We have seen both sides of an endless fight on social media, family dinners and tech conventions: Is blockchain the future or not? Should it be adopted everywhere and all areas of life?
The answer might be confusing, in short we believe that, yes, it is the future. But it does not mean that the other side against blockchain is wrong. How can it be possible you might ask? Good question. This all falls under a concept explained in details in the book “Crossing the Chasm” that I advise all founders to read.
All new technologies or products are adopted by what is called, the innovators. These innovators will accept to change from the normal product they use in order to try out something new, it hopes that it goes mainstream in the future. These innovators could be called the first techies that used Bitcoin for transactions over the web when the value was still minimal, because they believed in a decentralized future.
The early adopters are the next generation of developers that might have started with the launch of Ethereum and other blockchains. These developers still were in the risky situation where the future of blockchain is not really known, but they believed in the technology on the long run, so they placed a huge bet that it was going to be successful. In that range, we can start seeing some investors (such as Peter Theil) invest in products, blockchains and different technologies.
These 2 types of users, developers and investors are at the highest risk since the technology is still not guaranteed to make it mainstream and could die at anytime, which reaches the most difficult part of any technology: The Chasm.
The Chasm: Hype, Scams and Lies
The Chasm is the part where blockchain tries to go mainstream and reach what we call the Early Majority. The Early Majority is hard to get overall as they are much more stubborn to change from what they are currently using.
The Chasm, according to “Crossing The Chasm”, is the “do or die” of every new technology. It is when the technology is going public and trying to reach retail users around the world. Remember the 2017 hype where everyone started to hear about cryptocurrency, Bitcoin and blockchain overall? This is what you could describe as the peak of the Chasm, where hype is overblown since a new technology, that was only for a small minority is now being introduced to the early majority. This causes what is called “hype” where everyone wants to get a piece of the action before it goes viral. This is the main reason behind the “Crypto Bubble” where the assets and startups were extremely overvalued and anyone with Web-3 in their whitepaper could get $1 million in funding (eerily similar to the DotCom bubble). The bubble then, as expected pop, and everyone who had invested now feared for their investments and realized that they wasted thousands and millions of dollars without a real product ready.
These same people then claimed that cryptocurrency is “gambling” or a “casino” without real intrinsic value, which might be true from their point of view, since this is the reason they went into it in the first place. But behind the scenes, the shambles and all the lawsuits, one fact remains:
Blockchain has landed in the Early Majority and it is here to stay.
Third world countries use it to settle payments daily, it is now a conservative 1 trillion dollars industry and we are seeing more and more companies wanting to integrate blockchains into their systems. You can use blockchain to settle payments, buy property, invest your money, lending and borrowing or creating a secure identity.
But it does not mean that blockchain at this date of time is perfect. Hacks are still completely probable, scams are still rampant and one click could cost you all your net worth. All of these are reasons that blockchain i still not moving in yet to the Late Majority. It still needs a lot of work. The Late Majority and Laggards are extremely hard to persuade. They need to make sure that the government approves of it, since why would they move from banks since banks are extremely safe? They don’t care about the technology and they like playing it safe. They won’t move unless they extremely need to, and the technology is polished enough that it can be used.
Now, no one exactly knows how much time that might take, but what we know that the everything is on the move, and there is nothing to stop it. It might take a few more months or 10 years, but there is no reason to believe that the technology would not improve and scale to appease to the risk-averse majority.
For anyone not currently using blockchain technology, or not even knowing it worth: See you in 5 years.
In the meantime, let’s keep building.
Athena Consulting can help you build end-to-end products fast and cheaply. If you are interested, let us have a chat.