Gartner identifies the four phases of the Blockchain spectrum

Blockchain is forecast to generate $3.1 trillion in new business value worldwide by 2030, half of it by 2025 with applications designed for operational improvement, according to Gartner, Inc. However, enterprises can make missteps that will leave them out of position to capitalize fully on blockchain, under competitive threat by using the wrong strategy and being lulled into a false sense of progress and capability.

“Beyond operational improvements and increased efficiency, fully mature blockchain complete solutions will allow organizations to re-engineer business relationships, monetize illiquid assets and redistribute data and value flows to more successfully engage with the digital world. That is the real business of blockchain,” said David Furlonger, distinguished research vice-president and Gartner Fellow. “To unlock this potential, CIOs should use a framework to help their organizations better understand the timing of investments and the value proposition for blockchain usage based on different solution archetypes.”

Gartner created the Blockchain Spectrum to examine the phased evolution of blockchain solutions and how this path aligns to the anticipated value businesses can derive. In the book “The Real Business of Blockchain: How Leaders Can Create Value in a New Digital Age,” launched this month, Furlonger and co-author Christophe Uzureau, research vice president at Gartner, use the spectrum as one of several analytics models to reveal how blockchain will evolve from what it is today to what it will be by 2030.

The Blockchain Spectrum is made up of four evolutionary phases that segment solution offerings and characteristics, some of which won’t fully develop for years, but will have critical implications for the future of business and society. Each of these phases offers opportunities and risks, but CIOs should begin experimenting at some level based on a clear understanding that the choices they make will have significant consequences for their enterprise competitiveness and respective industries.

Blockchain-Enabling Technologies

These technologies provide the foundation upon which existing future blockchain solutions can be created and business modeled. This foundation can also be used as part of non-blockchain solutions; for example, to improve the operational efficiency. The foundational technology includes cryptography, distributed computing, peer-to-peer networking and messaging.

Blockchain-Inspired

In 2012, business leaders, primarily in financial services, started exploring blockchain through proofs of concepts and pilots. This phase will last through the early 2020s. Blockchain-inspired solutions leverage the foundational technologies but use only three of the five elements of blockchain — distribution, encryption and immutability. While some of these solutions make use of tokenization, they are not sufficiently decentralized to use such tokens to create new value exchange systems as part of the internet of value. As a result, these solutions often aim to re-engineer existing processes specific to an individual organization or industry while maintaining centralized controls.

Blockchain-Complete

Blockchain-complete solutions deliver the full value proposition of blockchain using all five elements — distribution, encryption, immutability, tokenization and decentralization. Blockchain-complete solutions will feature tokenization enabled by smart contracts and decentralization, two components blockchain-inspired solutions lack. These solutions enable trade in new forms of value (such as new asset types) and unlock monopolies on existing forms of value ad processes (such as digital commerce or digital advertising).