# Blockchain for Doping Control Applications in Sports: A Conceptual Approach
## 4 SWOT Analysis
For each business process, a specific set of participants and specific sets of rules and policies need to be established, and the logical isolation between them facilitates coordination and contributes to security and privacy within the ecosystem [58]. Weaknesses  
Potential Non-Compliance with Data Laws: The proposed AD blockchain framework addresses a global community of stakeholders with a semi-decentralized approach for data governance. The removal of a single centralized authority, the transnational aspect of the network of peers, and the append-only permanent data storage are features that may challenge the traditional legal frameworks [93]. Data localization laws are sometimes established at sovereign level, imposing limitations for data replication beyond national borders [92]. Requirements imposed by the General Data Protection Rules (GDPR) and the \"right to be forgotten\", for example, can be ensured by throwing decryption keys after the data retention time is elapsed, or by assuming off-chain storage schemes for personal data with on-chain pointers, which would allow the actual data to be deleted in accordance with time-elapsed rules. However, there's no consensus that such remedies fully meet GDPR requirements [92,94]. The regulatory framework for the adoption of blockchain is not yet fully defined or harmonized at global scale [93]. Architecture Complexities and Lack of Standards: Compared with traditional databases, the architecture of blockchains inserts certain complexities for developers and operators [88,94]. For example, logical data layer models in blockchain environments require a developer to consider two constructs, assets and SCs, with differences from platform to platform [94]. In conventional databases, this layer is a well-defined and standardized area of application programming [88,94]. In the physical data layer, blockchains are divided in three tiers: transactions, blocks, and ledger, but there is no standard, and the internal organization and data structures of these tiers are platform-dependent [94]. In the data access layer, reading data is not straightforward and the immutability feature challenges the development of alternatives for allowing data deletion [88,94]. More efficient data access to the application layer is a critical request for blockchain-based systems, with on-going efforts in this area aiming to support faster and more sophisticated queries [94]. Performance and Scalability: Balancing on-chain and off-chain storage is an important consideration for most scenarios. For big data applications, on-chain storage may lead to increased cost and performance loss due to scaling the replicated data stores. Therefore, hybrid approaches for separating data are commonly adopted [94,95]. Typically, the application's hashes are kept on-chain and actual data are stored off-chain. This configuration provides better performance and scalability while still achieving immutability (data hashes allow integrity verification of off-chain data) [96]. On the other hand, it introduces challenges for aggregating and integrating data from different sources [94]. From a data administration perspective, permissioned blockchains allow on-premises or cloud installations. The platform's choice, its parameters, hardware configuration, workload, and mode of hosting have a significant impact on performance. Therefore, a recommendation is to benchmark and fine tune the platform before production use [94]. Long-Term Preservation of Data: The long-term preservation of blockchain data is still an open question [92]. A general assumption when adopting blockchains is that the replicated data store will automatically guarantee the long-term preservation, security, and availability of records, but this perception might not always be correct [92]. With regard to the AD scenario, it is assumed that organizations are interested in keeping their ledgers, which is a measure to guarantee their own interests with respect to eventual disputes.