China's consortium chains may not be trusted internationally, says Vitalik Buterin

The progress of the Chinese government and large enterprises in the blockchain space is impressive. However, according to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, they may need to do more than just deploy and build on private or semi-private consortium blockchains to gain traction internationally. 

In a recent interview, Buterin explained that, while what Chinese entities were doing would help them grow the use of blockchain within China, the technology’s best use cases are meant to be implemented on an international level. And for that purpose, it would be difficult for them to gain the trust of other countries to use their private blockchains. Buterin said:

“In an international context, you cannot assume that there is even a single government that everyone trusts, whereas public blockchains are more easily perceived as being neutral.”

So, he added, it would be a crucial step for China to work on more public blockchains similar to what the Blockchain Service Network (BSN) was doing through its international wing — BSN International.

Buterin said that consortium blockchains are under limelight due to the scalability and security they offer for private entities that tend to be highly conservative. But public blockchains will surmount consortium blockchains’ safety and security in the long run, he added.

Addressing BSN, Buterin said it was “too early” to say anything about the project and that it will only be possible to form an opinion after seeing the kinds of projects that are built on the network and how the network evolves. 

“It’s important to not try to guess too much from early initial information about a project when it’s being released [...] I think this is one of the mistakes that people made with Libra,” he concluded about BSN.