Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies: Beyond the Code Console
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Nottingham
Department Name: Nottingham University Business School
Abstract
According to the 2019 Gartner's Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, Blockchain, the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) behind Bitcoin, continues to be within the top trends to dominate the business ecosystem in the next 5 to 10 years. From legacy businesses and financial institutions to start-ups and governments there is increasing interest around this technology with some characterising it as the most influential innovation in the next decades while others dismiss it as a speculative bubble" and a "fraud".
Since its emergence in 2009, a variety of potential applications have been proposed that utilize different forms of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger protocols, either in terms of rearranging existing infrastructures or in terms of creating new economic value. One of the most discussed applications both in industry and academia is supply chain management.
Supply chains globally are in a transition face. On the one hand, the way they have been managed has fundamentally changed on a business level due to globalization and interconnected markets while regulatory compliance (e.g. 2015 Modern Slavery Act) and ethical consumption in the digital age are demanding clarity on business practices and corporate responsibility. Tackling those challenges will require solving some of the current issues in procurement and supply chain management, such as lack of traceability and transparency, risks related with multi stakeholder relationship management as well as regulatory compliance.
For many, blockchain solution are the most suitable for tackling these issues since they can enhance transparency by documenting a product's journey through the supply chain, they can provide a better scalability since, theoretically, any number of people can access them from any touch point, and they can provide better security through the decentralized and immutable nature of the ledger. However, the one key aspect that constantly emerges in both academic literature and industry reports and sums up the advantages of the technology is "trustless interactions", in the sense that all of the above advantages can facilitate transactions between parties without the traditional safeguards that facilitate trust in such settings.
All these aspects, nevertheless, are yet to be seen not only in terms of the technical development of those systems but also in terms of business and real-world applications as well as user adaption and acceptance. Trust free interactions imply a frictionless economy without uncertainty or risk and the current state of affairs in the blockchain sphere is far from that goal. Hence, the Blockchain proposition of "trustless interactions" does not necessarily imply that they really are or that people will perceive them as such.
Current research on the topic mostly focuses on either the technical infrastructure that is required for the development of these DLT systems or have conducted thought experiments on which parts of the industry this technology can disrupt. Little is yet know regarding which characteristics of Blockchain are most relevant for particular settings and how they need to be designed.
Hence, by combining both qualitative and quantitative data sources, the current project is aiming in answering 2 question: 1. Are trust-free applications, one of the main propositions of this technology, something that will make Blockchains (and its different implementations) applicable for different business use cases? 2. How this new form of "algorithmic trust" will be perceived by users and does it differ from "institutional & organizational trust" or trust in a third-party service provider?
Since its emergence in 2009, a variety of potential applications have been proposed that utilize different forms of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger protocols, either in terms of rearranging existing infrastructures or in terms of creating new economic value. One of the most discussed applications both in industry and academia is supply chain management.
Supply chains globally are in a transition face. On the one hand, the way they have been managed has fundamentally changed on a business level due to globalization and interconnected markets while regulatory compliance (e.g. 2015 Modern Slavery Act) and ethical consumption in the digital age are demanding clarity on business practices and corporate responsibility. Tackling those challenges will require solving some of the current issues in procurement and supply chain management, such as lack of traceability and transparency, risks related with multi stakeholder relationship management as well as regulatory compliance.
For many, blockchain solution are the most suitable for tackling these issues since they can enhance transparency by documenting a product's journey through the supply chain, they can provide a better scalability since, theoretically, any number of people can access them from any touch point, and they can provide better security through the decentralized and immutable nature of the ledger. However, the one key aspect that constantly emerges in both academic literature and industry reports and sums up the advantages of the technology is "trustless interactions", in the sense that all of the above advantages can facilitate transactions between parties without the traditional safeguards that facilitate trust in such settings.
All these aspects, nevertheless, are yet to be seen not only in terms of the technical development of those systems but also in terms of business and real-world applications as well as user adaption and acceptance. Trust free interactions imply a frictionless economy without uncertainty or risk and the current state of affairs in the blockchain sphere is far from that goal. Hence, the Blockchain proposition of "trustless interactions" does not necessarily imply that they really are or that people will perceive them as such.
Current research on the topic mostly focuses on either the technical infrastructure that is required for the development of these DLT systems or have conducted thought experiments on which parts of the industry this technology can disrupt. Little is yet know regarding which characteristics of Blockchain are most relevant for particular settings and how they need to be designed.
Hence, by combining both qualitative and quantitative data sources, the current project is aiming in answering 2 question: 1. Are trust-free applications, one of the main propositions of this technology, something that will make Blockchains (and its different implementations) applicable for different business use cases? 2. How this new form of "algorithmic trust" will be perceived by users and does it differ from "institutional & organizational trust" or trust in a third-party service provider?
Planned Impact
We intend the Horizon CDT to be the place where partners come to find their future employees and to engage with the opportunities and challenges of digital identity and personal data. The key beneficiaries of our research will be:
- Commercial private sector companies that will engage with our CDT students during their research and/or employ them after graduation. Our partners include companies developing digital identity technologies as well as user companies across a range of sectors (consumer goods, entertainment, transportation, energy and others).
- Public sector and third sector organisations that are concerned with the use of digital identities to support civil society including broadcasters, healthcare providers and campaign groups.
- The public whose personal data forms the focus of their research and who will ultimately use and come to depend upon digital identities.
- Research communities spanning computer science, engineering, psychology, sociology, business and humanities.
These will benefit in various ways.
- Commercial, public and third sector companies will benefit from being able to recruit from a pool of talented PhD graduates who bring an in-depth understanding of digital identity and a proven ability to work in interdisciplinary teams. They will also benefit from being able to participate in co-creation of PhD research to ensure focus on relevant challenges and be able to exploit results of this PhD research.
- The public will benefit through a greater understanding of the opportunities and challenges of digital identity.
- Research communities will benefit by opening up promising new interdisciplinary fields.
Our Impact activities will be driven by Professor Derek McAuley, the Director of Horizon, who has a track record of establishing industry labs, spinning our companies and who is currently acting CIO of the TSB funded Connected Digital Economy Hub. Key activities will be:
- All Horizon PhDs will be carried out in collaboration with an external partner who will be involved in drawing up the initial topic, recruiting students, shaping the PhD proposal, supervision, and hosting at least one internship
- We will continue to organise knowledge exchange events within Horizon that are open to our network of over 100 external partners, including our annual Horizon Research Conference.
- We will encourage the release of applications, open source software, and open datasets wherever collaboration agreements allow.
- We will actively encourage our students to spin-out new ventures, including providing seedcorn funding through Horizon.
- We will engage our students with our two partner catapults, the Connected Digital Economy Catapult and the Satellite Applications Catapult.
- We will actively encourage industry visits through guest lectures on our "Broadening Horizons" core taught programme.
- We will also encourage companies to define, steer and sponsor the first year interdisciplinary team projects.
- Our students will complete a module on Public and External Engagement and are encouraged to engage in public events and exhibitions.
- Horizon's journalist-in-residence will help expose students research to the wider world through regular blogposts, while the University's marketing and communications team will help them develop press releases.
- We will provide training in research publication as part of the Professional Skills module and mentor publications through the Practice Led Project and the annual writing retreat (where students present and critique draft papers).
These impact activities will be supported by a professional online presence with posters, demos and podcasts made available through our website and associated YouTube channel and twitter feed, and with individual PhD profiles being posted on our own site and on external networking portals such as LinkedIn and ResearchGate.
- Commercial private sector companies that will engage with our CDT students during their research and/or employ them after graduation. Our partners include companies developing digital identity technologies as well as user companies across a range of sectors (consumer goods, entertainment, transportation, energy and others).
- Public sector and third sector organisations that are concerned with the use of digital identities to support civil society including broadcasters, healthcare providers and campaign groups.
- The public whose personal data forms the focus of their research and who will ultimately use and come to depend upon digital identities.
- Research communities spanning computer science, engineering, psychology, sociology, business and humanities.
These will benefit in various ways.
- Commercial, public and third sector companies will benefit from being able to recruit from a pool of talented PhD graduates who bring an in-depth understanding of digital identity and a proven ability to work in interdisciplinary teams. They will also benefit from being able to participate in co-creation of PhD research to ensure focus on relevant challenges and be able to exploit results of this PhD research.
- The public will benefit through a greater understanding of the opportunities and challenges of digital identity.
- Research communities will benefit by opening up promising new interdisciplinary fields.
Our Impact activities will be driven by Professor Derek McAuley, the Director of Horizon, who has a track record of establishing industry labs, spinning our companies and who is currently acting CIO of the TSB funded Connected Digital Economy Hub. Key activities will be:
- All Horizon PhDs will be carried out in collaboration with an external partner who will be involved in drawing up the initial topic, recruiting students, shaping the PhD proposal, supervision, and hosting at least one internship
- We will continue to organise knowledge exchange events within Horizon that are open to our network of over 100 external partners, including our annual Horizon Research Conference.
- We will encourage the release of applications, open source software, and open datasets wherever collaboration agreements allow.
- We will actively encourage our students to spin-out new ventures, including providing seedcorn funding through Horizon.
- We will engage our students with our two partner catapults, the Connected Digital Economy Catapult and the Satellite Applications Catapult.
- We will actively encourage industry visits through guest lectures on our "Broadening Horizons" core taught programme.
- We will also encourage companies to define, steer and sponsor the first year interdisciplinary team projects.
- Our students will complete a module on Public and External Engagement and are encouraged to engage in public events and exhibitions.
- Horizon's journalist-in-residence will help expose students research to the wider world through regular blogposts, while the University's marketing and communications team will help them develop press releases.
- We will provide training in research publication as part of the Professional Skills module and mentor publications through the Practice Led Project and the annual writing retreat (where students present and critique draft papers).
These impact activities will be supported by a professional online presence with posters, demos and podcasts made available through our website and associated YouTube channel and twitter feed, and with individual PhD profiles being posted on our own site and on external networking portals such as LinkedIn and ResearchGate.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Thomas Chesney (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Symeon Dionysis (Student) |
| Description | In the 1st stage of my research, I explored blockchain & distributed ledger technologies implementations in supply chain management and their implications regarding trust, industry collaboration, information sharing, governance and regulation. An online industry survey was utilised, targeted at industry professional working or experimenting with blockchain applications in supply chain management. Participants from the health, pharmaceutical and energy industry have completed the survey. A preliminary analysis of the data indicated overall positive attitudes regarding blockchain implementations in supply chain management, especially in addressing communication inefficiencies and product traceability. At the same time, participants expressed their concerns on issues of privacy and regulatory frameworks. The lack of trust among users as well as not realising the benefits of blockchain were the most significant barriers to broader market adoption. One particularly interesting finding emerged from the decision-making flowchart participants had to complete at the end of the survey, which accessed through a series of questions whether they actually need to use a blockchain system for a particular application they are working on and which revealed that for only one participant blockchain would be an appropriate solution. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this research is still ongoing, intending to conclude by the end of spring. The second stage of my research involves examining how consumers perceive blockchain applications in supply chain management and how they compare with existing traceability systems/certifications. Several companies are currently utilising this technology for their products in order to enhance transparency, traceability, and provenance and increase consumer confidence. In the first study of this stage, I investigated consumers' purchasing intentions for blockchain traceable coffee and their psychosocial antecedents, utilising an extended model of the Theory of Planned Behaviour. An online questionnaire study was deployed, using two traceability systems (one based on blockchain and one on a more established traceability certification) for organic coffee. Our results suggested that environmental protections, perceived behavioural control, and attitudes were the main predictors of consumer intentions to purchase blockchain traceable coffee. Another interesting detail from our study is the participants' willingness to pay a price premium for blockchain traceable coffee. 75.6% of participants indicated that they are willing to pay at least 5% more for the blockchain traceable coffee, with the majority price premium ranging from 5% to 30%. A research paper based on this study is now published in the British Food Journal (DOI: 10.1108/BFJ-05-2021-0541). The second study of this stage expanded on my previous work. I conducted an online experiment among 516 participants using different versions of a traceable organic coffee product (traceability based on a company initiative, third-party traceability, a blockchain platform and a combination of the two latter settings), in which I recorded and compared their willingness to buy, along with a series of other measures such as their level of trust and how they evaluate each traceability feature. The results suggest that although participants recorded higher scores in trust and in their evaluation of the traceability features for the blockchain supported products, their willingness to buy was relatively the same. Furthermore, the same patent emerged when comparing participants with low and high environmental awareness. However, participants in the high environmental awareness group recorded significantly higher scores in all measures than those in the low environmental awareness group. A research paper based on this study is currently submitted for review. |
| Exploitation Route | On an academic level, this research provides information on how features of blockchain technologies are perceived by the industry. It also reveals what these new blockchain-based traceability systems imply for the consumer and what are the influential factors behind their intentions to purchase them. Since blockchain technologies are still in the early stages of adoption, future academic research might explore different industries in which this technology's benefits can be transferred to the consumer, in which format, and how they affect their purchasing intentions compared to what already exists in the market. On a non-academic, this research can be incorporated into the design of commercial blockchain platforms since it provides insights on which aspects of this technology matter most to both businesses as well as consumers. |
| Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology,Retail |