Are people really using blockchain yet, is it still hype and what does it take for them to use it? It’s all over the news, blockchain, cryptocurrency, rocketing prices, massive dips. In forums we hear a lot about partnerships, companies working on using blockchain but are they really? Most people still don’t know what blockchain is, or how it works.. but do they even need to know? Most of the news is mostly discussing price and speculation, or parodies on the cryptocurrency sub-culture.

For real world adoption it will need to go through 4 stages, we have already reached stage 1 and gathering steam in stage 2. The 4 stages are -

1. Working proof of concept

2. Developer adoption

3. Enterprise adoption

4. Seamless user experiences.

1. Working Proof of Concept.

This is bitcoin, followed closely by Ethereum. Bitcoin had an estimated number of users between 3M and 5M from a March 2017 research estimate. This doesn’t include the 13M coinbase users who would be using Bitcoin wallets too. Even if we discount traders from the count and look at it from a retail perspetcive there are a few retailers across different industries who accept bitcoin including Bloomberg, Dish network, Microsoft (xbox content and windows store). Whilst the list is small, it does show that there is a working proof of concept. Bitcoin has shown that this is something that people will use to purchase goods.

Proof of concept is needed to drive the next stage of evolution. When there is enough evidence that blockchain is a technology with a valid usecase it opens the door to build on top and expand out the use cases. This is where Ethereum, with its smart contracts and Distributed App capability evolved.

2. Developer Adoption.

The explosive growth of projects based on blockchain in the past few years is a clear demonstration of developer adoption and increased interest in building products on top of blockchain as we can see from the listings on coinmarketcap.

January 2014 - 67 listings

January 2015 - 491 listings

January 2016 - 551 listings

January 2017 - 617 listings

January 2018 - 1355 listings

These are the publically traded projects, that have reached a daily trade volume of $100K USD.

The amount of projects indicates the maturing of the ecosystem as more and more people pour resources into building on top of blockchain. It is comparable to developer adoption of the world wide web. Although it resulted in the dotcom bubble, it also created some of the largest comapnies in the world today. Quite possibly, a similar pattern will emerge where a large number of projects will fail and leave a few with mass user adoption.

3. Enterprise Adoption.

It is still early for the enterprise adoption. Whilst there are some consortium’s, such as R3, working on proof of concept blockchain implementation; enterprise adoption is a key part to blockchain mass usage. Existing enterprises are the gateway and key access points to customers and end users, and without adoption from some of these companies, mass use is unlikely.

Although a key use case is decentralisation, there is a key difference between distributed and decentralised. Enterprise blockchains can still be valid if a group of companies became the main nodes for some of the services that would benefit from blockchain. Moreover, enterprise adoption would validate its use as a scalable solution.

Enterprise adoption could come in different forms. Whether that is from acquisitions, becoming a party to an existing project or building their own. Secondarily, is because a B2B marketplace is a use case that enterprises could adopt, for example, purchasing processing power, arbitraging future energy needs, or delivery and enforcement of royalty payments.

4. Seamless user experiences.

Most people when using a service are doing so to address a pain point, whether that is booking a holiday easily, making a payment, buying property, paying a friend. The technology that the service is built on is not front of mind.

For blockchain solutions to reach mass adoption, the user experience needs to be seamless to the point where the user doesn’t even know that they are using blockchain. A good example is cloud hosting, when someone uses a website, they don’t know if it’s hosted in the cloud or not, they only know that the website is serving their need. This is the same principle for blockchain mass adoption. It is an enabler to address pain points for the customer. This could be in reducing fees, or controlling their personal data.

When we reach this stage, mass adoption will have occurred with the user knowing it has happened.