The Crypto Toolbox: Accelerators for enterprise adoption
Layer 2+ projects that enable enterprise adoption
TLDR: Corporates are increasingly exploring blockchain-based solutions, working on many pilots of their own. The cryptocurrency ecosystem not only offers base layer protocols to build these pilots, but also quite a few layer 2+ solutions that can be useful for enterprises, especially around privacy, interoperability, security & identity, tracking, and data marketplaces.
I recently wrote a short mini series about enterprise blockchain. In there, I looked at the top 12 use case areas, 70+ current industry projects, industry consortia, and did an evaluation of the major blockchain protocols for enterprise use. Where the series was looking at blockchain from a macro perspective, this post is to identify projects that are potentially interesting to large enterprises based on their immediate needs.
Enterprises are in a stage of exploration and piloting right now, very few solutions are in productive use, but that will likely change soon. The financial services industry has been experimenting since 2015. Manufacturing & logistics industries started a lot of pilots in 2017, and other industries are following as well. At the same time, technology firms started to introduce blockchain solutions and services that will drive further growth.
While payments has been a focus especially in the financial services industries before, enterprises focus mostly on B2B use cases around data sharing and asset tracking as of now. Anything related to data & analytics is of high interest, but in an early stage. B2C use cases are a second priority at best.
To move ahead, enterprises need solutions:
- That provide all the safety and security features of enterprise-grade solutions to be able to move pilots into production use
- That provide enabling shared services to be able to scale and integrate their different endeavors
- That work on solutions for their immediate focus use cases
I’ve been using a blockchain technology stack for orientation purposes to figure out what types of solutions enterprises currently need most. The top 5 categories in my opinion and why are:
- Privacy: Enterprises need to protect their data from competitors, and the pseudonymity that public blockchain ledgers provide might not be enough in many cases.
- Security & Identity: Security is a no-brainer for anything that is supposed to go into productive use, and identity is a core enabler for security, scaling, and interoperability
- Interoperability: Since enterprises are working on blockchain projects mostly in isolation right now, interoperability between projects and with legacy systems is important to get them productive.
- Tracking & provenance: Supply chain tracking is the most prominent use case in manufacturing & logistics industries right now, and data sharing / provenance in focus anywhere with tight regulations or security needs.
- Data marketplaces: Stronger use of data and analytics is in high demand cross-industry right now (“data is the new oil”), and data marketplaces give enterprises access to new potentially valuable data.
Based on those 5 categories I compiled a list of projects that I think are most interesting for enterprises right now. Please note that the list excludes base layer technology (see my recent other post for those).
I’ve been following a couple of them for a while, but also discovered some just recently while browsing CMC. The list might not be complete, would argue though that all of those on the list definitely deserve a look:
Privacy
- Enigma: Adds a data privacy layer on top of base layer protocols
- NuCypher: Develops solution for private data on public blockchains
Security & Identity
- Quantstamp: Work on (semi-)automatic security audits of smart contracts
- Atonomi: Provides security and identity management for IOT devices
- Civic, Selfkey, Peer Mountain: Develop solutions for identity mgt.
Interoperability
- Aion: Allows for interoperability between different base layer protocols
- Chainlink: Works on API interoperability with non-blockchain systems
Tracking & provenance
- Tierion: Offers data and document verification, tracking, and audit trail
- Ambrosus, Modum: Develop solutions for supply chain tracking
Data marketplaces
- Streamr: Develops a marketplace for real-time (streaming) data
- Fysical: Works on a marketplace for location data
- Nebula Genomics: Wants to launch a marketplace for genomics data
- Ocean Protocol: Develops a curation system for data marketplaces
With growing adoption and maturation of enterprise blockchain, other categories will be come relevant as well. Those that I would see next are exchange infrastructure to make use of multiple cryptocurrencies transparent to the application layer, scaling, payments, and stablecoins for B2C payment use cases, and marketplaces and/or sector-specific projects to start reaching further into the consumer-facing space.
Please let me know what you think about this post, and if you think there’s an important project to add, please let me know, too!
