Why I’m beginning to despise Blockchain
The tech fad creating more problems than it solves
by Blair Hudson
Blockchains are great, right? I mean it’s a freakin super-cool distributed indestructible data store that builds trust, ruins middlemen and saves you boat loads of money while speeding up your operations. And your boss or their boss has probably heard about all these glorious benefits by now too.
Heck, you or one of your colleagues may have even been granted a budget to go and build a Blockchain for your company. You certainly don’t want to miss out on the action, or worse let the competition get there first!
So you’ve gone and started your first Blockchain project. You’ve likely started researching use cases and brainstorming within your own operations. Maybe you’ve turned to one of a few Blockchain development startups or consultants offering relevant services for help.
The startups are probably either turning you away to go develop your use cases further (their talents lie in building the implementation rather than understanding your business), or validating your ideas to see if they are a good fit for the Blockchain.
The consultants are probably engaging teams across your organisation in ideation workshops and billing you for their expertise and framework-driven assessments by the hour.
Maybe you even have a prototype Blockchain up and running on a few small computers, or in the cloud, to demo a generic implementation.
This is a big problem.
Blockchain is more like electricity than a hammer, but still just a new technology
Let’s set one thing straight: Blockchain, like many other technologies before it, is just that: a technology.
If Blockchain were a hammer (maybe a new scratch-proof model that sounds an alarm when you aren’t hammering straight), you would possibly add one to your toolbox for future work. Then you have it available to use whenever you need to do some hammering and you decide it’s the best tool for the job.
What you certainly wouldn’t do is head out and buy some nails, and with hammer-in-hand start brainstorming all the sorts of things you could hammer those nails into, assessing the best use-case for your shiny new hammer.
Moreover, if Blockchain were electricity, you might want to use it in your factory. You could replace candles with light globes, to improve the conditions and enable your assembly line workers to hammer nails more consistently. Or you might use it to obsolete your existing manual process, and power new mechanical nailing processes that greatly improve the performance of your business.
Worse yet, if you don’t start using it, a competitor (maybe young and new your industry – a “startup”) may develop a process that pushes your business (and its manual hammering practices) out of the market entirely. “Disruption.”
The three types of Blockchain projects
Let’s explore some of the different approaches to Blockchain and the primary concerns of each.
‘But I want to use Blockchain to resolve internal issues within the bounds of my business!’
Learn about Blockchain, add it to your toolbox and stop wasting time searching for processes to hammer nails into
You can only solve internal problems when you know what they are. When they do arise, assuming you have the requisite knowledge of how the Blockchain could apply (which I fully recommend you do), then you can pick up the Blockchain from your toolbox and start exploring a solution. When the stars align it might even be worthwhile over using a traditional database.
‘But I’m worried that my competitors will start benefiting before we can!’
When Blockchain impacts services you rely on, your competitors become your peers
While this may not apply to all cases, remember this: decentralisation is dependent on peering. To decentralise operations with the Blockchain, you need many contributing peers. It’s more than likely you’ll have the opportunity to join in as a peer on any alternatives your competitors are developing for existing suppliers. (Phew!)
‘But if I just ignore it some startup will just come and reinvent all we know how to do!’
Think like a startup, and redefine your business on the Blockchain
Disrupt yourself. If your business is anything resembling a transactional ‘middle-man’ (especially one which could operate almost entirely digitally), you are far better off defining how you fit into this brave new world of decentralisation – before someone else decides you don’t fit at all.
The next time someone starts discussing a Blockchain project with you, just be sure to ask them this:
Are you reimagining your core business, upgrading the lights, or just randomly hammering nails into things?
Blair Hudson is a data analytics specialist, working with businesses to help them achieve their full potential — one decision at a time. As the world demands the intersection of innovation and data science, he’s on a journey to answer the question “How do you design data for change?”.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any employer.
