Why are blockchain projects frequently frustrated?

As with a series of innovative breakthroughs that have occurred before, blockchain technology is experiencing an exciting pace of prototyping and adoption. At present, a considerable part of the world's super-large enterprises are embarking on various experiments. Although the scale is large and small, no one dares to stand by in this wave. In fact, it is the blockchain technology that is so attractive, and the criticism of it is so harsh. Previously, Jimie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., had poured cold water on cryptocurrencies when Bitcoin was hottest. Today, however, JPMorgan's JPM coin is about to be released, which also marks the banking giant's embrace of the potential for change in the blockchain and plans to establish a new partnership with Microsoft. Under this wave of enthusiasm, there is an unspoken fact that even though there are still a lot of noise in the market and the news that “the world has changed!” attracts attention, it must be acknowledged. Although chain technology promises to bring new ways of achieving everything, most of them promise not to fulfill their goals. Yes, any emerging technology may have a high failure rate at the experimental level, but for the blockchain, the source of failure seems to be deeper – including technology, organization, or more important sociology. Level.

Comparing with other emerging technologies in the era of digital transformation, we find that the high failure rate of the blockchain in the early stage is still within a reasonable range. This high failure rate (predicted as high as 92%) directly illustrates the broader complexity of technology-driven change. Compared to the enthusiasm of the cryptocurrency ICO, investors are now losing billions of dollars, which proves once again that the market can only support truly mature technological achievements, and the extra bubbles will eventually turn into punishment. Looking at the blockchain itself, there seems to be some more fundamental factors, namely how to create a truly decentralized democratic economy – ironically, the blockchain is now highly representative. One of the main tools of the traditional enterprise. If the relevant organizations and project leaders can accept the following important principles at the beginning of the design phase, they are likely to have the opportunity to improve their adoption.

First, people often don't know what factors affect the development vision and understanding of blockchain projects. Like other technologies, blockchains do not exist in a vacuum, but are closely related to organizational, social norms, design, dysfunction, and purpose. Faced with the inertia and deep-rooted behaviors that have accumulated over the years in organizations and markets, emerging technologies, while capable of causing positive changes, do not necessarily mean that they will bring positive changes. Therefore, we must first establish a clear organizational vision and make an in-depth technical and strategic understanding of the rational goals of the blockchain – believe me, this is a long road in itself. What's more, many project leaders are not familiar with the blockchain themselves, let alone other emerging technologies that they must reach to achieve maximum value and autonomy. According to practical experience, the core failure points of many early blockchain projects are even the general lack of good network cleaning habits.

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The second major failure point, and perhaps the most difficult problem to overcome, is how the blockchain will coordinate with society, organization, and the market. To truly realize the potential of the blockchain, we need to read the latest and most reliable blockchain news, think about how to carefully design the project, and weigh the attitudes, positions and behaviors of stakeholders. This social coordination challenge naturally conflicts with human behavior and norms in many ways. To this end, we should consider the blockchain project as an enhanced technology that only uses it to amplify or simplify the tasks we have already achieved; rather than using the blockchain as a major change in habits, behaviors, and market activities. Subversive technology. I believe everyone knows that the private key is the true guardian of the encrypted assets in the blockchain; however, the loss of private keys caused by intentional, unintentional or fraudulent activities has caused billions of dollars in losses to the cryptocurrency, which itself It is a good proof that people are not really ready to accept the blockchain in their mentality. In short, technology itself must gradually retreat behind the scenes, rather than directly becoming the protagonist on the stage. At present, many projects and start-ups that want to change the rules of the game are arguing “how and what” in their own projects; but it is most important to really make the blockchain and other technical vocabulary that they always have in mind. It should be "why" and the actual results.

When people no longer simply talk about the blockchain and all its features and benefits, the journey to change the world is the first step. The premise is that it should show the third failure point to be explained next. Respect. In order to achieve blockchain deployment and realize value in the enterprise environment, we must link the blockchain with legacy systems, operations, and behavior. This is a very real problem, which often brings huge operational and technical obstacles; in particular, it is emphasized that the elastic benefits brought by the blockchain network may be offset by the existence of security vulnerabilities in the legacy systems that match them. Do it. In addition, the blockchain can impose a high computational burden, especially for trust or authenticity verification algorithms (such as proof of work or proof of equity), which can also greatly reduce the efficiency of the blockchain implementation. This counterintuitive problem brings new challenges to our traditional digital transformation work, and makes us realize that the return on technology investment in the new era may no longer be realized in the form of products or services with zero relative cost.

As for the algorithmic or computationally intensive requirements brought about by the proof mechanism, the blockchain project has not yet come up with an ideal solution – at least not for the current technology generation. Ongoing research efforts have been working to increase transaction speeds, enabling subsequent blockchain variants to be truly aligned with existing credit card mechanisms in terms of throughput and speed. Once this standard is met, we will be able to truly leverage a large amount of cryptocurrency as a means of trading. It takes advantage of the easy-to-audit attributes of the block – with a rich record accumulation and timestamps, each micropayment can be backtracked. For this reason, there is also an emerging idea that the blockchain may be more like a machine-to-machine ledger system than a peer-to-peer "no trust" trading engine. With the rise of networked devices and the Internet of Things, future micropayments related to utilization, location, access and consumption may show explosive growth. Just as the use of NFC technology to automate the charging of cars, the link between the Internet of Things and digital payments may be realized by the auditable ledger and settlement system mentioned in the blockchain.

In view of the above failures around digital transformation and enterprise blockchain, perhaps the most important conclusion is that the blockchain itself is an enhanced technology, and it should always be the first priority to keep simplicity. Simplicity is a complex natural enemy, and sticking to simplicity will help people to liberate themselves from the vast blockchain or cryptocurrency white paper. Fortunately, the blockchain technology itself and the relevant technical personnel are gradually finding the ideal balance point. The failure and correction of each project also makes the whole ecosystem mature. (Technology Walker)

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