“The bubble in blockchain space is likely to pop within a year, but the technology’s true value will start to be demonstrated in commercial applications.” Ant Financial CEO Eric Jing said on Saturday.

Jing, who heads up the Alibaba’s financial affiliate , made the comment at a blockchain-themed panel discussion of the annual session of China Development Forum(2018) in Beijing. According to him, the core of blockchain lies in a multi-party trust mechanism, which is to solve credibility issues with regard to data, objects, people and assets. Blockchain’s built-in trust mechanism will provide a solid foundation for enhancing cross-organizational and cross-individual collaboration.

However, he believed that no blockchain application has attained a large-scale commercial success so far. And an upsurge in ICOs, worthless tokens, and blockchain-based digital pets reflects that the industry is still awash with hype and speculation.

Jing pointed out four challenges facing the large-scale blockchain implementation:

First, safety issues. There are potential attacks on blockchain’s algorithm, system, and protocol. Under such decentralized business model, there is no centralized organization to assume responsibility if attacks take place . Second, information protection. It is necessary to develop effective technological solutions to strike a balance between the protection of sensitive information and trade secrets and the formation of a multi-party consensus. Third,trading performance. To reach consensus among multiple parties will lower trading efficiency, especially as the number of nodes increases, a decline in efficiency becomes even more obvious. Fourth, incentive mechanism. An effective incentive mechanism is required to solve the problem of on-chain profit distribution among multiple stakeholders.

In addition, Jing mentioned that Ant Financial is committed to using blockchain to solve practical problems with social values, and to make business and finance more transparent and efficient.The firm also works hard to overcome the technical obstacles to bring blockchain to wide adoption.

He clarified the online financial services giant’s stance on ICO.

“So far, we filed one of the largest number of blockchain patents worldwide, but I don’t think we have anything to do with ICO.”

Jing, who remains cautiously optimistic about blockchain’s future, asserted that the bubble in the blockchain world may burst in a few years and its real value will begin to emerge then.