What’s holding blockchain back?

Building a blockchain becomes more complex when third parties participate. Consider a multinational that builds a blockchain to manage an intercompany process such as transfer pricing or treasury management. Historically, the company might be struggling with dozens of ERP systems and inconsistent data and processes. Instead of one central ledger for each subsidiary, a single distributed ledger can eliminate the need for reconciliation. Companies are exploring how they might use internal digital tokens to represent cash or other assets, with the aim of streamlining their movement between business units. Instead of time-consuming (and costly) bank transfers, currency conversions and multiple emails about each transaction, a tokenised transfer can be conducted in near real time via smart contracts and allow users to track each transaction’s progress.

A company creating a blockchain for itself will undoubtedly confront challenges related to internal buy-in, data harmonisation and scale. Still, this company can set and enforce the rules of the blockchain, just as it does with its ERP today. But generally speaking, you don’t realise the greatest return on investment in blockchain if you’re building it just for yourself. Blockchain’s benefits are best realised when different industry participants come together to create a shared platform. Of course, when you start inviting third parties to engage, you can’t write the rules yourself.

Our survey respondents echo these concerns, with regulatory uncertainty (48%), lack of trust among users (45%) and the ability to bring the network together (44%) making up the top barriers to blockchain adoption.