Most Common Blockchain Mistakes Organizations Make

As much as we’re hearing everyone talking about blockchain, most companies are still being quite cautious when it comes to implementing it into their operations. Not to say that they’re staying away from it, because there are already so many use cases of blockchain technology, but the way they are approaching this emerging industry is slow and careful.

All these organizations are hoping that the distributed ledger technology will create valuable efficiencies in their organizational processes. If you’re among those who have already implemented blockchain into their organization or are preparing to do so, there are quite a few common mistakes blockchain projects make you will need to keep in mind to ensure blockchain brings you only benefits.

Not Creating Immutable Data Audit Trails with Blockchain

Those tech leaders who are already exploring blockchain in their organizational setting are mostly deploying it in proof of concept tests, often to identify the same problems a traditional database could handle.

Organizations are not using blockchain technology to support immutable data audit trails to exchange the version of transactional truth, the true mission of blockchain technology. For most organizations, blockchain technology remains to be used for searching for a problem that is negatively affecting the business in some way.

Assuming Blockchain is Mature

Another mistake organizations make is assuming that blockchain technology is mature and will not continue to evolve. The market is composed of various platform offerings aiming to differentiate themselves in numerous ways.

A number of blockchain platforms are further developed because of confidentiality, while others for tokenization or fiat currency or goods representation in a digital form. But, most of them are still created for universal transactions. In all, most blockchain platforms are too immature for large-scale production work, followed by supporting and requisite systems, security, and network management services.
Confusing Protocol with Complete Business Solutions
Not only do most organizations lack knowledge about when to use blockchain and when not to, but they also confuse protocol with a business solution. After all, blockchain is the foundational-level technology seeking applications additionally to fulfill certain business needs. As much as it can be used in numerous scenarios, from supply chain management to sharing patient data across different medical information systems, blockchain must also include other relevant features, like business logic, user interface, and interoperability.

When talking about blockchain, the foundational-level technology helps organizations to see blockchain as a protocol that performs a particular task within an entire application. There shouldn’t be any assumptions that a protocol can be the entire basis for a social network or an e-commerce system.

Scale Misconceptions

Organizations also wrongly assume that blockchain technology should be seen as solely a database or data storage system. Although the blockchain technology lacks quality in scaling, each node in the peer-to-peer network receives a distributed ledger copy with each update, but with its expansion, the performance is slowing down.

Blockchain was initially designed to offer an immutable, trusted record of events surpassing the dynamic collection of parties that lack trust. Such architecture implies the price of database management capabilities. Organizations should see the blockchain technology as a write-once, append-many ledger, meaning it doesn’t provide the entire create-read-update-delete model typical for the traditional database management technology.

Rushing into Interoperability

Another big mistake that businesses will make with blockchain technology is assuming it includes interoperability standards. While there are blockchain platform vendors who talk about it with other blockchains, it is quite challenging to imagine interoperability when the majority of platforms and their protocols are still in the designing or developing phase.

At the moment, all vendor conversations about platform interoperability should be overseen by CIOS and other team leaders who would have valuable interoperability feedback. In other words, organizations should stop choosing a certain blockchain platform and expect that in a year or so, it will interoperate with the upcoming technologies from different vendors.

In Final Words

Blockchain is still evolving and discovering new areas where it can be valuable, from a GameFi collection token, where it helps create the virtual gaming environment, to penetrating into a new industry that is yet to discover how this technology can provide numerous benefits to the organizations in it.