2019 Global Enterprise Blockchain Benchmarking Study

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance produce a Global Enterprise Blockchain Benchmarking Study, supported by Invesco, providing new insights into the current state of the enterprise blockchain ecosystem. 

This second edition of the study gathers survey data from 160 start-ups, established companies, central banks, and other public-sector institutions from 49 different countries worldwide. The empirical analysis specifically focuses on enterprise blockchain networks that have entered in production.  

The study underlines significant changes since the initial version: “While two years ago, the industry landscape was mostly dominated by half-hearted experiments and short-lived proofs-of-concept – often announced with great fanfare and publicity – the hype has gradually given way to genuine development of sustainable blockchain networks that are increasingly being deployed in production environments,” the new report says.

The median enterprise blockchain project takes 25 months between initial proof-of-concept and deployment in production, while some large-scale networks take more than four and a half years for full launch.

The study cautions, however, that the vast majority of existing live enterprise blockchain networks (77 per cent) has little in common with multi-party consensus systems. Such “blockchain meme” projects, as coined by the report, are nevertheless influential drivers of organisational change to promote the development of common data standards. "In multiple industries, enterprise blockchains are perceived as a solution to establish common data standards across organisations, eliminate organisational silos, and facilitate record reconciliation to help improve overall efficiency and enable the creation of new services", said Dr Robert Wardrop, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School, in a Foreword to the report.

The new study also finds that financial services account for the largest share (43 per cent) of live blockchain networks as banks and other institutions seek to use the technology for greater efficiency.

While the report points to revenue generation being the biggest strategic driver for blockchain investment, only six per cent of current enterprise blockchain networks’ value proposition focuses on incremental revenue generation. "A few salient points shine through in the report: one being that the success of blockchain cannot and will not happen in isolation as the power is in the network, that true transformation of ecosystems takes time, and that new technologies must prove themselves to build trust in the new paradigm", says Dave Dowsett, Global Head of Technology Strategy, Digital Transformation, AI and Emerging Technology at Invesco, in another Foreword to the report.

Read the study