Commercializing Blockchain

5Blockchain Powering the New Marketplace Model

A Fundamental Foundation: Marketplaces Built Using Blockchain Technology

Blockchain as a marketplace is a very interesting concept, which I have thought long and hard about. On the one hand, a marketplace built on Blockchain technology makes complete sense – after all Blockchain is about decentralization and removing the middlemen. On the other hand, marketplaces today are globally complex beasts, which need significant management and administration. For that reason, I am not putting marketplaces into my use cases, as I do believe this is a fundamental foundation of Blockchain technology use cases.

My questions start to grow when you look at the reality of servicing a marketplace and the high customer expectations set by the current retail world leaders. There are many questions which affect the customer services, around delivery, marketing, quality and many other issues.

I do believe Blockchain-based marketplaces will grow (and there are some already operating) but will they become global giants, with extensive product ranges? This will be difficult to achieve, given the current marketplace giants.

Amazon and Alibaba are founded on two key aspects:

1. Customer service
2. Wide product range.

These are critical to the success of these marketplaces and something that is very hard to get right with a decentralized Blockchain-based marketplace.

I believe we will see many smaller Blockchain-based marketplaces grow, focused on a particular ...