Content uploaded by Mahendra Kumar Shrivas
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Mahendra Kumar Shrivas on Feb 28, 2020
Content may be subject to copyright.
Content uploaded by Mahendra Kumar Shrivas
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Mahendra Kumar Shrivas on Jan 23, 2019
Content may be subject to copyright.
APA Citation
Shrivas, M. K., & Dr. Yeboah, T. (2019). The Disruptive Blockchain: Types, Platforms and Applications. Texila International Journal of Academic Research (TIJAR), Special Edition(2019), 17-39. doi:DOI: 10.21522/TIJAR.2014.SE.19.02.Art003
IEEE Citation
M. K. Shrivas and T. Dr. Yeboah, "The Disruptive Blockchain: Types, Platforms and Applications," Texila International Journal of Academic Research (TIJAR), vol. Special Edition, no. 2019, pp. 17-39, 2019.
MLA Citation
Shrivas, Mahendra Kumar and Thomas Dr. Yeboah. "The Disruptive Blockchain: Types, Platforms and Applications." Texila International Journal of Academic Research (TIJAR) Special Edition.2019 (2019): 17-39. 2 04 2019. <https://www.texilajournal.com/
academic-research/article/1216-the-disruptive-blockchain>.
Chicago Citation
Shrivas, Mahendra Kumar, and Thomas Dr. Yeboah. 2019. "The Disruptive Blockchain: Types, Platforms and Applications." Texila International Journal of Academic Research (TIJAR) (Texila International Journal of Academic Research (TIJAR)) Special Edition
(2019): 17-39. Accessed 04 2, 2019. doi:DOI: 10.21522/TIJAR.2014.SE.19.02.Art003.
1
©TWCS, 2018
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
The Disruptive Blockchain: Types, Platforms and Applications
Mahendra Kumar Shrivas1, Dr. Thomas Yeboah2
1PhD Scholar, School of Information Technology, Central University of Nicaragua Managua,
Nicaragua, Central America
2Dean, School of Technology Christ Apostolic University College Kumasi, Ghana, West Africa
1mshrivas@texilaconnect.com 2thomyebs24@gmail.com
ABSTRACT:
Organizations are always trying to bring new
technologies to their operations with high
motivation for value growth and to leverage
themselves with cost effective and efficient
solutions. These organizations are very sensitive
to change and value driven thus constant change
is the only law for them to achieve their goals and
to be in the market. When Bitcoin jumps into the
market, the whole world wanted to own it but
now after Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency bubble,
there are significant shift towards Blockchain
related products, services, solution
developments, researches and use-case studies.
From technical-financial opportunists, to
evangelists, to researchers, to enterprises, to
financial institutions, to governments, the whole
world is behind Blockchain and now it has the
technological spot light. Blockchain has left
behind all other technologies as far as research
initiatives, investments and financial funding are
concern. There are substantial research growth
on, how Blockchain can be useful in specific
area? Objectives of this paper are to highlight
facts and Blockchain phenomena that were
misinterpreted and misrepresented due to this
sudden shift. In this research article, authors are
presenting comprehensive literature review of
Blockchain Technologies and its applications in
various sectors. Our research supports that
Blockchain is revolutionizing and disrupting
organizations across all industries. Blockchain is
really a next big technological invention after
Internet. In Blockchain Code is the law and Smart
Contracts are the new way of enforcing
agreement and achieving censuses without any
need of third party.
Keywords: Blockchain, Types, Permissioned,
Permissionless, Smart Contract, Bitcoin,
Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, Corda R3,
Quorum, IOTA, Ripple, Kadena, Tezos,
Sawlooth, NEM, MultiChain, HydraChain,
BigChainDB, OpenChain, Applications
I. INTRODUCTION
Industrial revolution, computer revolution and
power of internet have transformed various
economies in the past and were main driving
force of growth. Today we are in the next
transition phase, new technologies like Cloud
Computing, Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT),
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning
(ML), Quantum Computing, etc. are going to
become de facto standard of next era of driving
force of economic growth and Blockchain is
going to be integral part of all technologies.
Blockchain was originally used in Bitcoin by a
pseudonym called Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009,
which is a digital cryptocurrency. Blockchain
facilitates transfer of digital currency between
parties without need of any central bank or inter-
mediator in Bitcoin network (Shrivas & Yeboah,
2017; Nofer, Gomber, Hinz, & Schiereck, 2017;
Tama, Kweka, Park, & Rhee, 2017). While
Bitcoin is designed to store state of ownership of
coins, Ethereum can be used to store state of
ownership of any items in digital form using
smart contracts (Dinh, et al., 2017).
Blockchain is just two-decade-old young
disruptive technology and now getting popularity
after success of Cryptocurrency. Most of the facts
about Blockchain are either exaggerated,
misinterpreted, little known or still unknown. The
main objectives of this paper are to highlight
some important phenomena and facts about
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
2
©TWCS, 2018
Blockchain that were misinterpreted and
misrepresented. Exploratory research
methodology is used in this comprehensive
research study. The Standard Exploratory
Method Type I, Exploratory method type 5 and 6
(Swedberg, 2018) were employed to explore
various Blockchain related concepts. We tried to
explore all possible secondary sources to
understand Blockchain related phenomena. We
explored thousands of resources mainly research
articles from Google Scholar, IEEE Explore,
Whitepapers, Discussion forums, Websites,
Blogs, Developer Documentations from
Blockchain Projects, Project Codes from GitHub,
etc. and presented it in this publishable research
paper (Miscione, Ziolkowski, Zavolokina, &
Schwabe, 2018). In the exploration phase, we
used all possible key combinations like
“Blockchain and OpenChain”, “Blockchain and
Project Funding”, etc. in search query. We choose
most relevant and reliable source for this study
after filtering.
This paper has been organized in various
sections. Section II focuses on Blockchain &
types while Blockchain reference architecture
and Blockchain platforms are conferred in
Section III. Section IV covers current and future
status of financial infusion and Blockchain
project initiatives. There are detailed discussion
on applications of Blockchain in Section V.
Section VI presents Truth vs Hype about
Blockchain and Conclusion is given in Section
VII at the end.
II. BLOCKCHAIN AND TYPES
A distributed ledger that holds collection of
interlinked blocks along with block hash is called
Blockchain (Shrivas & Yeboah, 2017).
Blockchain is distributed registry, which records
transactional data blocks initiated by
participating notes in the Blockchain network.
Block is basic unit in Blockchain, which is
generally combinations of block header and block
data as depicted in Figure 1. Block header
generally holds information like current block
hash, root hash, timestamp, nonce, previous block
hash while block data portion contains total
number of transaction, transaction details (sender
address, value being transfer, receiver address,
transaction fee, etc.) (Dinh, et al., 2017; Zheng Z.
, Xie, Dai, Chen, & Wang, 2017; Fernàndez-
València, Caube, & Vila, 2018). A cryptographic
hash algorithm like SHA-256, SHA2-512, SHA-
256d (Glabb, Imbert, Jullien, Tisserand, &
Veyrat-Charvillon, 2007), SHA3-256 (Dworkin,
2015), SHAKE256, Winternitz hash (Buchmann,
Dahmen, Ereth, Hülsing, & Rückert, 2011),
BLAKE2 (Patent No. IETF RFC 7693, 2015),
Keccak256 (Bertoni, Daemen, Peeters, &
Assche, 2009), Scrypt (Patent No. No. RFC 7914,
2016), etc. is used to generate hash value of block
that is stored in the block. Therefore, each block
holds the value of either current block & previous
block or only previous block hash (Tama, Kweka,
Park, & Rhee, 2017). Blocks are inter-linked in
Blockchain represented by Merkle tree, acyclic
directed graph, etc. and can be retrieved using
underline protocol scheme. Figure 1 shows
sample Block structure, while Figure 2 represent
sample blocks in Blockchain, which is high level
and general representation to understand
Blockchain architecture. Hash value is unique for
a given block thus it is very hard to change block
data once it is recorded in the distributed
Blockchain. Because firstly, Blockchain is
distributed, so if anyone wanted to change any
one block, they have to alter the records
everywhere and secondly they have to change all
forward blocks because change in one block will
generate a different hash causing different hash
value for all foremost blocks. It requires consent
of all participating parties and required
computing power. This makes Blockchain
transparent, hard to temper and ensure trust
between parties. Third parties, intermediary or
agents can be eliminated using Blockchain thus
Blockchain just not ensure trust between parties
but also help in lowering down the cost.
Blockchain allows participants to query each
transaction or transaction paths thus each
transactions can be traceable from originating
address/node to receiver address/node from
distributed ledger.
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
3
©TWCS, 2018
Figure-1. Sample Block Structure
Figure-2. Sample Blocks in Blockchain
A. Blockchain Types
Based on the nature of data accessibility (Lin
& Liao, 2017) Blockchain can be categories
as below:-
1. Public Blockchain: - In this type of
Blockchain, anyone one can read and
submit transactions.
2. Private Blockchain: - In this type of
Blockchain only one organization or all
subsidiary organization within same
group are allowed to read and submit
transactions.
3. Community/Consortium Blockchain: -
In this type of Blockchain multiple group
of organizations form a consortium and
are allowed to submit transactions and
read transactional data.
4. Hybrid Blockchain: - This is new
category where any of three Public,
Private or Community/Consortium,
Blockchain can be combined to facilitate
transactions. A Blockchain platform can
be configured in multi-mode using
Hybrid Blockchain.
Based on the need of authorization to
participate in Blockchain it can be categories
(Michael, Cohn, & Butcher, 2018) as below:-
1. Permissionless Blockchain: - No prior
permission is needed to participate in this
type of Blockchain. Everyone allowed to
participate in verification process and
can join Blockchain network with their
own computational power.
2. Permissioned Blockchain: - To join this
type of Blockchain prior permission is
needed. Only authorized parties are
allowed to run nodes to verify
transactions in Blockchain network.
3. Hybrid Blockchain: - There could be
possibility that a node is participating in
Permissionless and Permissioned
Blockchain together to facilitate inter-
Blockchain communication such
Blockchain can be called Hybrid
Blockchain. A Blockchain platform can
also be configured to support
Permissioned and/or Permissionless
model.
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
4
©TWCS, 2018
As far as core functionality and smart contract
support in concern, Blockchain can be categories
(Hileman & Rauchs, 2017) into following:-
1. Stateless Blockchain: - Stateless
Blockchain system only focus on
transaction optimization and chain
functionality that is verifying the
transaction by computing hashes. It is
independent from smart contract logic
layer thus unaffected from smart contract
code bugs and vulnerabilities.
2. Stateful Blockchain: - This type of
Blockchain provides smart contract and
transaction computing capabilities. It
also supports multifaceted business
logic, its optimization and preserve logic
states.
III. BLOCKCHAIN PLATFORMS
Blockchain is emerging technology and reaching
to maturity as adoption is growing. Bitcoin was
the first Blockchain powered platform launched
in 2009 and was designed to exchange digital
cryptocurrency without any need of central
authority. Bitcoin revolutionizes exchange of
money by using peer-to-peer distributed
technology and hard to counterfeit due to strong
cryptographic protocol and hash function. New
coins can only be generated by mining process as
a reward for solving computational hashes and
verifying transactions (Zheng Z. , Xie, Dai, &
Wang, 2016).
In last one decade various Blockchain platforms
have been developed that are somehow similar to
Bitcoin platform but with added functionalities.
Blockchain platform is core of Blockchain
network and provides key services to
participating nodes. A typical Blockchain
platform (Cloud Standards Customer Council,
2017) should have following modules as depicted
in Figure 3:-
1. Blockchain Runtime Environment: -
To be able to process Blockchain
transactions and smart contracts
Blockchain needed a secure hosting
environment. Generally secure operating
system, programming language, runtime
libraries and supporting libraries reside
in this layer.
2. Cryptographic Services: - This layer
provides access to cryptographic
algorithms like hash function, digital
signature, etc.
3. Smart Contract Module: - Smart
contract module is optional and only
applicable to Stateful Blockchain. It
encapsulates business logics that can be
implemented using any programming
language like go, solidity, java, Rust, C++,
etc.
4. Blockchain Secondary Storage: -
Blockchain platform process high
amount of transactions and needs highly
secure, reliable and scalable storage
solution to store block data in Blockchain
distributed ledger. This layer provides
permanent storage capabilities to
platform. Generally LevelDB, RocksDB,
H2 Database, MongoDB is being used as
storage along with other distributed data
storage solutions to store ledger
information.
5. Blockchain Memory Store: - This layer
stores latest transactions in memory to
support faster data retrieval and to speed
up the execution of transactions. Merkle
Tree, Trie, Acyclic Directed Graph,
Associative Array, etc. are some of the
data structures that are being used as a
memory storage in various Blockchain
platforms.
6. Consensus Protocol Module: - This
module contains mechanism to achieve
agreement between nodes about
transaction validity and authenticity.
Once majority of nodes are agree and
consensus level is achieved then the
given transaction is treated as valid and
recorded in the distributed ledger. Proof
of Service (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS),
Proof of Importance (PoI), Raft,
Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT), etc.
are some of the famous Blockchain
Consensus Protocol in use (Siva, Sindhu,
& Sethumadhavan, 2017).
7. Blockchain Services Layer: - Using this
layer Blockchain platforms can be
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
5
©TWCS, 2018
leverage with extra capabilities such as
membership management, authorization
and access management, event
distribution and notification services,
exposing platform services using
Application Programing Interface (API),
etc. However, some of the services like
membership management, authorization,
access management, etc. are only
meaningful for Permissioned Blockchain
and optional to Permissionless
Blockchain.
8. Communication Protocol: -
Blockchain Protocol implements
standard rules that facilitates distributed
peer-to-peer communication between
participating nodes in Blockchain
network. Bitcoin uses broadcasting over
TCP connection (Bitcoin Community,
2018) and Hyperledger Fabric is
powered by a gossip data dissemination
protocol (Hyperledger, 2018) while
Ethereum uses devp2p protocol
(Ethereum Community, 2018).
Generally, users send transaction to a node in
Blockchain network. The Node groups set of
transactions into one block and then broadcast
this Block to all nodes for processing. Nodes
compute cryptographic hashes, process
Blockchain transactions, and broadcast success
result to all Nodes in Blockchain network. Based
on Consensus and agreement block is added to
distributed ledger and transaction is completed
successfully. In case of Bitcoin and Ethereum the
node that is successfully verified the transaction
is rewarded and this process is called mining.
Table 1 shows most popular Blockchain
Platforms and its categorization while
Blockchain Platforms and its technical
specifications have been pretested in Table 2.
Figure 3. Sample High-level Blockchain and Network Architecture
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
6
©TWCS, 2018
S.
N. Blockchain
Platform Start
Year
Category 1
(Private/Publ
ic/Consortiu
m/Hybrid)
Category 2
(Permissionless/Per
missioned/Hybrid)
Category 3
(Stateless/Stateful) Project Website
1 Bitcoin 2009 Public Permissionless
Stateless https://bitcoincore.org
https://bitcoin.org
2 Ethereum 2015 Public Permissionless
Stateful
https://ethereum.org/
3
Hyperledger
Fabric
2016 Consortium Permissioned
Stateful
https://www.hyperledger.o
rg/
4 Corda R3 2015 Consortium Permissioned
Stateful
https://www.corda.net/
5 Quorum 2016 Consortium Permissioned
Stateful
https://www.jpmorgan.co
m/global/Quorum
6 IOTA 2015 Public Permissionless
Stateless
https://www.iota.org/
7 Ripple 2012 Consortium Permissioned
Stateless
https://ripple.com/
8 Kadena 2016 Hybrid Hybrid
Stateful
https://kadena.io
9
Tezos
2018
Public
Permissioned
Stateful
https://tzscan.io
10 Sawlooth 2016 Hybrid Hybrid
Stateful
https://www.hyperledger.o
rg/projects/sawtooth
11
NEM
2015
Hybrid
Hybrid
Stateless
https://nem.io/
12 MultiChain 2015 Private Permissioned
Stateless
https://www.multichain.co
m
13 HydraChain 2016 Hybrid Hybrid
Stateful
https://github.com/Hydra
Chain
14 BigChainDB 2016 Hybrid Hybrid
Stateless
https://www.bigchaindb.c
om
15 OpenChain 2015 Hybrid Hybrid
Stateless
https://www.openchain.or
g/
Table 1. Blockchain Platform and Categorization
S.No. Blockchain Platform Hash
Function In Memory Data
Structure Secondary
Storage Consensus
Protocol Programmin
g Languages
1 Bitcoin SHA-256 Merkle Tree LevelDB Proof of Work C++
2 Ethereum Keccak256 Trie
LevelDB,
RocksDB
Proof of
Work(Ethash)
Go, C++,
Rust, Solidity
3 Hyperledger Fabric SHA3
SHAKE256 Bucket-tree,
Merkle Tree RocksDB
Supports pluggable
consensus like
Practical Byzantine
Fault Tolerance
(PBFT), Raft, PoW,
PoS
Go,
JavaScript,
Java
4 Corda R3 SHA-256 Merkle tree H2 database
Validity consensus,
Uniqueness
consensus,
pluggable consensus
Java, Kotlin
5 Quorum Keccak256 Trie LevelDB
QuorumChain
pluggable consensus
(PoS, Raft, Istanbul
- BFT)
Go
6 IOTA Winternitz
hash Acyclic Directed
Graph Trytes, Balanced
Trinary System PoW
Go, C, C++,
Java,
JavaScript
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
7
©TWCS, 2018
7 Ripple SHA2-512
Merkle Tree,
Knowledge Grap
RocksDB,
NuDB
XRP Ledger
Consensus Protocol
C++ ,
JavaScript
8 Kadena BLAKE2 Merkle Oracle
BFT Raft,
ScalableBFT
Pact
9 Tezos
SHA-
256,BLAKE2
Merkle
Distributed
Database
Proof-of-Stake Michelson
10 Sawlooth SHA-
512,SHA256 BlockCache, Radix
Merkle Tree BlockStore
Pluggable
consensus
algorithms
Proof of Elapsed
Time (PoET),
PoW, PBFT
Rust, Python,
JavaScript,
Go, C++, Java
11 NEM SHA-256d
Web, Portable or
Network database
Web Database,
Access database
Proof of Importance Java, C++
12 MultiChain SHA3-256 Merkle Tree LevelDB PoW C++
13 HydraChain SHA3-256 Merkle tree LevelDB PBFT Python
14 BigChainDB SHA3-256 Associative Array MongoDB BFT
Python,
JavaScript,
Java
15 OpenChain SHA-256 Associative Array
SQLite,
SqlServer,
MongoDb
Proof of Work C#
Table 2. Blockchain Platform and Technical Specification
IV. BLOCKCHAIN CURRENT AND
FUTURE STATUS
Blockchain has left behind all other technologies
as far as research initiatives, investments and
financial funding are concern. Resource ready
Cloud Computing platforms are also fueling
adoption of Blockchain. Blockchain-as-a-Service
(BaaS) is new service offering category after
SaaS, PaaS and IaaS from various Cloud
Computing providers (Hiran, Henten, Shrivas, &
Doshi, 2018).
Blockchain is going to generate new business
value of $176 billion by 2025, which will grow to
$3.1 trillion by 2030 further (Lovelock,
Reynolds, Granetto, & Kandaswamy, 2017).
Value generation of Blockchain in 2030 is greater
than individual Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
of France (2.6 trillion), United Kingdom (2.6
trillion) and India (2.4 trillion) (statista.com,
2018) in 2017.
A. Financial Infusion and Project Initiatives
As per PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) 2018
survey with 600 global executives 84% of
executives were actively involved with
Blockchain. As per the survey, various
organizations reported their Blockchain based
project status as 20% research stage, 32%
development stage, 10% Pilot stage and 15%
projects were live. In First five month of 2018,
various start-ups & market leaders raised $13.7
billion for Blockchain based products and
services via Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).
Industry wide Blockchain leadership were
reported as Financial services 46%, Industrial
products and manufacturing 12%, Energy and
utilities 12%, Healthcare 11%, Government 8%,
Retail and consumer 4% while Entertainment and
media 1% (PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Ltd.,
2018).
In another global survey on Blockchain in 2018
by Deloitte found Blockchain working use-case
Supply chain 53%, Internet of Things 51%,
Digital identity 50%, Digital records 44%, Digital
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
8
©TWCS, 2018
currency 40%, Payments 30% and Voting 12%.
Organizations from Canada (36%), China (49%),
France (37%), Germany (36%), Mexico (48%),
United Kingdom (40%) and United States (14%)
reported that Blockchain is currently in
production. While Organizations from Canada
(51%), China (86%), France (44%), Germany
(40%), Mexico (56%), United Kingdom (49%)
and United States (24%) are investing in hiring
staff with Blockchain experience now and in the
future (Pawczuk, Massey, & Schatsky, 2018).
Figure 4 suggests that Various Venture capital
firms have invested total $1,222 million in 558
companies. While they have funded total 295,
Blockchain projects in last 12 months. As per
Figure 4 New York (NY) gets highest amount of
$268 million investment followed by Menlo Park
(CA) $163 million, San Francisco (CA) $125
million and Beijing (China) $102 million and
where top four city getting funding from Venture
Capital firms respectively. Beijing (China) gets
48 highest number of funding for Blockchain
projects followed by Palo Alto (CA) 44, New
York (NY) 41 and Menlo Park (CA) 33 projects.
While Venture Capitals firms have funded total
121 projects in New York, 83 projects in San
Francisco, 63 projects in Menlo Park and 57
projects in Beijing.
Complete names of projects/organizations who
have got funding from Venture capital firms have
been given in Appendices A - Top 50 Venture
Capital Firms Investing in Blockchain
Project/Organization). While Figure 5 shows data
of country wise, top 50 global public company’s
fortunes. Public companies from various
countries are aggressively working on
Blockchain use cases. Top 50 global public
companies with total $11,678.1 billion market
valuation and $44,089 billion assets are
generating yearly sales volume of $5,505.1
billion and making $661.2 billion profits yearly.
All these top public companies are exploring
Blockchain and pumping huge money in
Blockchain related technologies. Public
companies from China and United States are
showstopper in this Blockchain play as depicted
in Figure 5.
Figure 4. City wise Investment by Venture Capital Firm in Blockchain Projects (through 15 June 2018)
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
Beijing, China
Berlin, Germany
Boulder, CO
Cambridge, MA
Chicago, IL
Frankfurt, Germany
Hong Kong
Houston, TX
London, UK
Menlo Park, CA
Mountain View, CA
New York, NY
Palo Alto, CA
Road Town, Tortola
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
San Mateo, CA
Seoul, South Korea
Shanghai, China
Tiburon, CA
Tokyo, Japan
Sum of Blockchain Investments
Last 12 Months
Sum of Value of Venture Investments
in Blockchain (In USD Millions)
Sum of Total Blockchain Company
Investments
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
9
©TWCS, 2018
Figure 5. Country wise financial of Top 50 Global Public Companies investing in Blockchain
B. HUMAN CAPITAL
Human capital is very important factors to sustain
growth and achieve technological maturity
specifically in Blockchain like young technology.
As being the new and evolving technology, there
are huge demand of skilled human resources in
Blockchain sector. There is huge gap in supply
and demand. China has evolved as global hub of
Blockchain based investment while United States
has largest number of Blockchain developer
communities followed by India. Top five country
wise total estimated Blockchain developers head
count stood as 27,876(US), 12,509(India),
7,656(UK), 4,544(Canada) and 4,283(France) as
depicted in Figure 6 (Filatov, 2018).
There is huge demand of Blockchain related
skills in job market. As per Burning Glass
Technologies in 2016, there were 1,838 job
openings, that grew to 3,958 job opening,
clocking 115% job growth (Bittle, 2017). As per
Indeed.com Blockchain based job openings
increased by 207% in 2016-2017. While demand
for Blockchain engineers has grown up 700%
from Jan-2017 to Jan-2018. Job openings grown-
up from 1,037 jobs in December 2016 to 4,541
job opening in Dec. 2017 on LinkedIn
(HowToToken Team, 2018). At the time of
writing this article, there were total 13,831 active
job openings Worldwide in LinkedIn while
industry wise distribution of job opening were
Information Technology and Services (9205),
Computer Software (8566), Financial Services
(4798), Internet (4047), Staffing and Recruiting
(1659), Hospital & Health Care (163), Insurance
(135), Computer Hardware (112), Investment
Management (92), Fund-Raising (15). Job
Function wise job openings were Information
Technology (7875), Engineering (5236),
Business Development (998), Marketing (911),
Finance (672), Writing/Editing (321), Product
Management (296), Human Resources (168),
Administrative (114) and other (1547). While
Location wise job openings recorded as United
States (4042), United Kingdom (1417), London,
United Kingdom (1042), Germany (933),
Netherlands (761), Greater New York City Area
(711), India (590), Amsterdam Area, Netherlands
(318), Hong Kong (197) and Chennai Area, India
(35). As per Figure 7 Malta is having highest 46
Blockchain developers per 100K Population
followed by Luxembourg 36 developers,
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
18000 Sum of Market Value (In USD Billion)
Sum of Profits (In USD Billion)
Sum of Sales Volume (In USD Billion)
Sum of Assets (In USD Billion)
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
10
©TWCS, 2018
Singapore 36 developers, Switzerland 24
developers and Netherlands 19 developers
respectively. Blockchain development is hottest
skills and demand has grown more than 6000%
within a year as far as Blockchain related
Freelancing work is concern. In Free Launching
job market specialist are making between $50 to
$150 per hours based on their experience level
while Blockchain full time developer earns
between $50K and $180K yearly (Mearian,
2018). Apart from technical skills demand, there
are significant demand for Marketing,
Community, Relations and Product Managers
including Risk Analysts. (Walters, 2018).
Figure 6. Global Blockchain Developers Counts (Top 20 Countries)
Figure 7. Estimated Global Blockchain Developers per 100K Population (Top 20 Countries)
0
10,000
20,000
30,000
40,000
50,000
Top 20 Counries and Blockchain Developers
Ethereum Solidity Blockchain Hyperledger Estimated Total
0
50,000,000
100,000,000
150,000,000
200,000,000
250,000,000
300,000,000
350,000,000
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
Top 20 Countries and Estimated Blockchain Developers per
100K Population
Total Population Estimated Blockchain Developers per 100K Population
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
11
©TWCS, 2018
V. BLOCKCHAIN APPLICATIONS
Governments in Dubai, United States, Korea
China and India are planning to launch public
services using Blockchain to prevent fraud and
better data management. We are going to see next
big revolution in agriculture sector driven by
Blockchain Technologies. Blockchain is going to
transform food supply chain in near future.
Blockchain is disrupting all sectors and going to
become most widely adopted technology of this
era. It is having vast area of applications although
some of the applications of Blockchain are listed
below-
1. Land Registry: - The Swedish Lantmäteriet
has successfully tested a Blockchain Platform for
Land Registry with the help of SBAB, Telia
Company, Landshypotek Bank, Kairos Future
and ChromaWay. The Land Registry System
(Figure 8) stores purchase/sale bills and
contracts, signatures of parties, their identity
documents and ownership information in
Blockchain. Edition of records are allowed
through administrative interface only but record
all the transactions in Blockchain, which can be
viewed by all stakeholders like buyers, sellers,
agents, banks including public (Kempe, 2017).
Ghana government and IBM have signed
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to
develop Blockchain based land registry platform
(ghanaweb.com, 2018). An Indian state
government, Andhra Pradesh has also piloted
land registry and registered 100,000 land records
in Blockchain (Haridas, 2018).
2. International Trade: - World Trade
Organization (TWO) is looking at various
feasibility to bring International Trade in
Blockchain (Ganne, 2018). In January 2018
Maersk and IBM come up together to develop
Blockchain based solution to Digitize Supply
Chains and Improve Global Trade (White, 2018)
and in August, 2018 Maersk and IBM Introduce
a robust Blockchain Platform called TradeLens
with Shipping Solution. Around 90 organizations
participated in this solution and 154 million
events captured. TradeLens is recording one
million trade-based event on daily basis (IBM,
2018). Singapore and Hong Kong are jointly
developing Global Trade Connectivity Network
(GTCN) using Distributed Ledger Technology
(DLT) (Hong Kong Monetary Authority
(HKMA), 2017).
3. Customs: - The World Customs Organization
(WCO) has already initiated feasibility study to
transform custom processes into Blockchain.
They are exploring the option to join TradeLens
platform jointly developed by IBM and Maersk
including Global Trade Connectivity Network
(GTCN) (Okazaki, 2018). U.S. Customs and
Border Protection (CBP) agency is also testing
Blockchain based shipment tracking system
developed by the Department of Homeland
Security (Partz, 2018). Samsung SDS is
developing a Blockchain based platform for an
export and customs clearance system for The
Korea Customs Service (KCS) (Das, 2018).
Figure 8. The Swedish Lantmäteriet Land Registry Blockchain
Platform
As shown in Figure 9 Banking, Financial Service
and Insurance are most disrupted sectors by
Blockchain followed by Conglomerate and
Automotive sectors, and are the consumers of
Blockchain. While Technology sectors are
Blockchain platform and service providers in
general. We have listed top 50 global public
companies in Table 3 who are exploring/adopting
Blockchain in their businesses. Blockchain
application use cases are also listed along with it.
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
12
©TWCS, 2018
Figure 9. Sector wise categorization of Top 50 Public Companies who are exploring Blockchain
S.
N
o
Ra
nk
1
Public
Company
Name
Company
Category Country Blockchain Application Use Case Website
1 1
Industrial and
Commercial
Bank of China
(ICBC)
Banking China Trying to verify digital certificates using Blockchain http://www.icbc-
ltd.com/icbcltd/en/
2 2
China
Construction
Bank
Banking China Using IBM Blockchain for financial products http://www.ccb.com/en
/home/indexv3.html
3 3
JPMorgan
Chase
Financial
Services
United
States
Contributed to Quorum Project
https://www.jpmorganc
hase.com/
4 4
Berkshire
Hathaway
Conglomer
ate
United
States
Blockchain base supply chain
http://www.berkshireha
thaway.com/
5 5
Agricultural
Bank of China
Banking China
Unsecured agricultural loans on Blockchain for e-
commerce merchant
http://www.abchina.co
m/en/
6 6
Bank of
America
Banking
United
States
Trying to use Ethereum Blockchain to automate issue
of letters of credit
https://www.bankofam
erica.com/
7 7 Wells Fargo
Financial
Services
United
States
Member of R3 and trying to simplify tracking of
securitized home mortgages.
https://www.wellsfargo
.com/
8 8 Apple
Technolog
y
United
States
Registered a patent to timestamp data using
Blockchain
https://www.apple.com
/
9 9 Bank of China Banking China
Working with Tencent to develop financial solutions
using Blockchain.
www.boc.cn/en/
10 10
Ping An
Insurance
Group
Insurance China Member of R3 and working with various insurance
firm to develop Blockchain solution http://www.pingan.cn/e
n/index.shtml
11 11
Royal Dutch
Shell
Oil & Gas
Netherla
nds
Funding Blockchain projects and working with BP to
develop Energy Commodities Platform
https://www.shell.com/
12 12 Toyota Motor Automotiv
e Japan
Founder member of Blockchain Mobility Consortium
and developing Blockchain based payment system for
self-driving cars
https://www.toyota-
global.com/
13 14 Samsung
Conglomer
ate
South
Korea
Own Nexledger platform to track global supply chains
https://www.samsung.c
om
14 19 BNP Paribas Banking France Blockchain platform for internal treasury operations
https://group.bnppariba
s/en/
1 Rank is based on 16th annual Forbes Global 2000 list which include topmost public companies from 60 countries
0
5
10
15
No of Companies
Sector wise categorization of Top 50 Public Companies who are exploring
Blockchain
Banking Automotive Conglomerate Entertainment
Financial Services Food & Beverages Insurance Oil & Gas
Pharmaceutical Retail Social Media Technology
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
13
©TWCS, 2018
15 20 Microsoft
Technolog
y
United
States
Offering Blockchain as a services on Azure Platform
https://www.microsoft.
com
16 22 Allianz
Financial
Services
German
y
Working on self-insurance Platform
https://www.allianz.co
m
17 23 Alphabet
Conglomer
ate
United
States
Working on various Blockchain projects https://abc.xyz/
18 24 Walmart Retail
United
States
Supply Chain on Hyperledger Fabric
https://www.walmart.c
om/
19 29 Daimler
Automotiv
e
German
y
Corporate bond using Ethereum Blockchain
https://www.daimler.co
m/en/
20 31
Banco
Santander
Banking Spain
Funded to Ripple and Digital Asset Holdings and own
a payment platform on Ripple
https://www.santander.
com
21 33 AXA Group Insurance France
Own 'Fizzy' smart contract platform to execute flight
insurance payments
https://www.axa.com/
22 34 Comcast
Conglomer
ate
United
States
Indirectly investing in enterprise Blockchain startups.
https://www.xfinity.co
m/
23 41
Anheuser-
Busch InBev
Food &
Beverages
Belgium Blockchain based logistics Platform
https://www.ab-
inbev.com/
24 42
Royal Bank of
Canada
Banking Canada Automating credit scores on Blockchain
www.rbcroyalbank.co
m
44 Pfizer
Pharmaceu
tical
United
States
Blockchain based supply chains solution
https://www.pfizer.com
/
26 47 Sberbank Banking Russia
Blockchain lab, Blockchain solution for corporate
bonds
https://www.sberbank.r
u
27 48 Nestle
Food &
Beverages
Switzerl
and
Working with IBM to develop Blockchain based
supply chain solution
https://www.nestle.com
/
28 49 Intel
Technolog
y
United
States
Part of Hyperledger consortium & Developing
Hardware for Blockchain Platforms
https://www.intel.com
29 50 Morgan Stanley
Financial
Services
United
States
Clearing house for bitcoin futures contracts
https://www.morgansta
nley.com/
30 51 Siemens
Conglomer
ate
German
y
Blockchain for energy Sector
https://www.siemens.c
om
31 53 Amazon.com
Conglomer
ate
United
States
Blockchain & Cloud integration, working with
Ethereum startup ConsenSys for Blockchain solutions
https://www.amazon.co
m/
32 56 ING Group
Financial
Services
Netherla
nds
User Identity https://www.ing.com
33 60
Goldman Sachs
Group
Financial
Services
United
States
Trading Platform
https://www.goldmans
achs.com/
34 61 Intesa Sanpaolo Banking Italy
Using Public Bitcoin Blockchain to timestamp records
and Ethereum Blockchain for derivatives
https://www.intesasanp
aolo.com/
35 66
Prudential
Financial
Insurance
United
States
Financing Blockchain Companies
https://www.prudential.
com
36 66 Prudential Insurance
United
Kingdo
m
Trade platform for SME https://www.prudential.
co.uk/
37 67 IBM Technolog
y United
States
Contributor to Hyperledger Fabric and have multiple
Blockchain initiatives,
Blockchain Technology Provider
https://www.ibm.com
38 67 Ford Motor Automotiv
e United
States Blockchain research group for the auto industry
Has a patent for controlling traffic flow https://www.ford.com/
39 72 Walt Disney
Entertainm
ent
United
States
Developing various Blockchain solution and own
Dragonchain platform
https://www.thewaltdis
neycompany.com/
40 77 Facebook
Social
Media
United
States
Exploring Blockchain Use-Cases
https://newsroom.fb.co
m/company-info/
41 78 MetLife Insurance
United
States
Own Blockchain platform for Insurance
https://www.metlife.co
m/
42 81 Alibaba
Conglomer
ate
China Food supply chain, Blockchain technology Provider
https://www.alibaba.co
m/
43 92 AIA Group Insurance Hong
Kong
Developed Bancainsurance platform using
Hyperledger Fabric and runs its own Blockchain
accelerator
http://www.aia.com/en/
index.html
44
10
5
Tencent
Holdings
Conglomer
ate
China Developing Blockchain for taxes
https://www.tencent.co
m/en-us/
45
10
7
Oracle
Technolog
y
United
States
Contributor to Hyperledger Fabric and Own Enterprise
Blockchain Platform
https://www.oracle.co
m
46
10
8
BHP Billiton
Conglomer
ate
Australia Blockchain for Supply chain https://www.bhp.com/
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
14
©TWCS, 2018
47
11
2
Mitsubishi
Automotiv
e
Japan
Using Ripple payments network and Planning to
launch their own Blockchain Platform
https://www.mitsubishi
cars.com/
48
11
4
Mizuho
Financial
Financial
Services
Japan Funding Blockchain projects
https://www.mizuho-
fg.com
49
11
6
BBVA-Banco
Bilbao Vizcaya
Banking Spain
Developing platform for Corporate loan in Ethereum
and Hyperledger Fabric.
https://www.bbva.com/
en/
50
11
9
American
Express
Financial
Services
United
States
Membership rewards using Blockchain
https://www.americane
xpress.com/
Table 3. Global Top 50 Public Companies2 and their Blockchain Use Case Plan
VI. BLOCKCHAIN TRUTH VS HYPE
The Bitcoin hype started as prices were growing
day by day then it shifted towards Blockchain.
Many organizations took distributed ledger
technology of Bitcoin and started using it. There
are so many hysteria created around Blockchain
and now no one wanted to leave behind. We tried
to bring some truth from fiction that is listed
below:-
A. BLOCKCHAIN IS IMMUTABLE
Distributed ledger in Blockchain is design in such
a manner that transactions can only appended.
Each Block holds hash value of previous block
thus any modification in one block will generate
a different hash value for the modified block thus
all next blocks in chain will also give different
hash values (Hileman & Rauchs, 2017). Actually
if anyone wanted to reverse, alter or delete any
record in Blockchain then they have to alter hash
values of all blocks from the altered block thus
Blockchain is mutable. In case of Ethereum
Blockchain, $40 million worth of coins were
refunded to their original owner (Castillo, 2016)
after a hard fork (Lin & Liao, 2017).
B. BLOCKCHAIN IS TAMPER-PROOF
In case, Cryptographic keys are compromise than
transactional records like wallet address, amount,
etc., in the middle can also be altered. Ledger
records in rest can also be modified by changing
all block hashes. In case of Public and
2 Source:- Big Blockchain: The 50 Largest Public Companies Exploring Blockchain(
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2018/07/03/big-Blockchain-the-50-largest-public-companies-
exploring-Blockchain/588939c92b5b) and Global 2000: The World’s Largest Public Companies
(https://www.forbes.com/global2000/list/)
Community Blockchains, changing of block
records can be done by consensus. Thus,
Blockchain is not temper-proof rather it is
transparent, temper evident and temper resistance
in some degree (Yaga, Mell, Roby, & Scarfone,
2018). Nevertheless, in case of Private
Blockchain, Blockchain owners can modify any
records.
C. BLOCKCHAIN IS TRUSTWORTHY
Trust is coded using Smart Contract in
Blockchain and vulnerable to attack if
implemented poorly. There were various
successful smart contract attack in Ethereum
platform in the past (Nicola, Bartoletti, & Cimoli,
2017).
D. BLOCKCHAIN IS FULLY SECURE
Nobody can take guarantee of security of any
system connected in the internet. It is just matter
of time, finding correct way to hack and
computational power. Most of the current
Blockchain platforms are using Pre-Quantum
Cryptography and at risk because of Quantum
Computing (Bernstein, 2009). Blockchain is not
secure from selfish miner, eclipse attack, third
party library vulnerabilities (Orcutt, 2018).
E. BLOCKCHAIN REDUCES RISK
FACTOR
Blockchain Technologies are newborn baby in
technology space. Most of the threats are still
unknown and it will take time to reach maturity
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
15
©TWCS, 2018
level. There are significant risk in the technology
that cannot be fully ignored with close eyes.
Smart Contract vulnerabilities, loss of password,
loss of private keys, hard forks, 51% majority
attacks, vulnerable wallets, cybersecurity and
censuses protocol vulnerabilities are some of the
topmost threats in Blockchain (Gazdecki, 2018).
VII. CONCLUSION
This is certain that Blockchain is new technology
and disrupting almost all sectors. Various
organizations are pouring lots of money into
Blockchain Platform development and
transforming their businesses and operation by
adopting Blockchain but the big question on hand
is, why? Because these organizations knows that,
there are various complexities and loopholes in
their existing systems, which Blockchain is
addressing. Data is stored in distributed ledger,
secured using cryptographic functions and almost
temper resistance. Blockchain promote trust and
transparency between participating parties and
eliminates need of third parties that is huge cost
saving and operational plus point. Smart
contracts are the digital agreements between
parties and a new way of doing business while
Code is the law in Blockchain and records in
ledger are proof of an event.
REFERENCES
Bernstein, D. J. (2009). Introduction to post-
quantum cryptography. In Post-
quantum cryptography, 1-14.
Bertoni, G., Daemen, J., Peeters, M., & Assche,
G. V. (2009). Keccak sponge function
family main document. NlST. Retrieved
2018, from
http://131002.net/data/papers/AK09.p
df
Bitcoin Community. (2018). Network. Retrieved
from en.bitcoin.it:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Network
Bittle, S. (2017, 10 30). Job Postings for
Blockchain Skills Double Over 2016.
Retrieved from burning-glass.com:
https://www.burning-
glass.com/blog/job-postings-
blockchain-skills-double-2016/
Buchmann, J., Dahmen, E., Ereth, S., Hülsing, A.,
& Rückert, M. (2011). On the security of
the Winternitz one-time signature
scheme. International Conference on
Cryptology in Africa (pp. 363-378).
Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
Castillo, M. d. (2016). Ethereum Executes
Blockchain Hard Fork to Return DAO
Funds. Retrieved from coindesk.com:
https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-
executes-blockchain-hard-fork-return-
dao-investor-funds
Cloud Standards Customer Council. (2017).
Cloud Customer Architecture for
Blockchain. Object Managment Group
(OMG).
Das, S. (2018, September 17).
https://www.ccn.com/samsung-sds-to-
power-worlds-first-exports-customs-
clearance-blockchain-in-korea/.
Retrieved from ccn.com:
https://www.ccn.com/samsung-sds-to-
power-worlds-first-exports-customs-
clearance-blockchain-in-korea/
Dinh, T. T., Wang, J., Chen, G., Liu, R., Ooi, B. C.,
& Tan, K.-L. (2017). Blockbench: A
framework for analyzing private
blockchains. In Proceedings of the 2017
ACM International Conference on
Management of Data, 1085-1100.
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
16
©TWCS, 2018
Dworkin, M. J. (2015). SHA-3 standard:
Permutation-based hash and
extendable-output functions. United
States: NIST FIPS.
Ethereum Community. (2018). devp2p
Application Protocol. Retrieved from
github.com/ethereum/:
https://github.com/ethereum/devp2p/
blob/master/devp2p.md
Fernàndez-València, R., Caube, J., & Vila, A.
(2018). Cryptography Working Group
Introduction to Blockchain Technology.
bigdatabcn.com, 1-18.
Filatov, T. (2018, 09 30). Blockchain developers
worldwide stats (absolute vs relative to
population). Retrieved from Analytics,
Blockchain Developers:
https://www.dappros.com/201809/blo
ckchain-developers-worldwide-stats-
absolute-vs-relative-to-population/
Ganne, E. (2018). Can Blockchain revolutionize
international trade? World Trade
Organization (WTO).
Gazdecki, A. (2018). How Secure Is Blockchain
Technology? Retrieved from
forbes.com:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeste
chcouncil/2018/10/12/how-secure-is-
blockchain-technology/#280edc5c72f0
ghanaweb.com. (2018, July). Blockchain
technology to revolutionise land
administration processes. Retrieved
from ghanaweb.com:
https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHo
mePage/business/Blockchain-
technology-to-revolutionise-land-
administration-processes-666920
Glabb, R., Imbert, L., Jullien, G., Tisserand, A., &
Veyrat-Charvillon, N. (2007). Multi-
mode operator for SHA-2 hash
functions. Journal of Systems
Architecture, 127-138.
Haridas, S. (2018). This Indian City Is Embracing
BlockChain Technology -- Here's Why.
Retrieved from forbes.com:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/outofasi
a/2018/03/05/this-indian-city-is-
embracing-blockchain-technology-
heres-why/#437312dd8f56
Hileman, D. G., & Rauchs, M. (2017). Global
Blockchain Benchmarking Study.
Cambridge Centre for Alternative
Finance. Cambridge, United Kingdom:
SSRN Electronic Journal.
Hiran, K. K., Henten, A., Shrivas, M. K., & Doshi,
R. (2018). Hybrid EduCloud Model in
Higher Education: The case of Sub-
Saharan Africa, Ethiopia. 2018 IEEE 7th
International Conference on Adaptive
Science & Technology (ICAST) (pp. 1-9).
Accra, Ghana: IEEE.
Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA). (2017,
November 15). Hong Kong and
Singapore launch a joint project on
cross-border trade and trade finance
platform. Retrieved from hkma.gov.hk:
https://www.hkma.gov.hk/eng/key-
information/press-
releases/2017/20171115-6.shtml
HowToToken Team. (2018). Blockchain
Developer Salaries – 2018 Report.
Retrieved from howtotoken.com:
https://howtotoken.com/career/blockc
hain-developer-salaries-2018-report/
Hyperledger. (2018). Gossip data dissemination
protocol. Retrieved from hyperledger-
fabric.readthedocs.io:
https://hyperledger-
fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-
1.3/gossip.html
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
17
©TWCS, 2018
IBM. (2018, August 9). Maersk and IBM
Introduce TradeLens Blockchain
Shipping Solution. Retrieved from
newsroom.ibm.com:
https://newsroom.ibm.com/2018-08-
09-Maersk-and-IBM-Introduce-
TradeLens-Blockchain-Shipping-Solution
Kempe, M. (2017). The Land Registry in the
blockchain - testbed. Retrieved from
chromaway.com:
https://chromaway.com/papers/Blockc
hain_Landregistry_Report_2017.pdf
Lin, I.-C., & Liao, T.-C. (2017). A Survey of
Blockchain Security Issues and
Challenges. IJ Network Security, Vol.
19(Issue 5), 653-659.
Lovelock, J.-D., Reynolds, M., Granetto, B., &
Kandaswamy, R. (2017). Forecast:
Blockchain Business Value, Worldwide,
2017-2030. Stamford, USA: Gartner.
Mearian, L. (2018). Blockchain moves into top
spot for hottest job skills. Retrieved
from computerworld.com:
https://www.computerworld.com/articl
e/3235972/it-careers/blockchain-
moves-into-top-spot-for-hottest-job-
skills.html
Michael, J., Cohn, A., & Butcher, J. R. (2018).
BlockChain technology. The Journal, 34-
44.
Miscione, G., Ziolkowski, R., Zavolokina, L., &
Schwabe, G. (2018). Tribal governance:
The business of blockchain
authentication. In Proceedings of the
51st Hawaii International Conference on
System Sciences. Hawaii: SSRN.
Nicola, A., Bartoletti, M., & Cimoli, T. (2017). A
survey of attacks on ethereum smart
contracts (sok). In Principles of Security
and Trust, 164-186.
Nofer, M., Gomber, P., Hinz, O., & Schiereck, D.
(2017). Blockchain. Business &
Information Systems Engineering, Vol.
50(Issue No.-3), 183-187.
Okazaki, Y. (2018). Unveiling the Potential of
Blockchain for Customs. World Customs
Organization.
Orcutt, M. (2018). MIT Technology Review: How
secure is blockchain really? Retrieved
from technologyreview.com:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/
610836/how-secure-is-blockchain-
really/
Partz, H. (2018). US Customs and Border
Protection to Test Blockchain Shipment
Tracking System. Retrieved from
cointelegraph.com:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-
customs-and-border-protection-to-test-
blockchain-shipment-tracking-system
Pawczuk, L., Massey, R., & Schatsky, D. (2018).
Deloitte’s 2018 global blockchain
survey. London, United Kingdom:
Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Percival, C., & Josefsson, S. (2016). Patent No.
No. RFC 7914.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Ltd. (2018).
PwC’s Global Blockchain Survey 2018.
Hong Kong: PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC) Ltd.
Saarinen, M. J., & Aumasson, J.-P. (2015).
Patent No. IETF RFC 7693. doi:DOI:
10.17487/RFC7693
Shrivas, M. K., & Yeboah, D. T. (2017). A Critical
Review of Cryptocurrency Systems.
TEXILA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF
ACADEMIC RESEARCH, Vol. 4(Issue 2),
116-131. doi:DOI:
10.21522/TIJAR.2014.04.02.Art012
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
18
©TWCS, 2018
Siva, S. L., Sindhu, M., & Sethumadhavan, M.
(2017). Survey of consensus protocols
on blockchain applications. 4th
International Conference on Advanced
Computing and Communication Systems
(pp. 1-5). Coimbatore, India: IEEE. doi:
DOI: 10.1109/ICACCS.2017.8014672
statista.com. (2018, 04). Gross domestic product
(GDP) ranking by country 2017 (in
billion U.S. dollars). Retrieved from
statista.com:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/268
173/countries-with-the-largest-gross-
domestic-product-gdp/
Swedberg, R. (2018). On the Uses of Exploratory
Research and Exploratory. Retrieved
from people.soc.cornell.edu/swedberg:
http://people.soc.cornell.edu/swedberg
/On%20the%20Uses%20of%20Explorat
ory%20Research%20and%20Explorator
y%20Studies%20in%20Social%20Scienc
e.pdf
Tama, B. A., Kweka, B. J., Park, Y., & Rhee, K.-H.
(2017). A critical review of blockchain
and its current applications. In Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science
(ICECOS), 2017 International Conference
on, pp. 109-113.
Walters, S. (2018). Blockchain Salaries: How
Much Do Blockchain Professionals Earn?
Retrieved from
bitcoinmarketjournal.com:
https://www.bitcoinmarketjournal.com
/blockchain-salary/
White, M. (2018, January 16). Digitizing Global
Trade with Maersk and IBM. Retrieved
from ibm.com:
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/blockchain
/2018/01/digitizing-global-trade-
maersk-ibm/
Yaga, D., Mell, P., Roby, N., & Scarfone, K.
(2018). Blockchain Technology
Overview. National Institute of
Standards and Technology Publication.
doi:https://doi.org/10.6028/
NIST.IR.8202
Zheng, Z., Xie, S., Dai, H., Chen, X., & Wang, H.
(2017). An overview of blockchain
technology: Architecture, consensus,
and future trends. In Big Data (BigData
Congress), 2017 IEEE International
Congress on, 557-564.
Zheng, Z., Xie, S., Dai, H.-N., & Wang, H. (2016).
Blockchain challenges and
opportunities: A survey. International
Journal of Web and Grid Services, 1-25.
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
19
©TWCS, 2018
APPENDICES
A. Top 50 Venture Capital Firms Investing3 in Blockchain Project/Organization
S.
No. Venture Capital
Firms Name
Blockcha
in
Investme
nts, Last
12
Months
Value of
Venture
Investm
ents in
Blockch
ain
(In
millions)
Total
Blockch
ain
Compan
y
Investm
ents
Top Blockchain
Project/Organi
zation funded City Website
1
Digital Currency Group
15
78
58
Basis, Ledger,
Circle,
Blockchain Inc.
New York,
NY
http://dcg.co
2
Pantera Capital
13
65
31
Basis, Circle,
Harbor,
Dmarket
Menlo Park,
CA
https://www.panteracapital.c
om
3
Blockchain Capital
12
71
37
Circle,
Coinbase,
Blockstream,
Ripple
San Francisco,
CA
http://blockchain.capital
4
Andreessen Horowitz
9
55
14
Basis, Coinbase,
DFINITY,
Harbor
Menlo Park,
CA
https://www.a16z.com
5
Node Capital
21
20
22
Trip.io, HuoBi,
Delphy
Foundation,
Fengwo
Beijing, China
http://www.nodecap.com
6
Boost VC
11
67
32
BlockCypher,
Tezos, Ledger,
Coinbase
San Mateo,
CA
https://www.boost.vc/
7
IDG Capital
4
31
8
Ripple, Circle,
Mars Finance,
imToken
New York,
NY
http://en.idgcapital.com
8
Draper Associates
6
25
17
Coinbase,
Ledger, Factom,
CryptoMove
San Mateo,
CA
http://www.draper.vc
9
Ceyuan Ventures
4
36
6
Basis, Mars
Finance, Trip.io,
OkCoin
Beijing, China
http://www.ceyuan.com/en/i
ndex.html
10
Lightspeed Venture
Partners
3
24
6
Basis,
Blockchain Inc.,
Saga
Foundation,
BTCC
Menlo Park,
CA
http://lsvp.com
11
Techstars
17
3
37
Filament,
Tok.tv, Storj
Labs,
Chainalysis
Boulder, CO
https://www.techstars.com
12
RRE Ventures
2
32
12
Paxos, Ripple,
Abra, Gem
New York,
NY
http://www.rre.com/
13
Union Square Ventures
3
28
9
Coinbase,
CryptoKitties,
Polychain
Capital
New York,
NY
https://www.usv.com/
3 Source Top 50 Venture Capital Firms Investing in Blockchain Companies (https://cryptofundresearch.com/top-50-
venture-capital-firms-investing-blockchain-companies)
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
20
©TWCS, 2018
14
General Catalyst
2
28
6
Circle, Bitwise,
Bluzelle
Cambridge,
MA
http://generalcatalyst.com
15
Liberty City Ventures
2
29
5
Paxos, Libra
New York,
NY
https://www.libertycityvent
ures.com/
16
500 Startups
4
5
16
Libra Credit
Network,
BlockCypher,
Hijro, Stably
Blockchain Lab
San Francisco,
CA
https://500.co
17
DHVC (Danhua
Capital)
19
20
21
Libra Credit
Network,
Hedera
Hashgraph,
Origin Protocol
Palo Alto, CA
http://www.danhuacap.com/
18
18 Kindred Ventures
5
15
6
Radar Relay,
TruStory,
dYdX, Rare Bits
San Diego, CA
https://kindredvc.com
19
Sequoia Capital
5
12
8
Guanguan Coin,
String Labs,
Binance
Menlo Park,
CA
www.sequoiacap.com
20
Future Perfect Ventures
2
15
11
Blockstream,
Blockchain Inc.,
Harbor, Abra
New York,
NY
http://futureperfectventures.
com
21
Fenbushi Capital
5
12
17
Symbiont, Gem,
Stream Token,
Ripio
Shanghai,
China
http://fenbushi.vc
22
ZhenFund
7
11
10
Basis, LIno,
Silot, BlockSeer
Beijing, China
http://www.zhenfund.com
23
First Round Capital
3
6
8
Abra, Rare Bits,
Amino
Payments, Gem
San Francisco,
CA
http://firstround.com
24
Limitless Crypto
Investments
6
77
6
Tezos, Power
Ledger, 0x,
Kadena LLC
Houston, TX
https://www.limitlesscrypto
s.com/
25
FBG Capital
14
30
14
Ripio, Origin
Protocol,
Eximchain, Lino
Beijing, China
https://www.fbg.capital/
26
Tally Capital
1
35
9
Blockstream,
Civic,
MaidSafe,
Blockchain
Capital
Chicago, IL
http://tallycapital.com/
27
GV (Google Ventures)
2
14
4
Basis,
Blockchain Inc.,
Veem, Ripple
Mountain
View, CA
https://www.gv.com/
28
Polychain Capital
8
40
8
Basis,
DFINITY,
MakerDAO,
CoinList
San Francisco,
CA
http://polychain.capital/
29
Earlybird Venture
Capital
1
15
5
Traxpay, XAIN
Group,
BigChainDB
Berlin,
Germany
https://earlybird.com
30
InBlockchain
8
18
8
Eximchain,
Lino, ONO,
Trip.io
Road Town,
Tortola
http://inblockchain.com
31
Galaxy Asset
Management
6
23
6
VideoCoin,
WePowerNetwo
rk, StormX,
NuCypher
New York,
NY
http://www.galaxyllc.com/
32
8 Decimal Capital
15
6
15
BluZelle, Libra
Credit Network,
0x
Palo Alto, CA
https://www.8dcap.com
33
Mosaic Ventures
15
21
6
Blockstream,
Blockchain Inc.
London, UK
http://www.mosaicventures.
com/
34
Mandra Capital
1
24
4
PINTEC,
OKCoin,
Chronicled,
Overnest Inc.
Hong Kong
http://www.mandracapital.c
om/
5th Texila World Conference for Scholars (TWCS), 2018 on Transformation: The Creative Potential of
Interdisciplinary & Multidisciplinary Knowledge Exchange
21
©TWCS, 2018
35
Camp One Ventures
2
2
6
Ripple,
Augmate,
Mobius
San Francisco,
CA
http://www.camponeventure
s.com/
36
PreAngel
2
5
5
Origin Protocol,
OkCoin, Sensay,
LendChain
Beijing, China
http://www.preangelfund.cn
37
Abstract Ventures
2
9
6
Ripple, Harbor,
Compound
Labs, TruStory
Tiburon, CA
https://www.abstractvc.com
38
Foundation Capital
3
7
4
Basis, Origin
Protocol,
BlockCypher,
OpenSea
Menlo Park,
CA
https://foundationcapital.co
m
39
Right Side Capital
Management
3
1
8
Airfox, Chroma,
Elemetric,
Hanzo
San Francisco,
CA
http://rightsidecapital.com/
40
AME Cloud Ventures
1
12
6
Blockstream,
Ripple,
ShoCard,
BlockCypher
Palo Alto, CA
https://www.amecloudventu
res.com/
41
1confirmation
7
10
7
Basis, Harbor,
MakerDAO,
OpenSea
Palo Alto, CA
http://www.1confirmation.c
om
42
Hashed
4
20
4
StormX, Origin
Protocol,
Bluezelle,
SureRemit
Seoul, South
Korea
https://www.hashed.com
43
FinLab
3
50
3
Iconiq Lab,
Vaultoro, Abra
Frankfurt,
Germany
https://finlab.de/
44
Streamlined Ventures
2
2
5
BlockCypher,
Chronicled,
PiggyBank,
PayStand
Palo Alto, CA
http://streamlinedventures.c
om
45
Greycroft
3
4
5
Sensay, BitPesa,
The Block
New York,
NY
https://www.greycroft.com
46
Tusk Ventures
2
26
3
Circle, Coinbase
New York,
NY
http://tuskventures.com/
47
Catagonia
2
50
3
Envion,
AppCoins,
HydroMiner,
Basis
Berlin,
Germany
http://www.catagonia.com/
48
Compound
2
2
4
Compound
Labs,
NuCypher, Gem
New York,
NY
https://compound.vc/
49
Arbor Ventures
3
4
4
Abra, Silot,
Global ID
Hong Kong
http://www.arborventures.co
m/
50
JAFCO Japan
3
27
3
Nayuta, Tech
Bureau,
COMSA
Tokyo, Japan
http://www.jafco.co.jp
Table 4. Top 50 Venture Capital Firms Investing in Blockchain Project/Organization
View publication statsView publication stats