Is the data on Multichain viewable to any node on the private blockchain?

Question

Coming from Ethereaum world and trying to understand multichain blockchain. Is the data stored on multichain blockchain visible to any one ?  Can private information be stored and shared with specific set of people ?

Can anyone comment on consensus alogorthm used and confidence level on it compared to POW and POS or PBFT ?

Answer 1

Any raw data stored in a MultiChain blockchain is visible to every node in the chain. By the way, it's exactly the same in Ethereum – even if you think you've hidden access to that data behind some smart contract, the data itself is still stored on every node's disk and can easily be read by nodes that wish to.

If you want to hide information on a blockchain, you should use encryption. If you want to manage selective disclosure over a blockchain, but only store each piece of data once, you can use a combination of symmetric and asymmetric encryption as described in detail here: http://www.multichain.com/developers/stream-confidentiality/

Assuming you're creating a permissioned blockchain, the consensus mechanism is round-robin mining between permissioned nodes, with a customizable level of leniency to deal with non-functioning nodes. See the mining-diversity blockchain parameter.

Comments

I may be wrong, but I believe everything posted to a stream is encrypted, and although every node gets the data, only intended recipients can decrypt the contents.  However IIRC stream postings are not transactions in the sense of sending an asset.

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For now in MultiChain, data posted to a stream is embedded *unencrypted* on a chain. If you want to encrypt, you need to do so at the application level.