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Corporate America Cools On Blockchain. Gartner Sees 'Disconnect Between Hype and Reality' (bloomberg.com)
"Corporate America's love affair with all things blockchain may be cooling," reports Bloomberg. An anonymous reader quotes their report. [Alternate version here.]
A number of software projects based on the distributed ledger technology will be wound down this year, according to Forrester Research Inc. And some companies pushing ahead with pilot tests are scaling back their ambitions and timelines. In 90 percent of cases, the experiments will never become part of a company's operations, the firm estimates. Even Nasdaq Inc., a high-profile champion of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, hasn't moved as quickly as hoped. The exchange operator, which talked in 2016 about deploying blockchain for voting in shareholder meetings and private-company stock issuance, isn't using the technology in any widely deployed projects yet...
"The disconnect between the hype and the reality is significant -- I've never seen anything like it," said Rajesh Kandaswamy, an analyst at Gartner Inc. "In terms of actual production use, it's very rare...." Only 1 percent of chief information officers said they had any kind of blockchain adoption in their organizations, and only 8 percent said they were in short-term planning or active experimentation with the technology, according to a Gartner study. Nearly 80 percent of CIOs said they had no interest in the technology. Many companies that previously announced blockchain rollouts have changed plans
Problems include the fact that most blockchains "also can't yet handle a large volume of transactions," and worries about compatibility with other software -- which some hope to address next year with software certification testing. But at least two big tech companies are aggressively pushing blockchain.
"So far, IBM and Microsoft have grabbed 51 percent of the more than $700 million market for blockchain products and services, WinterGreen Research Inc. estimated earlier this year,"
"The disconnect between the hype and the reality is significant -- I've never seen anything like it," said Rajesh Kandaswamy, an analyst at Gartner Inc. "In terms of actual production use, it's very rare...." Only 1 percent of chief information officers said they had any kind of blockchain adoption in their organizations, and only 8 percent said they were in short-term planning or active experimentation with the technology, according to a Gartner study. Nearly 80 percent of CIOs said they had no interest in the technology. Many companies that previously announced blockchain rollouts have changed plans
Problems include the fact that most blockchains "also can't yet handle a large volume of transactions," and worries about compatibility with other software -- which some hope to address next year with software certification testing. But at least two big tech companies are aggressively pushing blockchain.
"So far, IBM and Microsoft have grabbed 51 percent of the more than $700 million market for blockchain products and services, WinterGreen Research Inc. estimated earlier this year,"
Because 'blockchain' sounds better than 'redundant distributed database', a term (and technology) that's been around & constantly improved for ages.
Buzzword bullshit does not create reality, unless you are in the Cult of the Orangutan.
Because almost no one in the corporate world even understood what "blockchain" even means. They heard and saw a bunch of hype, they were afraid of missing the bandwagon, so they just reflexively "adopted" it.
It's very similar to the era where if you "had a website", your lack of a business plan or completely idiotic business plan, everyone jumped because "websites are going to be big!" Nobody know what they were really getting then, either, hence. Pets.com. etc.
https://youtu.be/9AajslFuPro
You are welcome on my lawn.
Translation: "I bought bitcoin at $19000 with borrowed money and now it's under $7000. If it will only get back to like $12000, I'll be able to get out and not have to sell my car."
You are welcome on my lawn.
who's stock value increased well about 100% when they announced plans to do their own microcurrancy and Blockchain implementation.
All of that gain and another 40% decrease plummeted their stock value when they announced: "Just kidding."
As with every new technology there come a lot of people who are willing to get VC money under the pretext of changing the world for the better and inventing the things which will net insane profits and blockchain is no different.
I'm not sure too many people have suddenly cooled on blockchain. More like journalists have failed to unveil a hype with little to no substance in time. I'm not saying the technology is useless, I'm just saying that blockchain just cannot solve all the world problems, yet it's exceptionally useful for certain areas of our existence. BTW, Git SCM is a good example of blockchain, yet no one talks about that and it was first released long before Bitcoin. systemd-journal also uses a sort of blockchain to store its log files.
Then we obviously have Bitcoin/Ethereum and several hundred of altcoins which still are very much alive, though people still don't trust them because there's no recognized authority behind them (math and science have fallen out of grace recently) and people prefer fiat money which is ostensibly backed by central banks (but we all know how it works, how it sometimes fails to work and how it's susceptible to manipulation, dirty games and trillion dollars bailouts).
"The disconnect between the hype and the reality is significant -- I've never seen anything like it," said Rajesh Kandaswamy, an analyst at Gartner Inc.
That's pretty much the case for most things Gartner sings the praises of from the rooftops. Gartner and IDC's business is largely made at senselessly hyping things up to scare companies into paying them for analyst insight on 'the new hot thing' that they don't get, but must be important....
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
And this is why Gartner is full if it. They are part of the hype train. They are part of the constant annoyance of C*O to lower level employees to jump on the train and not address the real issues.
It's not like this hasn't happened before... The best known previous example is the "Business X, except on the internet" that was all the rage during the dot.com boom and I'm pretty sure everyone here on slashdot remembers what happened when people finally wised up on it.
Sure, there were some actually viable and profitable businesses that came out of it, but most of the businesses that got investors excited were garbage companies with no viable path to profitability. Thus when they finally figured out that being on the internet wasn't some magical thing that couldn't fail the end the result was truly brutal and it's not like the average quality of bitcoin startups is any better than the average quality of blockchain startups.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
cryptocurrency is one thing, but other business use of blockchain is another. Blockchain architecture is lousy for distributed database systems, that's a long solved problem. Right now various groups are trying to push blockchain as a solution for the wrong types of problems.
Blockchain != cryptocurrency, especially in corporate applications. Even those banks who are experimenting with coins like Ripple to manage settlements will come to their senses, and understand that they are completely out of their gourds using a cryptocurrency (of which half is owned by the founders) for this purpose. They may end up using blockchain technology to implement distributed trust and immutability, but they have no need for a coin.
As for retailers accepting BTC, there is very little upside there for either the merchant or the customer, unless that customer is someone who happens to already hold a decent amount of them. Another more efficient and stable cryptocurrency may eventually rise to become a widely accepted means of payment for the masses, but it won't be BTC and it won't be in the next 5 years. I'm willing to stake a good bottle of Scotch on that.
I'm not very surprised that corporations are cooling on the notion of "using blockchain". I work on innovation in a reasonably large entity, and if I would have gotten a Dogecoin for every time someone said "we are planning to do an experiment with Blockchain" or "Should we do something with cryptocurrencty?", I'd be able to retire by now. By the way, the best way to silence those idiots is to ask: "What?". What should we do with cryptocurrency, what is your blockchain experiment? No one is able to give a concrete answer to that, or propose something that couldn't be handled just as well or better with a database.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Or maybe he's working for a blockchain startup. Which as with any startup requires a leap of faith. But as we all know, sometimes that leap pays off, in money or other ways.
Though if he really bought bitcoin he can only hope it pays off with money.
no, while (barely) adequate for cryptocurrency blockchain is a lousy solution for most business processes though, a very bottlenecked architecture. superior solutions exist for other business distributed databases and trust mechanisms.
as far as saying "it can only go up from here", er, no markets never have that guarantee. bitcoin could have its value sabotaged by government actions, for example.
yes and the market was so overjoyed with the news that BTC went to the moon...
except today it plummeted below $7K
Funny
Definitely.
I started buying bitcoin
I didn't know anyone was dumb enough to actually do that... I mean, other than paying for juice and hardware, anyhow.
Basically, whether you call it "distributed redundant database" or "blockchain," it's something that does NOT lend itself to the monopoly dream all of the corporations have. It is neither owned nor controlled by one single party, so the Party of Greed, aka Corporate America, simply cannot abide it.
I was working a contract where some of the tech leads were heavily pushing block-chain as a solution to many of the organizations problems. Chiefly they were looking to solve issues with non-repudiation and centralization of records. The hitch in their whole plan was they primarily dealt with homeless individuals, who (shock) often don't have access to computers or smartphones, much less own one. When I asked them how these individuals would maintain their keys for signing (critical for non-repudiation to have any meaning)... "we'll manage the keys for them". Okay, then what are the block chains going to be distributed/stored "our equipment of course". At that point, I told them they really needed to run this "solution" past lawyers versed in the technology and just checked out of the conversation. They weren't looking to actually solve the problems, they wanted to play with shiny new toys.
Which actually brings up another issue with blockchain solutions that I don't see addressed often. There's very little case law I'm aware of that clarifies if blockchains would actually be suitable as evidence of transactions or contracts in court and under what conditions. With a well defined and controlled infrastructure I think it's pretty easy to prove that party A and party B both signed and it's binding, but if the situation was more like above where key control was not compartmentalized it could get very messy in a hurry. If I'm managing millions of dollars in transactions (which they were), I'd want to be certain of what the requirements were before I implemented something, was taken to court and had my solution deemed "inadequate as proof" and was left on the hook for the money in question (which happens frequently with their current paper based solution... so you would think they'd learned their lesson).
They were all jumping on the blockchain bandwagon when Bitcoin was approaching $20,000 last year, now that it's dropped over 50%, they don't want anything to do with it.
Anyone who wants to back Bitcoin is an idiot. Either that or is making big bucks off it. Bitcoin is a terrible coin.
The fact t that 81% of all mining takes place in one country, China, which is under totalitarian control. The blockchain ledger contains what they want it to contain. And blockchain has serious scaling problems as well. Supposedly a "distributed" system, most transactions take over an hour to verify if one has downloaded and users their own local blockchain ledger. Most cryptocurrency owners avoid the use of local ledgers by using "wallets" which connect to the ledger on a blockchain server accessed by tens of thousands - no distribution there.
Major blockchain myths and the limitations they impose are discussed in the link below.
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog...
tldr; blockchain is, essentially,, a giant Ponzi Scheme masquerading as digital money. He how created it and those who jumped in early made off with the money of the late arrivals who were blinded by dreams of getting rich quick. Eventually, most government will outlaw its use.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Wrong.
Corporations don't contest money put into or taken out of accounts or put into transactions, they don't contest your home address, phone number, credit card....
You're someone implying they want to falsify something. Bullshit, that's not how most corporations make money.
The issue is the bottle necked architecture.
Quit pushing blockchain as a solution for normal business databases, it isn't. It's a very shitty low-performance distributed database that is ill suited for most business use.