Blockchain is without a doubt the most-hyped technology of 2018, and as such as generated considerable amounts of both criticism and enthusiasm. The Congress of the United States recently held hearings about the technology and noted economist Nouriel Roubini said that Blockchain is “nothing better than a glorified spreadsheet”. The technology does have many supporters as Blockchain advocate Peter Van Valkenburgh said in the same hearing that Blockchain “will be as significant for freedom, prosperity and human flourishing as the birth of the internet”. As with most technologies the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle of the two points of view. There has been a significant amount of bad press for the technology given its like to cryptocurrencies and the market crash that happened this year. On the other hands, there has been a proliferation of Blockchain use outside of the finance industry in a variety of industry use cases which have significant potential to disrupt many sectors.
ITR has identified four major areas of Blockchain development outside of the financial sector in the exhibit shown below. The four major categories of Blockchain services, smart supply chain, smart contracts and asset transfers, data privacy and security and consumer and eGovernment services. While there are literally hundreds of Blockchain applications now being tested, we believe that these are the current areas of focus in the market currently and we have listed sixteen sub-categories below all of which are now seeing trials in the market.
One major area of focus for Blockchain technology is improving supply chains, as Blockchain holds significant potential to make the logistics industry more efficient. One of the major advocates of using Blockchain technology in its supply chain is US retailer Wal-Mart. The company recently started working with IBM in order to track its leafy produce using Blockchain technology. By using Blockchain Wal-Mart is able to have a near real-time view of its supply chain. This makes product recalls much faster and potentially much more granular. For example, if an outbreak of a disease like E. coli or Salmonella is linked to a specific city, information on a package of vegetables using a bar code might not contain the origin of the product. But using Blockchain it is much more likely to be able to identify the geographic origin of a product.
There is also great interest in using Blockchain technology to ensure that products do not contain any illegal products. For example, the Coca-Cola Company is developing a Blockchain solution to provide transparency in its labor supply chain, as the company has been subject to severe criticism that some of its sugar suppliers in emerging markets use forced labor. By using the Blockchain, the company will be able to provide a transparent view of where its raw materials and labor originate. Similarly, the government of Rwanda in Africa is developing Blockchain technology to track rare earth elements to ensure that “conflict minerals” do not enter supply chains.