Why is Blockchain’s Adoption in Main-Stream Businesses so Slow?

Published in

BlockDigest

4 min readJun 3, 2020

Blockchain has been around since more than a decade now and still its adoption is not as much as it deserves. There are many factors that have contributed in slow adoption of the technology. I will list down them one by one:

Every New Tech Face Resistance:

History is witness that, almost every new technology that promises to change the way businesses are dealt with, has faced resistance for adoption. None of us can even believe today that “Internet” was initially rejected by many big companies (without which we cannot survive today). But this resistance for adoption is quite obvious, as no business would want to take risks of changing their well-established and tested processes. There are very few who are bold and would take that risk to go ahead with a technology that is yet to prove its true potential.

According to experts and research reports, it is said that almost 10% of the world’s GDP will lie on Blockchain by year 2030 (this is a huge number for a single technology).

Its Association with Cryptocurrencies:

Blockchain’s adoption until now has been largely dependent on the rise and fall of the Cryptocurrency market. This is very unfortunate because Blockchain has its applications much beyond just being an underlying technology of Cryptocurrencies. Blockchain is a horizontal technology which can applied across verticals or sectors.

Yet to Prove its True Potential:

Blockchain is hands down a very promising technology but it also is currently evolving and needs to be improved. There are a lot of limitations to Blockchain of which the biggest is “throughput” i.e. its transactions per second (TPS) capability. There are new developments happening to mitigate these limitations, and hopefully Blockchain will eventually evolve into something much beautiful to work with.

Complexity in Understanding:

Blockchain can be understood as a gourmet soup created with tried and tested computer science ingredients like Cryptography, Data Structures, Distributed Systems, Networking, etc. These concepts are generally familiar to a person who has some Computer Science background, others may struggle in truly understanding the technology if not explained properly.

It is obvious that such an invention will also introduce its own jargons. Terms like Block-Time, Block-Height, Nonce, etc. It can become a little difficult for a non-tech person to adopt to such terminologies quickly and thus people lose interest soon.

Lack of Blockchain Experts:

One of the biggest contributors is lack of in-depth knowledge of Blockchain across the world. The number of people across the world that can understand, develop, code, test, etc. on Blockchain is maximum to a 4-digit number. That’s too small when you compare experts in other technologies present today.

Many people mention Blockchain on their resume (expecting a good hike over their current salaries), but while getting interviewed struggle even in answering basic questions about how Blockchain works. This isn’t a good sign for Blockchain adoption, because there is a huge demand and very less supply of good Blockchain resource.

Dispersed Educational Content:

There are a lot of articles on and around Blockchain on internet today. Still it can be really difficult for a new-comer to understand how or where to start? There are several courses as well today but most of them (in my experience) lack in delivering what they appear to be. Most of the theoretical courses focus on teaching Blockchain via Bitcoin and then the student stay confused by the end on “what is the difference between Bitcoin and Blockchain?”.

Clearly most of these issues are around the fact that there is a lack of talent and knowledge in Blockchain. The key is to get educated properly in Blockchain.

BlockDigest is one company that is focused on training and educating people on Blockchain. Apart from classroom trainings, they have a variety of Blockchain courses on their website: https://blockdigest.thinkific.com/