Maintain the Persistence of a Distributed Ledger for Future Generations

Blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT) guarantees revision safety of transaction logs independent from usage scenarios. Thus, trust is ensured by DLT in a long-term perspective. Hence, one can pose the question, whether DLT is an attractive technology for long-term archiving of data. In this paper we juxtapose distributed ledger and data preservation approaches as two candidates for continuous archival workings. We show that, although the DLT seems to be a viable solution for the long-term preservation of data from a naive perspective, long time effects and efficiency considerations prevent the effective use of DLTs. We discuss hidden costs of transactions, that are not reflected in current price structures. We conclude that data stored on the distributed ledger might not be as preserved for future generations as usually assumed. In fact, data preservation in an archivist's perspective resembles the trust preservation in DLTs.