Is there a Blockchain in your future? The survey results may surprise you... [Video]

Introduction and background: Not so long ago, Open Source software was misunderstood, underinvested in and left to the minority to champion. As believers ourselves having benefited from, invested in and built major businesses around it, we championed The Future of Open Source as a movement for over a decade, creating the largest industry collaboration, survey and thought leadership platform of it’s kind. With thousands of influencers participating in it, tremendous insights were gleaned and viewed by millions to help educate, inform and lead. This was so successful that we did it again with the Future of Cloud computing, enjoying similar results. So when we saw the confusion and apprehension around Blockchain, the lack of use cases and understanding of its real potential, we heard the call from the community again, and last October launched the Future of Blockchain.

Today, we’re announcing the Future of Blockchain survey results. Once again, we want to create quantitative perspectives and actionable insights that collectively voice the opinions of industry thought leaders. There’s a lot of buzz around this topic, so the goal was to ask the most important questions, identify new opportunities, disarm any threats or challenges, and advance the discussion on this technology. The thousands of conversations and many thousands of data points in the results are fascinating and will take some time to fully digest and share. But to get you going here’s our primer video:

Drawing out some of the highlights:

It’s clear we’re in the earliest stages of this transformative technology. Most people realize that the closest comparison is the web in ‘97.

Everyone wants to understand if that means we’re 3 years away from a bust, and the implications thereof. Whatever the case, we still think it is vital to be investing now with a long-term perspective. Read here for why and where to invest.

Despite this, people can’t resist the potential of blockchain to bring about change, and even disruption, as the following findings show.

Trust is topical today in the wake of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal and so it’s clear that people are looking to get away from centralized control of their data. These were the top 5 factors accelerating blockchain adoption:

As these capabilities come into play, our survey highlighted 35 industries blockchain will disrupt. The top five being financial transaction processing, micropayments, banking, supply chain, and crowdfunding. Click to tweet.

In order for this to happen, regulation needs to be addressed. 79% of people believe current regulations in the U.S. regarding cryptocurrencies are still unclear. Even still, it’s understood by the majority that regulation of decentralized cryptoassets is difficult and it won’t be easy to come up with a solution. Click to tweet.

Technically, the #1 problem hindering blockchain is scalability. 78% of people believe it’ll take at least 3-5 years to solve this problem, and most think it will be solved, though there is a lack of conviction (and understanding) as to whether it will be layer 1 or layer 2. A debate rages: to build on or to rebuild current Blockchain technologies? Click to tweet.

Of course, the first application of the blockchain is Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Yet even there it’s clear we are very early, as crypto wallets and exchanges are difficult and uncomfortable to use, according to almost 75% of respondents. Though companies like Coinbase and Circle have made buying and selling top cryptoassets like BTC, ETH, and XRP easy to do, 2 out of 3 people find it very difficult to do the same with cryptocurrencies outside that realm. And though larger investors are looking at crypto, 62% are uncomfortable with exchanges holding their cryptoassets; significantly hindering broader adoption.

One of the most surpising results was that 78% of people believe that enterprise adoption was going to help accelerate overall blockchain adoption. It's actually a finding in the survey that we disagree with. And in at least one sign of why - 69% believe the enterprise has very low ability to implement Blockchain.

Building on our 16 years of investing experience, surveys, and understanding the way Open Source and Cloud Computing have been adopted, the enterprise has generally been a laggard. We expect the same will be true of Blockchain. We believe that the public blockchain will be the area of innovation, and the way that will come about is with startups, and upstarts like Ethereum leading with innovative distributed applications (dApps).

dApps can address new and heretofore impossibly difficult use cases like personalized data sovereignty. However this may not be as much of a revolution as an evolution, as our survey showed that only 11% of people believed that dApps would replace traditional apps, and the majority believe they will complement existing applications.

The one related interesting thing associated with dApps is the need for tokens. We debated whether or not each dApp will need it's own token, and at this point thought leaders haven't yet come to a conclusion. Yet everyone agrees we've been in a bubble with both ICOs and tokens that needs clearer regulation.

These are just some of the insights received from thousands of data points and conversations with the business and thought leaders, founders, technologists, economists, academics and educators who gave their opinions. To learn more and get the rest of the results and news as we share it, sign up here.

Do you see Blockchain in your future? We would love to get your thoughts and also questions for future surveys in the comments below...

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Michael Skok is the founder of the “Future of” series of thought leadership industry platforms. Michael and his team partner with bold, brave entrepreneurs to build iconic companies from inception to market leaders. As a former entrepreneur turned VC, Michael has backed and built teams that have created billions of dollars of value focusing on large, market-changing technologies such as Blockchain, IoT and AI/ML as well as disruptive business models such as Open Source and SaaS. Representative investments include Acquia, Demandware, Mautic, Moltin, Salsify and Zaius.

Follow Michael on LinkedIn, Twitter @mjskok, and in his Harvard Innovation Lab class, Startup Secrets. Follow Underscore VC on the web and Twitter @underscore.vc.