In the paper, “A systematic literature review of blockchain-based applications: Current status, classification and open issues”, Casino, Dasaklis, and Patsakis analyse the theoretical underpinning of 260 research papers published between 2014 and April 2018 to present a complete classification of blockchain-enabled applications across diverse sectors. Their findings also include limitations of the technology in these areas.

Based on thematic content analysis, the paper identifies three research streams:

Classification of the range of blockchain-based applications across a vast array of sectors. Suitability of the blockchain technology to create value in these sectors taking into account the various limitations this technology presents. Guiding researchers by providing a roadmap of promising research avenues, challenges and opportunities for which further research is needed.

Blockchain Classification

While blockchain applications are often classified as being either financial or non-financial, three generations of blockchains can be distinguished:

Blockchain 1.0 — applications enabling digital cryptocurrency transactions.

Blockchain 2.0 — Smart Contracts and applications extending beyond cryptocurrency transactions.

Blockchain 3.0 — applications in areas beyond the previous two versions, such as government, health, science and IoT.

It is the third iteration that is the primary focus of this paper; the argument being that state-of-the-art of blockchain-enabled applications have received limited attention and, in cases where they have, it was not to their full extent nor applicability.

Blockchain-based Applications

The paper offers an application-oriented classification, similar to the one proposed in Zheng et al. (2016) however, it uses a rigorous statistical methodology based on the literature and, therefore, fits better to current blockchain developments and illustrates with high fidelity the future blockchain trends.

From this, eleven domains of blockchain-based application were identified: alongside a large number of miscellaneous application, these include Business and Industry, Privacy and Security, Education, Health, IoT, Governance, Integrity Verification, Financial and Data Management.

Increased attention and investment in blockchain-enabled applications in all of these areas is mainly driven by the technology’s inherent capabilities. As noted by the authors, blockchain has introduced serious disruptions to traditional business processes since the applications and transactions, which needed centralised architectures or trusted third parties to verify them, can now operate in a decentralised way with the same level of certainty. The inherent characteristics of blockchain architecture and design provide properties like transparency, robustness, auditability, and security.

Blockchain Suitability: A Framework

From the analysis of the selected literature, the authors were also able to derive a series of insights concerning the limitations of blockchain technology and its usability across a wide area of domains. While blockchain is being adopted in many research fields and business areas, providing limitless opportunities for exploration, like any other emerging technology, issues and challenges arise.

The paper asserts the importance of examining the suitability of blockchain adoption against the use case requirements because, as discovered by the authors, there exist a limited number of frameworks have been developed in the scientific literature for assessing the suitability of blockchain-enabled applications. They point out Lo et al. (2017) and Wüst and Gervais (2017) as examples but offer their own framework for evaluating the suitability of blockchain-based solutions.

More specifically, the framework uses a three-level scale (i.e., low, medium and high) to measure the relevance of each prerequisite and evaluates the potential of blockchain against traditional databases in four main domain areas: required trust assumptions, context requirements, performance characteristics and required consensus mechanisms. This framework is offered as a comprehensive tool for blockchain practitioners to evaluate whether their systems will genuinely be enhanced by blockchain.

Concluding Remarks

While the potential of blockchain in various sectors and industries has been well covered, there remain many research gaps to be filled and exploratory directions to be expanded upon. The paper exists not only to analyse existing research in the field but to provide a framework for determining the individual characteristics that are most required in each identified domain. This will ultimately facilitate the choice of the proper blockchain and the corresponding mechanisms to tailor the blockchain to the actual needs of the application.