Deloitte’s five vectors of blockchain progress

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blockchain handshake — Blockchain technology needs to improve its performance, reduce its costs and complexity, and gain regulatory support for companies to adopt it.

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Deloitte, the world leader in auditing, accounting, and financial consulting, reports five barriers that blockchain needs to break down for companies to begin its adoption.

Different business and technology publications claim that blockchain will transform the way of doing transactions; they predict that it will reduce costs, that it will create new products and business models. The reality is that this technology is still in development; however, some signs prove its potential.

A solid growth

Deloitte states that some companies and initiatives began to use blockchain successfully and that this technology will evolve quickly. Some examples:

IBM created a blockchain platform that managed 3,500 transactions in just one second.
The Ethereum company unveiled an open source multiplatform based on this technology.
Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, among others, already offer cloud services with blockchain technology.
Some US states passed laws related to blockchain technology.

Five vectors of blockchain progress

Deloitte points out five barriers that this technology needs to address to increase its adoption.

Improve its performance. Some companies think that this technology is slow. For example, only up to seven Bitcoin transactions per second can be performed. Developers will need to improve platforms and optimize their efficiency.
Regulatory support. Many entrepreneurs do not adopt this technology because it is not yet fully regulated. The fact that transactions are carried out on these platforms may frighten many companies; however, countries like the United States already legislated some uses of this technology.
Increase consortiums. The blockchain consortiums are groups of companies that collaborate to promote shared objectives; that is, they work together to define standards, infrastructure, and applications. The good news is that the number of active blockchain consortiums in all industries increased from 28 in 2017 to more than 60 in 2018.
Reduce costs and complexity. There is a perception that blockchain solutions are expensive and their implementation is complicated. In this regard, technology giants such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft must develop and offer practical and straightforward blockchain services and solutions.
Establish standards and interoperability. According to Deloitte, the GitHub repository has more than 6,500 active blockchain projects, but these use different platforms with multiple coding languages, protocols, consensus mechanisms and privacy measures. It will be necessary to standardize this technology so that it is easy to adopt it and develop improvements on it.

Deloitte specialists conclude that the future of this technology is positive. They assure that it is understandable that many companies have doubts about its potential; nevertheless, the signals regarding their rapid growth and development are indisputable.

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