Gartner says blockchain is still ten years away from becoming mainstream. “Blockchain technologies have not yet lived up to the hype and most enterprise blockchain projects are stuck in experimentation mode,” said Avivah Litan, distinguished analyst and research vice president at Gartner.
The analyst says the emerging technology is so underperforming that interest is waning following experiments and implementations that fail to deliver.
Gartner’s 2019 Hype Cycle for Blockchain Technologies shows that blockchain is sliding into the Trough of Disillusionment. The analyst predicts the technology will take another two years before advances and pragmatic use cases uniquely supported by blockchain continue to roll out.
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The Trough of Disillusionment highlights technologies and markets where interest has waned as experiments and implementations fail to deliver (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Hype Cycle for Blockchain Technologies, 2019
Source: Gartner (October 2019)
“Blockchain is not yet enabling a digital business revolution across business ecosystems and may not until at least 2028, when Gartner expects blockchain to become fully scalable technically and operationally,” said Litan.
For blockchain to become mainstream, Gartner said users shouldn’t have to worry about picking the right platform, the right smart contract language, the right system interfaces, and the right consensus algorithms. Additionally, concerns about how users will interoperate with partners that use different blockchain platforms for their projects must be rectified.
“We are witnessing many developments in blockchain technology that will change the current pattern. By 2023, blockchain platforms will be scalable, interoperable, and will support smart contract portability and cross-chain functionality. They will also support trusted private transactions with the data confidentiality required. All together, these technology advances will take us much closer to mainstream blockchain and the decentralized web, also known as Web 3.0,” said Litan.
“Over time, permissioned blockchains will integrate with public blockchains, and will take advantage of shared services while supporting the membership, governance and operating model requirements of permissioned blockchains,” she concluded.
