Over the last five years, the promise of blockchain technology has swept the social impact world, with many innovators experimenting to find use cases for this uniquely secure technology. This has resulted in hundreds of new organizations, ventures, and initiatives focused on blockchain. We want to understand the ways in which blockchain can most effectively be used for social impact and the outlook of the blockchain technology.

Trend

Blockchain has been utilized in many different forms. It has been used as the foundation of clearing and settlement systems that are resistant to tampering and fraud. The technology is used for smart contracts, and found use in speeding up digital transactions as well. The wide array of apps and the rapid diversification of blockchain also heralds an opportunity for developers. With more firms gearing up to take advantage of blockchain, the demand for developers will start growing exponentially.

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Area of Focus on Specific Blockchain Use Cases

Many people know blockchain because of its capabilities and potential when it comes to payments and transactions, however companies and users also focus on certain areas of blockchain involvements such as digital currency, data sharing, certification, and asset transfers. The changes within these particular sectors are also important to note as they can impact the direction of which blockchain may shift.

From this graphs you can see that from 2019 the focus on timestamping and tokenized securities hasn’t really been affected, but in the span of one year focus on data access/sharing and identity protection have both decreased by around 20% and keep in mind that this only happened in the span of one year so if this trend does continue this may lead to some unexpected consequences. However on the bright side, there seems to be an increasing shift in access to IP and certification, this means that companies and users are trying to shift to a more transparent method of transactions and further improving upon the security of blockchain. 

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Distribution of Leading Cryptocurrencies

This graph presents the distribution of these cryptocurrencies from 2015 to 2020, by market share. The market capitalization of Bitcoin constituted 66% of the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies in 2020. This figure decreased from 86 percent in 2015, in large part due to the rise of other cryptocurrencies.

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Worldwide Spending on Blockchain

This graph presents the total worldwide spending on Blockchain. The data forecasts a steep increase in worldwide spending through 2023 and beyond. It also indicates that an exponentially increasing upward trend remains consistent in the years to come.

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Blockchain Investments by Global Organizations

This graph depict’s organizations projected investments into Blockchain over the course of 2020. This shows the perceived importance of blockchain and can be used to predict future trends in investments.