Why Blockchain keeps being a promise?

Although it is a very popular concept and it has been appearing at posts, news and congresses for a long time, Blockchain still does not get to settle down at our daily life. That technological concept that promised to change everything has not consolidated as quick as expected.

I will try to describe what are for me the main reasons why it is still considered a promise.

From my point of view, the main reason is that it is a technology, not a product, and it generally gives that the medium user tends to confuse these terms. We need to take into account that, to see a technology success, it has to be massively used by products or services. Through the years, different applications had been popping up. Bitcoin was conceived as the first real application and is the most famous one but 12 years later, its usage is not as spread as expected.

After Bitcoin, other cryptocurrency came up like Ethereum or Monero. They were created as new currency generally unknown and tended to be related to speculation, volatility, purchases in black market, etc. Summarizing, it does not exist a general trust on them to spread their use. Said so, it is elementary to highlight that relating always Blockchain to virtual currency is, in my opinion, a tremendous error as it is just one within all possible applications.

Apart from security, one of the main Blockchain benefits is decentralisation. A priori, all are pros, intermediaries and commissions disappearance, costs savings… We are talking about one to one ordinary transactions without having to trust our data to third parties. For instance, currency transactions without banking interferences or contract signs without notaries. All activity would keep registered at BlockChain that implies deep changes in society. It makes us wonder: Are we ready to this great change? Is it of huge corporations interests? Will some today essential job positions disappear?

There already exist some important point that should be defined more accurately such as verifying the data provided by users to the database, as it seems complicated that all the data introduced by new users can be contrasted and verified. Other key point are privacy and transparency limits on theses public database as all the data introduced could be seen by users. As we can see, some mysteries have not been solved yet so that the use of this technology can be spread and consolidated.

Generally, great technological challenges are introduced in a descendent way. From the largest companies, passing through smaller environments, to the general individual usage. Although it is true that some Blockchain applications do exist and are being used nowadays, we do not have this application for an individual environment that can catch everyone yet. Definitely, the partial ignorance of technology, its fast advance, its lack of real applications, unanswered questions and issues, make of Blockchain just a potential technology.