Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and ICO have been the trendy topics in FinTech (financial technology) and other tech forums for the last few years. The well-known technology infrastructure providers including Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS and IBM all started providing support for managed Blockchain services. Very often, we get excited to know about new Blockchain based pilot initiatives in different parts of the world. However, the big question is, how is Blockchain in the real world?
Over the last few years, we have seen many ups and downs to the interest of Blockchain technology. Initially, the traction was towards Bitcoin – the most popular cryptocurrency and application built on top of the Blockchain technology. Soon we saw many other cryptos and ICOs coming into the picture. But not many had the same traction as Bitcoin.
The following chart is based on the data from Google Trends, comparing the search trend of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency topics worldwide, for the period of last five years. The numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the period. A value of 100 indicates the peak popularity for the term, while a value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means there was not enough data for this term.
The chart explains that Cryptocurrency mostly trended higher than Blockchain during the period, which is obvious. However, both saw a downslope after hitting the peak in Jan 2018. Since then, people gradually started losing interest in those.
Stack Overflow – the most popular online forum for coders – recently published their Developer Survey Results 2019. The survey is conducted every year and is considered the largest and most comprehensive survey of people who code around the world. Nearly 90,000 developers took the 20-minute survey earlier this year.
In that survey, the developers were asked how are the organisations using Blockchain Technology, and the result is below.
Most respondents on the survey said their organisations are not using or implementing blockchain technology, and the most common use reported is outside of currency. Developers in India are the most likely to say their organizations are using blockchain technology. (See Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results 2019)
When asked what they primarily believe about blockchain technology, respondents on the survey were largely optimistic about its broad usefulness. This optimism was largely concentrated among young, less experienced developers, however. The more experienced a respondent is, the more likely they were to say blockchain technology is an irresponsible use of resources. (See Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results 2019)
Blockchain, in theory, is a great technology to work on, however, the developers’ survey results clearly give us a powerful message. While I’m excited to see many successful use cases of the technology in the near future, however, I’d also like to stress that our limited resources should be used responsibly and efficiently.
Thank you for reading this piece. I’m eagerly willing to know your comment or feedback on this.
