Understanding The Gartner Blockchain

Understanding the Gartner Blockchain
Spectrum and the Evolution of Technology

Solutions
FOUNDATIONAL Refreshed: 11 February 2020 | Published: 26 October 2018 ID: G00373230
Analyst(s): David Furlonger, Rajesh Kandaswamy
Blockchain is often wrongly used as a collective noun, resulting in

blockchain washing of technology solutions. Many vendors are
misrepresenting and diluting the potential of their blockchain-inspired
solutions. CIOs can use this research to understand blockchain possibilities
to maximize success.
FOUNDATIONAL DOCUMENT
This research is reviewed periodically for accuracy. Last reviewed on 11 February 2020.
Key Findings
■ Misuse of the “blockchain” term and associated technologies, intentional or unintentional,
creates market confusion and devalues the full extent of blockchain possibilities.
■ Enterprises have a black-and-white focus on private or public ledgers, and this leads to lack of
appreciation for the range and evolution of technologies that will impact their business.
■ The vast majority of blockchain solutions are not suitable for enterprise adoption. Most target a
value proposition based on improving efficiency or record keeping, but this introduces
significant and expensive core system replatforming challenges.
■ Business leaders are ignoring or underestimating the very different business propositions
developed from using all five blockchain components in combination with AI and IoT.
■ Providers that build and position their offerings correctly across the Blockchain Spectrum
establish trust with their customers and improve their blockchain-related growth opportunities.
This research note is restricted to the personal use of ahad.iqbal@neom.com.

Recommendations
CIOs looking at blockchain for strategic innovation should:
■ Commit to scenario planning, assuming that technical challenges with the base blockchain
layers are likely to be resolved within three to five years. Decentralization and tokenization are
inherent to the blockchain concept.
■ Educate executives on the possibilities and limitations of various types of blockchain solutions
across the spectrum to identify the right areas of application and avoid unnecessary investment.
■ Avoid an all-or-nothing approach, such as wholesale decentralization or no blockchain. Instead,
map a progressive path of usage along the Blockchain Spectrum.
■ Use the spectrum to ensure the best fit of technology and business capability to market
conditions, and use business capability modeling to assess best-fit blockchain solutions.
Table of Contents
Analysis.................................................................................................................................................. 3
The Future of Blockchain Leads to the Internet of Value and a Programmable Society......................3
The Current State of the Market for Blockchain Solutions................................................................. 4
Value Capture Is Not Straightforward................................................................................................ 6
Four Archetypes Describe the Blockchain Spectrum...................................................................... 10
Blockchain Evolutionary Phases..................................................................................................... 12
Phase 1: Blockchain-Enabling Technologies Archetype.............................................................12
Phase 2: Blockchain-Inspired Archetype...................................................................................13
Phase 3: Blockchain Complete Archetype................................................................................ 14
Phase 4: Blockchain-Enhanced Archetype............................................................................... 16
Mapping Archetypes and Evolutionary Phases to Use-Case Value Capture.................................... 17
Gartner Recommended Reading.......................................................................................................... 19
List of Tables
Table 1. Four Archetypes Describe the Blockchain Spectrum of Solutions............................................ 11
List of Figures
Figure 1. The Programmable Economy and Society............................................................................... 4

Figure 2. Capturing Value From Blockchain-Inspired Solutions................................................................7
Figure 3. Capturing Value From Blockchain Complete Solutions............................................................. 8
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Figure 4. Capturing Value From Blockchain-Enhanced Solutions............................................................ 8
Figure 5. Blockchain Spectrum Evolutionary Phases.............................................................................12
Figure 6. Four Types of Blockchain Value Capture Initiatives................................................................. 17
Figure 7. Comparison of Four Types of Blockchain Initiatives................................................................ 18
Analysis
Gartner is introducing the Blockchain Spectrum, a model for examining the phased evolution of
blockchain solutions and how this path aligns to the anticipated value that businesses can derive.
This model will clarify different archetypes for three main solution phases that will evolve over time:
■ Blockchain inspired
■ Blockchain complete
■ Blockchain enhanced
The spectrum enables CIOs and other business leaders to have a clear framework they can apply to
understand the types of solutions suitable for their business context. Further, it helps them
understand the clear possibilities and limitations of their choice, and how those choices will set the
stage for the development of complete and enhanced blockchain solutions. Lastly, this model is
intended to reduce the considerable level of confusion (and hype) that exists in the market
surrounding blockchain solutions, what value they may bring and what it will take to achieve that
value.
The Future of Blockchain Leads to the Internet of Value and a Programmable Society
This model also allows us to gain a better understanding of how the phased development of these
blockchain solutions will signal massive changes to our economy and society. The blockchain
conceptual model (described in “Use Gartner’s Blockchain Conceptual Model to Exploit the Full
Range of Possibilities”) shows the scope and range of possibilities.
Starting in the early 1990s with the formation of the internet of information, there has been a gradual
transition through the 2010 period to an internet of content. Blockchain offers us a lens into a new
internet — the internet of value.
The internet of value will manifest itself through the development of capabilities such as:
■ Decentralized autonomous organizational structures and operating systems

■ Distributed applications (Dapps) that provide new access mechanisms into that value
■ Monetized microtransactions involving a wide array of new types of digital assets
■ Autonomous, delegated rights and decision making enabled by smart agents
■ Self-sovereign identity management with granular privacy
Gartner, Inc. | G00373230 Page 3 of 22

These capabilities will combine on a World Wide Ledger that supports a programmable economic
and societal model as we enter the 2030 decade (see Figure 1 and “Maverick* Research: Crypto-
Politics and ‘World Wide Ledger’ Will Rock Your Business Competition”).
Figure 1. The Programmable Economy and Society
Source: Gartner (October 2018)
The Current State of the Market for Blockchain Solutions

The programmable economic and societal model will gather steam rapidly after 2026. In the
meantime, technology providers and consortia-led initiatives are developing and offering watered-
down blockchain solutions that severely ignore two of blockchain’s key tenets — tokenization and
decentralization. This results in projects that are little more than blockchain washing, meaning they
are named as blockchain projects, but, realistically, the majority of the business outcome could be
achieved via the use of nonblockchain technology. These blockchain-inspired solutions are

positioned as a means to achieve value from cost savings. These alleged savings come from
improving operational efficiency via automating business processes or by digitizing records, for
example.
However, we must remember that blockchain was architecturally designed to be more than an
upgrade to existing distributed messaging infrastructure. Blockchain introduces two additional
concepts to the inspired designs currently being discussed — decentralization and tokenization.
Startup disruptors are developing or offering blockchain

complete (and aspire to blockchain enhanced) solutions that
leverage all five of blockchain’s core tenets — record
immutability, encryption, widescale peer-to-peer (P2P)
distribution, decentralized and autonomous trust verification
and execution, and tokenization.
Mainstream enterprises and governments, however, haven’t yet grasped the full extent of the value
and disruptive power of these solutions. When apprised of such designs and concepts, they are
concerned about loss of control, security, unclear regulations and technology immaturity. The
dominant marketing power and enticements for alleged efficiency gains purported by inspired
solution developers are currently masking the true nature of blockchain. Also, as much of the world
operates from a basis of centralized control mechanisms, the prospect of decentralization and
especially autonomous decentralization is very threatening to most existing value propositions.
Technology suppliers often label their inspired offerings as just blockchain or distributed ledger to
imply blockchain value. Some even go so far as to suggest that enterprises need to maintain
centralized control and not pay attention to new forms of digital assets. This is regardless of the
broader societal trends that are increasingly predisposed to micro, shared, self-determined,
collaborative and tokenized operations. CIOs and other business leaders must recognize that such
solutions basically involve a replatforming of their existing architecture and systems of record with
newer, but potentially untested and immature concepts and components.
Critically, such replatforming involves introducing a new system

of record — often requiring a shared acceptance across
multiple firms of single or completely synchronized
management in order for the replatforming to hope to be
successful. Moreover, this replatforming can distract from more
strategic and innovative opportunities.
While such a replatforming may prove marginally beneficial to CIOs, it has a downside:

■ It may distract from more strategic and innovative opportunities such as the creation of
decentralized business ecosystems and the development of a multiasset revenue model.
■ The suggested value propositions do not account for the significant costs associated with
issues such as administrative/management overhead, system integration, information
governance, security changes, application rationalization, operations and process re-
engineering, and staff training. No cost-benefit analysis Gartner has seen reflect this reality.
■ Trades-offs between collaboration and competition in the context of consortia are yet to be
clearly understood or reconciled. Governance models (of partners, information, standards and
regulations, for example) are works in progress, and limited attention has been paid to the
potential for enterprise and vendor lock-in. Merely applying nonblockchain operating models for
use, for example, in consortia-based structures will be inappropriate.
Many providers discuss their offering as a platform (see “Market Guide for Blockchain Platforms”).
There is limited attention being paid to how, in practice, these alleged technology platforms will
operate effectively in real-world, risk-adjusted, scaled scenarios — such as replacing entire
payment networks.
In addition, there are significant gaps in both the availability and maturity of components (such as
consensus algorithms for decentralized operation, Dapps, APIs, smart contracts, SDKs and
security), that would otherwise turn basic centralized messaging protocols/systems into something
more valuable. On top of this, not every platform can be considered the same. See Note 1 for more
details.
Value Capture Is Not Straightforward

Much attention is being placed on the potential benefits of blockchain capabilities and the value
they may capture. Gartner has identified some potential benefits and the key value obtained from
using a blockchain solution (see Figures 2, 3 and 4). However, these potential benefits must be set
against the difficulty of obtaining them and the use of alternative technologies that may achieve the
same outcomes for lower total cost. Below, we describe the value from the four blockchain
archetypes.

Figure 2. Capturing Value From Blockchain-Inspired Solutions

Figure 3. Capturing Value From Blockchain Complete Solutions
Figure 4. Capturing Value From Blockchain-Enhanced Solutions
As the figures show, the potential for value capture increases as the solutions evolve. It must be
noted that this potential value acquisition carries risk and potentially significant costs. Businesses
and their executives will need to take radical steps to re-engineer their strategy, business processes
and operating models as the spectrum evolves.
Businesses have been reluctant to enact these radical changes for four reasons:

■ A lack of clear understanding as to what blockchain really is — at a technical and a business
level — and, therefore, an inability to identify why it is important and relevant in their context
and what outcomes a particular solution may accomplish.
■ A reluctance to accept the risks from radical changes to operating, customer engagement,
financial and technology models, if understanding is clear or partially clear.
■ An intransigent heritage culture and mindset supporting predominantly centralized industry and
corporate structures, business models, and processes that were designed and optimized for the
prior century.
■ A lack of awareness as to the extent of market and societal disruption made possible by token
funded startups, decentralized business models and, especially, the integration of autonomous
agents and monetized microtransactions enabled via the Internet of Things (IoT).
In many cases, enterprises are still struggling with making their technology architectures more agile
and dynamic to meet the demands of digital business (see “The 2019 CIO Agenda: Securing a New
Foundation for Digital Business”). Enterprises continue to wrestle with implementations for cloud
technologies, open APIs, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital platforms, for example. However,
blockchain proofs of concept (POCs) that focus on efficiency gains and record keeping in particular
have caught senior executives’ attention due to a “fear of missing out.” Business leaders have
become enamored with the claims of blockchain-inspired evangelists purporting to create
significant cost savings from, for example, reducing reconciliation, mitigating fraud and improving
shared visibility into documents.
Business leaders have welcomed the opportunity to work more

closely with industry peers in this regard without recognizing
the challenges associated with working with industry
competitors in a collaborative context, such as sustaining
shared management understandings and dealing with issues
like data confidentiality.
These blockchain-inspired solutions have limited scalability at this time for technical reasons. Yet,
they are being positioned as solutions to solve massively complex and large-scale market
challenges for scores of enterprises of different sizes and sophistication in long-linked, cross-border
and/or cross-industry supply chains (see “The Future of Blockchain: 8 Scalability Hurdles to
Enterprise Adoption”). As blockchain fundamentally creates a new system of record, the
implications for integration and interoperability within and between organizations are significant.
These challenges, especially at the level of multiorganization consortia, are being largely overlooked
or downplayed.

Four Archetypes Describe the Blockchain Spectrum
When considering the use of blockchain, CIOs are in need of a

model that can allow them to easily and correctly align the
needs of their enterprise with the correct blockchain solution
and blockchain-related options available from technology
providers.
To do this, it is necessary to describe the model in terms of the kind of characteristics exhibited by
different blockchain archetypes. This model does not distinguish between public blockchain and
private blockchain. However, it does presuppose that the focus of blockchain-inspired solutions is
based on private implementations. Blockchain complete and blockchain-enhanced solutions will
more likely be based on public implementations.
The Blockchain Spectrum (see Table 1) is broken into four sections indicating the different
archetypes of blockchain offerings and their characteristics. Most of the solutions today fall into the
“inspired” category while “complete” and “enhanced” solutions are yet to appear or are limited to
startup disruptor implementations at limited scale. For at least the next two years, the enterprise
blockchain technology market will develop many offerings that have some blockchain-like
characteristics, but lack the full benefits of blockchain complete or enhanced offerings.

Table 1. Four Archetypes Describe the Blockchain Spectrum of Solutions
Blockchain Blockchain- Blockchain-Inspired Blockchain Blockchain-

Archetypes Enabling Solutions Complete Solutions Enhanced Solutions
Technologies
Phase Technologies such Solutions that do not Interoperable Blockchain-enhanced

Characteristics as encryption and meet all the aspects of solutions that meet all solutions combine the
consensus blockchain but the components of full extent of
algorithms, cloud or combine some blockchain. These blockchain complete
other distributed elements of the include record solutions with other
compute blockchain-enabling encryption and technologies such as
infrastructures, technologies to offer immutability, AI and IoT. These
tokens, messaging, limited capabilities. monetized deliver intelligent
digital wallets, and Examples include tokenization and solutions allowing for
digital signatures are automated messaging fungibility, dynamic
the underlying with a high degree of decentralization via programmability using
building blocks that encryption based on algorithmic trust, AI-informed smart
are combined to less than 10-node broad-scale shared contracts;
build blockchain distribution using a P2P ledger infrastructure
platforms. These centralized notary or distribution with self- capabilities for IOT-
platforms can be database. sovereign identity based multiasset
delivered as private, They lack the full extent management, and micro transactions;
hybrid or public of blockchain core legally sound and self-sovereign identity
architectures and tenets — especially secure semismart management; and fully
operational styles. tokenization and contracts. Services autonomous
decentralization. are consumed via organizations
Dapps across open- operating as
source environments. decentralized
autonomous
organizations (DAOs).
For the next two years, the enterprise blockchain technology market will develop many offerings
that have some blockchain-like characteristics but lack the full benefits of blockchain complete or
blockchain-enhanced offerings. When offerings are positioned as blockchain, but do not deliver the
capabilities associated with blockchain complete or enhanced archetypes, confusion and
misrepresentation are created in the market and in the minds of end users. Organizations expect to
get a return from the technology components they consume based on how the solution’s
components meet a particular business challenge or requirement. Blockchain-inspired solutions can
offer returns in areas such as platform modernization, more efficient records management, reduced
reconciliation and reduced fraud.
However, blockchain-inspired solutions will not allow for decentralized operations or monetization of
digital assets via tokenization. Most organizations will have to undertake considerable effort and risk
to re-engineer decades-old processes and operating models, and create new business models to
accommodate blockchain complete and blockchain-enhanced solutions. Therefore, enterprise
leaders need a clear understanding of the endgame. This will be impossible without understanding
the characteristics of each solution component and its phase of evolution (see Figure 5). CIOs
should accompany their analysis of these characteristics with an assessment of Gartner’s Hype

Cycles (see “Hype Cycle for Blockchain Technologies, 2018” and “Hype Cycle for Blockchain
Business, 2018”). These Hype Cycles will provide more granularity as to the maturity and progress
for critical blockchain components.
Gartner’s Blockchain Spectrum seeks to eliminate this kind of black-and-white thinking in favor of a
model that recognizes the real-world operational challenges enterprises face. At the same time, it
identifies an endgame opportunity that CIOs and business leaders should aspire to achieve.
Figure 5. Blockchain Spectrum Evolutionary Phases
Blockchain Evolutionary Phases
Phase 1: Blockchain-Enabling Technologies Archetype

Phase 1 offerings include technologies that enable blockchain. These include cryptography, data
structure with hash pointers, distributed computing, peer-to-peer networking, consensus
algorithms, messaging, event processing, crypto token, wallet, state transition, smart contracts,
transaction validation and endorsement (see “A Technical Primer for Assessing a Blockchain
Platform”).
Other foundational technologies and services may also fit in this category. These include the
following:
■ Technologies: Identity and access management, security, virtualization, containerization, cloud,

API platforms, microservices, monitoring, and reporting tools
■ Services: Consulting, design, training and support

Blockchain-enabling technologies are not blockchain in themselves; however, they are important
building blocks in the construction and delivery of blockchain solutions. These technologies can be
used by enterprise IT departments and consortia organizations to build their own blockchain
solution or used as part of a nonblockchain solution. Blockchain technology providers can build and
market such solutions or use them to build blockchain solutions. A common use of blockchain-
enabling technologies is the enablement of private or permissioned ledgers, sometimes called
enterprise or distributed ledger technology blockchain offerings, more often associated with
centralized blockchain architectures.
There are opportunities for end-user enterprises to push technology providers to innovate,
particularly in the areas of tokenization, data management, security, and performance, as well as
with the provision of microservices or microtransactions (e.g., for IoT capabilities or for addressing
markets that are too small or isolated to be served efficiently on traditional infrastructures).
Phase 2: Blockchain-Inspired Archetype

Phase 2 combines key enabling components from the earlier evolutionary phase to form limited-
scope offerings. They are often based on more traditional, nonblockchain solutions. These offerings
largely replicate existing centralized enterprise transaction and information systems. In general, they
use just three main components of the blockchain concept: some version of a centralized notary,
distributed or replicated data store; cryptography (hashing/signing); and a messaging layer. They are
almost exclusively bundled for private or enterprise/consortia deployment, and they lack
tokenization and decentralization.
These blockchain-inspired aspects are basically nothing more than a blockchain-like veneer often
offered as blockchain platforms and/or delivered in the cloud as blockchain as a service. They
reinforce legacy enterprise vendor offerings, and/or support a kind of monopolistic consortia
business construct.
These offerings allow enterprises to proceed with blockchain

while avoiding the expensive change in business model and
process. However, they can inhibit enterprises from taking
advantage of true blockchain disruption, and may increase
vendor lock-in. Enterprises choosing this option should
understand their limitations and be prepared to move to
blockchain complete solutions over time.
Enterprises focused on blockchain-inspired solutions may be able to more effectively address

technology and business challenges that existing legacy solutions cannot. These include fraud
mitigation, reconciliation reduction, and more effective (secure) data sharing, replication and
distribution. However, CIOs and business leaders should recognize that vendors may be unwilling to
assist in contract extrication and/or technical issues around data management. Also, CIOs must be

prepared to conduct a formal cost-benefit analysis to prove out the value of these solutions when
set against existing and family technology.
Although blockchain-inspired offerings will be accompanied by professional services support,

Gartner clients indicate this can be expensive, considering the required scale at the management
consulting and technical implementation levels. It is not unheard of for externally supported proofs
of concept (PoCs) to cost more than $1 million, compared to an internally developed simple PoC
costing as little as $100,000.
Additional Business Requirements Exist in the Inspired Phase
There will be additional requirements of a more businesslike nature. For example, the governance of
consortia groups that favor this archetype requires a clear and practical approach, and planning for
technology upgrades and future innovation that require a flexible development environment.
Moreover, input costs and output returns need clarity as well as an understanding about intellectual
property contributions, for example. Also, enterprises may have significant amortized or sunk costs
invested in legacy technologies that will need to be addressed. Gartner clients have expressed a
reluctance to throw away those investments for an untried (at mission-critical levels) technology
solution, especially one that introduces a new operating model with unclear data governance
involving multiple peers — all allegedly with the same goals (see “Planning for Blockchain Solution
Adoption”).
Phase 3: Blockchain Complete Archetype

In the blockchain complete phase, the solutions attempt to deliver the full value proposition of
blockchain through an orchestrated implementation of the key capabilities listed above.
These include:
■ Record encryption and immutability

■ Broad-scale P2P ledger distribution
■ Decentralized algorithmic trust control through consensus
■ Monetized tokenization and fungibility
■ Secure smart contracts
■ Decentralized identity
Further maturity in blockchain-enabling solutions needs to occur for blockchain complete solutions
to be fully feasible. Improvements are needed in many vectors, including enhanced performance
through reduced latency and increased throughput, ecosystem scalability, data management, and
broad integration. Most blockchain solutions market themselves as blockchain complete, but, in
reality, the majority are blockchain inspired.

Blockchain complete offerings will have an important role to
play in the broader digital business landscape. Organizations
seeking the value proposition of a complete blockchain solution
will typically inform their perspectives based on an initial
assessment of blockchain-inspired offerings — centralized
components and traditional centralized infrastructure
components.
However, there are many reasons organizations will not move to a blockchain complete solution and
will limit their blockchain aspirations to the blockchain-inspired archetype. Doing so will deliver
some capabilities to enhance sharing of information among known entities as well as potentially
improving opportunities for tracking and tracing physical and digital assets.
The opportunity for reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) is also apparent via the rationalization of
people, processes, applications and other technologies at each individual enterprise, which can, in
theory, be replaced by a single-utility, cross-enterprise blockchain solution. Gartner analysts’
interactions with clients do not reveal defined timelines for enterprises seeking to achieve this
rationalization. Rather, client discussions reveal they have a propensity to add blockchain
capabilities to their existing technology environments. While this may be appropriate in terms of
initially testing blockchain solutions against existing legacy solutions, the longer-term ramification of
IT debt must be accounted for.
The possibilities for creating blockchain complete solutions are many. The proliferation of Dapps
and basic (non-AI infused) smart contracts, and the introduction of new business models via
decentralized operational structures provide for a rich new vein of digital business development.
This will be further enhanced via the introduction and use of cryptocurrency tokens and other forms
of tokenized assets (see “Use Gartner’s Strategic Tokenization Decision Framework to Boost the
Value of Digital Business Ecosystems”).
Tokenization is the ability to represent a unit of value digitally

that enables it to be secured, exchanged, traded or utilized for
any other purpose. Tokenization is an intrinsic element in
blockchain technologies. Blockchain technologies also provide
for processing state changes in tokens.
Blockchain complete solutions can be identified by the inclusion of tokens and the replacement of a
centralized notary with an algorithmic consensus mechanism that provides decentralized services in
an open ecosystem for public consumption.

CIOs should look very carefully at offerings that purport to have consensus where, in effect, it is just
an alternate technology mechanism that retains decision rights with the same limited set of
participants. Implementation details must be investigated to determine if the solution is blockchain
complete or blockchain inspired. This is especially important in the context of how the solution
manages data, where the data controls sit, how transaction governance is enabled and how on-
chain/off-chain data synchronization occurs.
Executives Face Challenges Around Decentralization
The challenges for enterprise executives will be recognizing and accepting decentralized operating
environments where market decision making and intermediation as well as solution development
and operation are not undertaken by a single corporate entity. This will have significant ramifications
for product design, pricing and customer service. Enterprises will increasingly share in customer
journeys as opposed to owning the entire journey. Roles that enterprises had in terms of know-your-
customer verification or relationship management will be partially or fully subjugated to algorithms
and/or the broader contributions and governance models within the P2P network. This will be
extremely unsettling to most enterprises, and it is not clear whether the demand-side pull of the
market will scale sufficiently to overcome those vested corporate interests that resist in order to
maintain the status quo of intermediated control.
Phase 4: Blockchain-Enhanced Archetype

In Phase 4, blockchain-enhanced solutions will result when the aforementioned capabilities are
combined with new technologies (see “Blockchain: The Dawn of Decentralized Identity”).
Blockchain’s ability to provide decentralized economic power and microtransactions, combined with
the intelligent decision-making ability of AI and the sensory powers of IoT, will create never-before-
possible technology constructs for business.
Further, blockchain-enhanced solutions will use new forms of value or digital assets. These tokens
can introduce new economic models that provide monetization opportunities for previously
unmonetizable assets or underutilized assets. This will enable greater levels of personalization at a
microtransaction level, especially once IoT becomes more mainstream by turning information into
an exchangeable digital asset, for example.
AI-infused smart contracts and the introduction of new business models via decentralized
operational structures provide for a rich new vein of economic development and digital business
services. Self-sovereign identity capabilities will allow greater flexibility in the executions of the
terms and conditions of doing business codified in smart contracts. They will also allow for the
delegation of economic decision making to “things” that can acquire economic provenance through
their use of digital wallets (see “Blockchain Usage Depends on Blockchain Wallet Platforms”). These
enhanced solutions take the concept of conversational commerce and remove the human from the
transaction. All these solutions lay the foundation for a new programmable economy to form as the
outgrowth of digital commerce.

Mapping Archetypes and Evolutionary Phases to Use-Case Value Capture
In earlier research, Gartner analyzed the use-case initiatives being experimented on in the
marketplace (see “Pay Attention to These 4 Types of Blockchain Business Initiatives”). From this
analysis, we found that blockchain initiatives fall into four distinct categories (see Figure 6):
■ Efficiency play
■ Record keeper
■ Digital asset market
■ Blockchain disruptor
Figure 6. Four Types of Blockchain Value Capture Initiatives
Since that initial work, Gartner compared the different initiatives and considered them in the context
of the Blockchain Spectrum — in particular, the timeline over which underlying solutions will evolve
and the value that can be achieved from the initiatives. Figure 7 shows how these initiatives differ
and relate to the four archetypes from the spectrum.

Figure 7. Comparison of Four Types of Blockchain Initiatives
Conclusion
Gartner’s Blockchain Spectrum is a model that shows the likely evolutionary path of blockchain
technology development in an enterprise context. It identifies the importance CIOs and business
leaders must place on evaluating the various vendor offerings and potential value propositions from
this set of technology capabilities. It also illustrates the potential opportunities that a blockchain
complete or blockchain-enhanced archetype can provide over the long run, albeit with significant
changes required to business operations, markets and customer behaviors.
It does not suggest that disruptor organizations couldn’t leap frog legacy technologies or operating
models and deploy blockchain complete or enhanced solutions. However, these disruptors may
lack an ability to scale and manage various market and regulatory externalities.
CIOs and business leaders must not underestimate the radically

disruptive nature of blockchain complete and blockchain-
enhanced solutions. Within three to five years, many of
blockchain’s technical challenges will likely be resolved.
Business leaders that fail to do sufficient scenario planning,

experiment with the technology, and delay consideration of
decentralization and tokenization risk significant long-term
disintermediation.
This research was conducted with the assistance of Homan Farahmand. Additional contributions
were from David Cearley, Yefim Natis, Martin Reynolds, Richard Hunter, Paul Vincent and Avivah
Litan.
Gartner Recommended Reading

Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.
“Market Guide Blockchain Platforms”
“Understanding Blockchain Platform Architectures and Implementation Styles”
“Blockchain Status 2018: Market Adoption Reality”
“Pay Attention to These 4 Types of Blockchain Business Initiatives”
“Forecast: Blockchain Business Value, Worldwide, 2017-2030”
Evidence
Blockchain washing (see “How to Make the Most of a ‘Pointless’ Blockchain Project”): The term
“blockchain” is also used to refer to various technologies that, in reality, are related only indirectly to
a blockchain and that appear in products from enterprise technology vendors. We call this use of
the term “blockchain washing” (analogous to “cloud washing” in the early days of cloud computing),
and we consider it a major contributor to the confusion about what blockchain means.
Blockchain-washed products may be worthwhile. They may successfully occupy a niche in areas
such as security, data integration, application integration and identity management — but the
connection to a distributed ledger is so tenuous that the use of the term “blockchain” is confusing.
One resulting risk is that organizations waste resources and time on old technologies and fail to
prioritize the right investments.
Note 1 Blockchain Platforms Are Inconsistent

Blockchain platform offerings lack uniformity. Examples include:
■ Venture-funded, small startup company offerings, often merely supplying a consensus

algorithm.

■ Community-driven and/or consortia-led, open-source projects (e.g., Bitcoin, Hyperledger,
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and R3), where the architectures do not conform to a particular
standard or governance model.
■ Not actual blockchain platforms; instead, those that represent a constitution of subsystems or
functional components (e.g., storage subsystems such as BigchainDB and Interplanetary File
System [IPFS]) that can be leveraged by other platforms.
■ A currency primarily and a platform secondarily. Some choices (such as Rootstock or DASH)
turn what is mostly a currency into more of a platform by adding components such as smart
contract capability.
■ Application-level solutions, some with vertical focus and an embedded foundation layer
technology to enable the solution and be a foundation for other solutions (e.g., Factom).
■ Specialized domain-centric platforms (e.g., the Gnosis prediction market and R3 Corda in
financial services).
■ “Metaplatforms” spanning multiple blockchain technologies. (e.g., Cosmos, Polkadot, Plasma
and Aion).
Note 2 Embedded Design Principles

Confusing the picture even further is the lack of clarity with respect to the embedded design
principles of the offerings, for example:
■ The existence of safe smart contract capability including significantly improved programming
models. Go and/or Solidity are currently barely better than legacy Java and C#, for example.
■ The specificity surrounding use of open source, throughout the stack, preferably starting with
the design and development process (as opposed to tacking it on at the end).
■ Unclear protocol specifications with multiple independent implementations, in the same way
that Chrome, Safari and Firefox all implement the same web protocols.
■ The availability of integrated, fungible tokens of value and wallets for things like payments,
marketable financial instruments and native digital assets, as well as accompanying structures
and workflows within an application and for controlled access to resources.
■ The availability of fine-grained privacy/confidentiality controls backed by solid cryptographic
mechanisms (such as zero knowledge proofs).
■ The existence of full scalability (e.g., of nodes and transactions) to planetary scope in tested
mission-critical contexts that can manage distributed metanetworks (e.g., chain of chains, code
sharding and partitioning) and more efficient consensus algorithms, governance and
throughput.
■ Capabilities for cross-platform/ledger interoperability that can enable new initiatives (e.g.,
Cosmos, Polkadot, Plasma, Aion and Juzix) as well as accommodate existing legacy system
workloads.

■ A critical mass of developers/skills across ecosystems, with multiple third-party development
tools and frameworks.

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Understanding The Gartner Blockchain

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Understanding The Gartner Blockchain

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Understanding the Gartner Blockchain

Spectrum and the Evolution of Technology

Analyst(s): David Furlonger, Rajesh Kandaswamy

Blockchain is often wrongly used as a collective noun, resulting in

This research note is restricted to the personal use of ahad.iqbal@neom.com.

Table 1. Four Archetypes Describe the Blockchain Spectrum of Solutions............................................ 11

Figure 1. The Programmable Economy and Society............................................................................... 4

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■ Decentralized autonomous organizational structures and operating systems

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Figure 1. The Programmable Economy and Society

Source: Gartner (October 2018)

The Current State of the Market for Blockchain Solutions

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Startup disruptors are developing or offering blockchain

Critically, such replatforming involves introducing a new system

Gartner, Inc. | G00373230 Page 5 of 22

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Value Capture Is Not Straightforward

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Source: Gartner (October 2018)

Gartner, Inc. | G00373230 Page 7 of 22

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Source: Gartner (October 2018)

Figure 4. Capturing Value From Blockchain-Enhanced Solutions

Source: Gartner (October 2018)

Page 8 of 22 Gartner, Inc. | G00373230

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Business leaders have welcomed the opportunity to work more

Gartner, Inc. | G00373230 Page 9 of 22

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When considering the use of blockchain, CIOs are in need of a

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Blockchain Blockchain- Blockchain-Inspired Blockchain Blockchain-

Phase Technologies such Solutions that do not Interoperable Blockchain-enhanced

Source: Gartner (October 2018)

Gartner, Inc. | G00373230 Page 11 of 22

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Figure 5. Blockchain Spectrum Evolutionary Phases

Source: Gartner (October 2018)

Blockchain Evolutionary Phases

Phase 1: Blockchain-Enabling Technologies Archetype

■ Technologies: Identity and access management, security, virtualization, containerization, cloud,

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Phase 2: Blockchain-Inspired Archetype

These offerings allow enterprises to proceed with blockchain

Enterprises focused on blockchain-inspired solutions may be able to more effectively address

Gartner, Inc. | G00373230 Page 13 of 22

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Although blockchain-inspired offerings will be accompanied by professional services support,

Additional Business Requirements Exist in the Inspired Phase

Phase 3: Blockchain Complete Archetype

■ Record encryption and immutability

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Tokenization is the ability to represent a unit of value digitally

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