Blockchain in business: little knowledge but many use cases

During the EY Blockchain Summit, the annual event that the strategic consulting firm dedicates to the innovative blockchain technology, a survey was carried out among top managers to understand the level of knowledge they have about this technology and how to apply it in their business.

The survey

The survey was conducted among 100 large companies and public administrations and also covers other innovative technologies. The survey shows that knowledge of blockchain technology is still low (with a score of 48 out of 100). 

The best-known technologies are artificial intelligence, 5G and IoT, which are still in the middle (53, 52 and 51 out of 100 respectively). Virtual and augmented reality (34 out of 100) and quantum computing (29 out of 100) seem to be more unknown.

Blockchain in business

Blockchain is considered one of the three technologies with the highest impact on business by those who know about it: 57% would like to implement it in their company.

The main doubts and obstacles to the spread of blockchain are related to privacy issues, rigid adaptation, interoperability, lack of culture and clear regulation.

According to Giuseppe Perrone, EY partner and EMEIA blockchain leader: 

“Blockchain technology can have great value for the business of companies and for the evolution of PA services, but to really leverage this value, it is necessary to work on skills development, industry regulation and the ability to innovate specific use cases”.

When it comes to the future value of adopting blockchain technology in businesses, it seems that the company’s global leader on the technology, Paul Brody, is in no doubt, stating bluntly: 

“Blockchain will do for enterprise networks and business ecosystems what ERPs have done for the individual enterprise in the past. Using blockchain to improve supply chain management not only ensures a level playing field for all businesses but also means being able to provide higher quality information allowing for better decision making.”

Blockchain use cases

In terms of individual applications of the technology, the research denotes that the most popular seem to be traceability (for 24% of respondents) and the token economy (18%). Whereas smart contracts for process automation, the creation of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) and the adoption of digital identity paradigms based on Self Sovereign Identity remain at lower percentages, 15%, 13% and 11% respectively. Only 4% are aware of use cases in DeFi, the decentralized finance enabled by Blockchain.

More than half of the top managers (58%) are convinced that blockchain in traceability is a useful tool both on an operational level and from a marketing point of view, giving more value to their brand. 

Also of interest are the research findings regarding the main applications of NFTs, which are revolutionizing the world of finance. The most popular applications are collectibles (23%), marketing activities (21%), play to earn and gamification (16%) and copywriting and fractional ownership (14%).