There are too many blockchain "tourists" using the term as a "buzzword" rather than developing real world use cases, the chief executive of cryptocurrency start-up Ripple has said.

"Blockchain is like the new big data or AI (artificial intelligence) — too many people are using it as a buzzword and not focused solving a real problem," Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said on the question-and-answer (Q&A) site Quora Tuesday.

"We like to call them blockchain tourists! There are many applications that are nothing more than science experiments."

Blockchain — or distributed ledger technology — is the software that underpins digital currencies like bitcoin and Ripple's own XRP token.

Distributed ledgers are decentralized networks which aren't governed by any central authority. They maintain groupings of data across a vast network of computers via encrypted "blocks".