Assessing the Technology Readiness Level of Current Blockchain Use Cases

Blockchain technology has garnered much hype since the introduction of Bitcoin, but over a decade later, the technology is still lacking mature use cases outside that of cryptocurrencies. This paper makes use of a systematic literature review to identify non-cryptocurrency use cases of blockchain to establish an overview of existing or hypothesized solutions using the technology. The identified use cases are subsequently assessed on their technology readiness level (TRL) using the guidance of established research [1] to determine the maturity of individual blockchain solutions described in peer-reviewed literature. By categorizing the individual use cases into groups, a generalized assessment of maturity for different application areas is assessed for blockchain technology. The literature review and subsequent estimation of TRL revealed that there are highly mature blockchain use cases, although they are quite limited in terms of industry-wide utility. As an example, the Everledger use case has tracked over two million diamonds and is estimated to be TRL 9 (the highest level) in the specific scope of diamond provenance tracking, but other luxury-tracking blockchain initiatives are years behind this [2].