.

Benefits of an Independent Blockchain Network

1. Control Over Network Rules

An independent blockchain gives the freedom to design its protocol rules based on some particular demands. They could include the validation of transactions, block creation, fees, and updates to the software.

For instance, an organization-specific blockchain would favor the accessibility and predictability of transactions. On the other hand, the demands of a public blockchain may include the open nature and anti-censorship features.

Flexibility is advantageous when the application’s demands are in disagreement with the pre-existing design of the blockchain. But increased control translates into increased responsibility too.

2. Flexible Consensus Mechanisms

Consensus algorithms enable the participating nodes in the blockchain network to reach an agreement about the state of the blockchain. There exist different algorithms that provide different tradeoffs between security, efficiency, energy usage, and decentralization.

Proof of Stake utilizes incentives and validators. Proof of Authority makes use of validators, whereas Byzantine Fault Tolerant algorithms assist in reaching agreements among a group of nodes under certain failure scenarios.

Each consensus algorithm impacts transaction confirmation and the network’s response to disruptions differently. There isn’t a consensus algorithm that would suit all situations and is the best in all of them.

3. Control Over Transaction Fees

Fees for transactions on public blockchains can be subject to change depending on the level of demand on the network. The benefit of an independent blockchain is that there will be more flexibility with respect to the setting of the fees and how the transactions can be processed.

Some examples of fee structures include fixed parameters, dynamic fees, or other ways of paying for transaction fees. In any case, low transaction fees do not mean the absence of costs incurred by the network itself.

4. Defined Participation and Access

Depending on its structure, the standalone blockchain could create rules concerning who is allowed to become node operators, process transactions, or gain access to specific records.

This can prove helpful where there are several organizations that want to maintain a common ledger, but within certain participation policies. Permissioned blockchain systems allow restricting transaction validation operations to particular participants.

However, there are also downsides to introducing participation control. The greater control over participation can lead to less openness and decentralization, so the blockchain design should suit user needs.

Limitations and Challenges

1. Security Responsibilities

The blockchain being created is not guaranteed security because of the existing network since it depends on many other factors such as the design of the protocols, the number of validators, the implementation, and the resources that will be used to secure the system.

A smaller number of validators makes coordination easier but may be more prone to collusion or service disruption. Poor consensus and software bugs may cause problems with transactions and availability of the network.

In order to ensure security, there should be extensive testing, code review and vulnerabilities detection.

2. Infrastructure and Maintenance

It is not sufficient to have software that generates blocks. Communication between nodes needs to take place, transactions need to be verified, and data in the network should be accessible.

Running one’s own blockchain network also entails planning for software updates, back-ups, monitoring, recovery, and compatibility between different versions of the protocol.

All of this should take place even after the launch of the blockchain network. Otherwise, the network might experience problems in the future.

3. Adoption and Ecosystem Development

The operation of a blockchain can be significantly user-dependent. A newly developed blockchain would not possess as many integrations, tools for developers, liquidity, and community engagement as a preexisting platform.

Participation can take time to build up. Lack of participation may limit the functionalities of the network and make it challenging to have a properly decentralized validation community.

4. Interoperability and Governance

The linking of different blockchains can pose technical problems. It can include bridging, messaging systems, and other types of interoperability solutions which each comes with its own set of security issues.

Governance is also an issue that needs to be thought about. The blockchain needs a way for participants to propose and pass new protocols. Different opinions on upgrades and network policies can slow down decision making, sometimes resulting in diverging chains.

Conclusion

Maintaining a private blockchain network provides increased autonomy in relation to the rules of the network, its consensus algorithm, transaction costs, and participants. Yet, it entails constant spending on security, infrastructure, maintenance, and ecosystem development.

The decision to maintain one’s own blockchain network should be based on the requirements and needs of the business. With careful consideration of both strengths and weaknesses, businesses will be able to assess whether it is necessary to develop their own blockchain network or opt for an existing platform.

Exploring the Benefits and Limitations of Running Your Own Blockchain Network was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The fix is one comparison. Only bdk_electrum 0.24.1 has it, there’s no fixed 0.23, and LDK Node shipped on 0.23 eight hours later

In BDK’s Electrum client, the loop that gathers fee data for a wallet has a comment on line 588 of the 0.23.2 source that says exactly what it should do:

let prev_tx = self.fetch_tx(outpoint.txid)?;
// Ensure server returns the expected txout.
let txout = prev_tx
    .output
    .get(vout as usize)

The only check under that comment is that output number vout exists. Nothing checks that prev_tx is the transaction the wallet asked for. fetch_tx sends a txid to the Electrum server, takes back whatever transaction the server returns and caches it under the txid it asked for. The output then goes into a map keyed by the outpoint the wallet asked about, and that map is where BDK gets input values when it works out the fee on a transaction whose inputs the wallet doesn’t own.

So for a parent the wallet doesn’t already hold, a server could answer with any transaction that has enough outputs, and its amount would become that input’s value in the wallet’s fee numbers. That’s as far as I can follow it in the code. fetch_tx also serves the wallet’s own history, and I haven’t traced what a swapped transaction does on that path, or run any of this against a server that lies.

One comparison, merged in April

The fix is six lines in fetch_tx: compute the txid of what came back and return an error if it isn’t the one requested. It was merged to master on 24 April as PR 2188.

Master isn’t what gets published, though. bdk_electrum 0.24.0 came out on 8 May without the check; I diffed the published sources, and its fetch_tx is the same as 0.23.2’s. The backport, PR 2228, was merged on 16 June into a branch called release/chain-0.23.x, and that name nearly caught me out. I read it as the 0.23 line getting the fix. It’s the release branch for bdk_chain 0.23, and bdk_electrum’s 0.24 releases come off it. The fix sat merged there for 118 days, until 0.24.1 was published on 12 October at 05:29 UTC, 171 days after it first landed.

Who can’t take it

Cargo treats 0.23 and 0.24 as incompatible, the way it treats any minor bump before 1.0. A crate that asks for bdk_electrum 0.23 gets 0.23.2 at most, and no 0.23 release has the check. Moving to 0.24 also moves electrum-client from 0.24 to 0.25, so it takes an edit to the manifest, and cargo update won’t do it.

crates.io lists 11 crates that depend on bdk_electrum. Two use it only in tests. Of the other nine, five ask for 0.23 and four for 0.24. LDK Node is one of the five. Its 0.7.1 release came out at 13:53 UTC on 12 October, eight hours and 24 minutes after 0.24.1, still on bdk_electrum 0.23, and it asks for previous outputs in both its sync and its full scan. It does fill the client’s cache from its own wallet first, so parents it already holds never go to the server. fedimint-ldk-node 0.7.0 asks for 0.23 too. LDK Node’s main branch has moved to 0.24.0, which resolves to 0.24.1 on a fresh lockfile, so its next release should carry the check.

Downloads tell it from the other side. On 13 October, the first full day 0.24.1 existed, crates.io counted 2,050 downloads of bdk_electrum, and 530 were 0.24.1. 799 were 0.23.2, the last of the line that has no fix. Downloads are CI runs and mirrors as much as people, so I wouldn’t read them as users, but they’re the only count there is.

The case where any of this matters is a node pointed at an Electrum server somebody else runs. I don’t know of a way to count LDK Node deployments set up like that. Until LDK Node ships a release on 0.24, the apps built on it can’t get the check without patching LDK Node itself.

BDK’s Electrum txid check took 171 days to ship, and 5 of the 9 crates using it can’t get it was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If a crypto payment appears in your wallet within a few seconds, does that mean the payment is actually final?

Not necessarily.

This is one of the easiest things to misunderstand when using blockchain networks. A transaction can appear successful while the network is still working toward making that transaction irreversible.

That difference between speed and finality is becoming increasingly important as blockchains try to handle more payments, trading activity, and financial applications.

Seeing a Transaction Is Not the Same as Finality

When you send a crypto transaction, it generally goes through several stages.

1. Inclusion

First, the transaction is accepted into a block.

At this point, the network has included your transaction, but that does not always mean the transaction can never be changed.

2. Confirmation

As additional blocks are added after the block containing your transaction, confidence that the transaction will remain part of the chain increases.

More confirmations generally mean greater confidence.

3. Finality

Finality is the point at which the network considers the transaction settled and extremely difficult, or under the protocol’s rules effectively impossible, to reverse.

That is the part businesses and financial applications really care about.

A payment showing up quickly is useful. Knowing that the payment is settled is even more important.

Why Does Finality Matter?

Imagine paying for something with cryptocurrency.

The merchant does not only want to see that the transaction was broadcast. They want confidence that the money cannot suddenly disappear because the transaction was reorganized or reversed.

The same idea matters to exchanges.

An exchange receiving a deposit needs to know when those funds are safe to credit to a customer’s account. Waiting longer can improve certainty, but it can also make the user experience slower.

DeFi has an even bigger reason to care.

Lending platforms, decentralized exchanges, derivatives protocols, and other applications may execute several transactions based on what happened previously. If the underlying transaction is not sufficiently settled, a temporary change can create unexpected losses or liquidations.

So the real question is not simply:

“How fast is this blockchain?”

It is:

“How quickly can this blockchain provide reliable settlement?”

Speed, Security and Decentralization Are Connected

Making a blockchain faster sounds simple.

It isn’t.

Higher speed can require larger blocks, faster communication between validators, more powerful hardware, or changes to how consensus works.

Those changes can introduce new trade-offs.

If running a validator becomes too expensive, fewer people may be able to participate. If fewer independent participants can operate the network, decentralization can become harder to maintain.

On the other hand, making a network extremely conservative can improve some security properties while creating slower settlement.

There is no single perfect balance.

Blockchain networks are constantly deciding how to balance speed, security and decentralization.

Ethereum and Solana Are Taking Different Paths

This becomes particularly interesting when looking at Ethereum and Solana.

Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade is focused heavily on increasing execution capacity and changing how blocks are built and processed. Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade takes a different direction, with a major focus on reducing the time needed to reach finality.

So the two networks are not simply trying to win a race for the highest transaction count.

They are addressing different parts of the blockchain infrastructure.

For readers interested in the technical details behind these two upgrades, the Coinpedia Report provides a deeper comparison of Glamsterdam and Alpenglow, including their consensus changes, capacity goals and activation plans.

What Does This Mean for Users?

For everyday users, these technical changes may eventually become almost invisible.

You may not care which consensus mechanism confirms your transaction. You simply want to know that:

• Your payment arrived.
• Your transaction settled.
• Your funds are safe.
• The network does not become unusable during busy periods.
• Fees remain reasonable.

That is where finality becomes important.

A blockchain can process transactions quickly, but if users still have to wait a long time before they can confidently treat those transactions as settled, some of the benefit of that speed disappears.

The Bigger Blockchain Race

The next phase of blockchain development may therefore be less about simply asking which network is faster.

The more useful question may be:

Which network can provide fast, secure and predictable settlement without sacrificing too much decentralization?

Ethereum and Solana are approaching that problem differently.

One is pushing execution and block capacity. The other is redesigning parts of its consensus system to make finality dramatically faster.

Both approaches highlight the same lesson: speed is only one part of blockchain performance.

For users, developers and financial applications, what ultimately matters is not just how quickly a transaction appears on the screen.

It is how quickly they can trust that it is truly settled.

Fast is useful. Final is what builds confidence.

Why Blockchain Finality Matters More Than Transaction Speed was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.