The Covid19 emergency has not stopped the development of Blockchain technologies, which indeed grew all over the world in 2020, also entering a phase that the Observatory of the Milan Polytechnic defines as "greater maturity". In Italy, however, the market is slowing down. This is what emerged from the research "Blockchain: the hype is over, get ready for ecosystems”, which has released some data: compared to 2019 at an international level concrete projects grew by 59%., while announcements dropped by 80%, a sign of a market that is moving away from the media hype to focus on more operational initiatives and the creation of ecosystems. Not only that: 47% of the cases mapped in 2020 use existing platforms, a sign that the attention of operators is shifting more and more towards the development of applications and less towards the creation of new platforms.
The most active countries in the Blockchain were the United States, with 72 projects launched in the last five years, and China, with 35 cases, followed by Japan (28), Australia (23) and South Korea (19). Italy remains in the top ten countries with the most initiatives, but slows down: 18 projects, with a significant slowdown in business investments, which in 2020 they are worth 23 million euros, 23% less than in 2019. A declining market, according to the assessments of the Polytechnic "due to the emergency which limited the launch of new initiatives and prompted companies to concentrate on already active projects". But on the other hand it seems to be more mature here too: 60% of the expenditure concerns operational projects, 28% pilot projects, only 11% proof of concept and just 1% training. Finance is the most represented sector, with 58% of spending, and the only one to have increased investments (+6%), followed by agri-food (11%), utilities (7%) and PA (6%).
“Blockchain technologies in 2020 – he commented Valeria Portal, Director of the Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Observatory – have continued to develop and are increasingly used by companies to improve business processes and create new business opportunities in areas other than finance, from agro-food to utilities, from the Public Administration to insurance. The slowdown in the market due to the pandemic is compensated by a greater maturity of companies, which invest mainly in operational and pilot projects, and of the available platforms, some already operational and others which will become operational in 2021".
“The Blockchain market – he adds Francesco Bruschi, Director of the Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Observatory – is emerging from the more 'media' phase to focus on the creation of ecosystems that aim to create new opportunities by creating infrastructure platforms and business applications based on them. The development of these enabling infrastructures, however, is not yet complete: companies and PAs guide technological development towards more easily usable solutions and it will be important to follow the evolution of the legislation, which is often still an obstacle to the development of more innovative solutions”.
As regards the type of projects related to the Blockchain, according to the analysis of the Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Observatory of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, most are still focused on applications related to existing processes, such as payment reconciliation and supply chain traceability. The most numerous applications are created to facilitate the sharing and coordination of data between different actors to avoid divergences (59% of projects launched from 2016 to today). Almost a quarter has the objective of improving the verifiability of data by other actors in the ecosystem or third parties (24%), especially in the agri-food sector to ensure product traceability. 13% use crypto assets enabled by Blockchain platforms to exchange money or other assets. Finally, 4% is dedicated to the creation of reliable and verifiable processes.
