Blockchain Technology

Speculation on the value of blockchain is rife, with Bitcoin — the first and most infamous application of blockchain — grabbing headlines for its rocketing price and volatility.… A World Economic Forum survey suggested that 10% of global GDP will be stored on blockchain by 2027.

Most tellingly, large investments in blockchain are being made. Venture-capital funding for blockchain startups consistently grew and were up to $1billion in 2017. The blockchain-specific investment model of initial coin offerings (ICOs), the sale of cryptocurrency tokens in a new venture, has skyrocketed to $5 billion.

Leading technology players are also heavily investing in blockchain: IBM has more than 1,000 staff and $200 million invested in the blockchain-powered Internet of Things (IoT).

Despite the hype, blockchain is still an immature technology, with a market that is still nascent and a clear recipe for success that has not yet emerged. Unstructured experimentation of blockchain solutions without strategic evaluation of the value at stake or the feasibility of capturing it means that many companies will not see a return on their investments.…

Blockchain is a distributed ledger, or database, shared across a computing network. Each computer node in the network holds a copy of the ledger, so there is no single point of failure.