Forrester Research: 90% of Blockchain Initiatives by US Firms Will Never Become Operational

About 90 percent of currently active U.S. companies’ blockchain initiatives will ultimately be abandoned. This statistic comes from a study by Forrester Research, cited by Bloomberg in an article July 31.

The U.S. market research firm Forrester Research predicts that most of blockchain-powered projects initiated by American companies will be put on hold in 2018. Specifically, Forrester Research estimates that in a whopping 90 percent of cases, the projects will “never become part of a company’s operations.”

The researcher also claims that “some companies,” which have been striving to incorporate the widely touted distributed ledger technology (DLT) in their businesses, are now pulling back and scaling down their ambitions.

The most recent study marks at least the second instance in which Forrester has predicted a grim future for blockchain applications in corporate America. Back in 2017, the company published an article entitled “Predictions 2018: The Blockchain Revolution Will Have To Wait A Little Longer,” claiming that 2018 will be “the year of reckoning for blockchain initiatives.”

“Those who failed to translate the headlines into reality will write off their investments and give up, while others that have a deep understanding of the technology and its transformational potential in the long run will continue to forge ahead.”

According to Bloomberg, Ron Resnick, the first executive director of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), argued that blockchain development might still experience an uptick in 2019, saying that “[companies] are still testing the waters.”

Previously, Executive Director of Hyperledger Brian Behlendorf claimed that the “coming wave” of blockchain applications will not come from established tech giants, such as Google, Amazon or Facebook, as these companies “have a blind spot when it comes to blockchain.”

Earlier in July, former Wall Street executive Mike Novogratz predicted that mass adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain is “still five to six years away.”