Blockchain is here to stay.
An exploratory study upon blockchain technology in
the Netherlands
Artisa Burazeri
22 June 2018
MSc. BA - Digital Business
Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam
Author’s note Artisa Burazeri
Student number: 11807210
E-mail: artisaburazeri@student.uva.nl Under the supervision of Prof Dr. Ed Peelen
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Statement of originality
This document is written by Artisa Burazeri who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
3 Abstract
The current research explores blockchain technology’s application in the Netherlands through textual analysis of public media articles, and in-depth qualitative analysis of interview data conducted with Dutch organizations from diverse backgrounds. The textual analysis provides a macro view of opinions regarding blockchain in the Netherlands, showing a positive trend throughout the years, as well as provides an overview of the most discussed blockchain applications. The interview analysis provides a deeper and contextual viewpoint of blockchain in the Netherlands via the emergence of thematic categories which correspond to blockchain’s characteristics, applications, challenges in implementation and strategies. Results show that characteristics such as trust, value-adding functionalities and efficiency are catalysts for blockchain applications in financial services, supply chain & logistics, healthcare, governmental services, energy and ICOs. Challenges in infrastructure, technicalities, organization and regulations point to the immaturity of blockchain technology, still disruptive capabilities are yet to be exemplified. Further, a distinction between corporations and startups in terms of blockchain PoCs and blockchain implementation is presented, by emphasizing the need of a synergetic relationship between the two entities, for a mass-scale blockchain implementation.
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Contents
Blockchain is here to stay. ... 1
1. Introduction ... 5
2. Theoretical Background... 7
Financial Services ... 18
Healthcare ... 20
Supply Chain Management & Logistics ... 23
Governmental Institutions ... 26
Energy sector ... 28
Cultural services & Educational purposes ... 29
3. Research Question ... 33
4. Methodology ... 34
5. Results ... 41
6. Discussion ... 54
7. Conclusion ... 59
8. Limitations & further research ... 61
5 1. Introduction
“The first generation of the digital revolution brought us the Internet of information. The second generation — powered by blockchain technology — is bringing us the Internet of value: a new platform to reshape the world of business and transform the old order of human affairs for the better” (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016).
Since its first introduction to the world by Satoshi Nakamoto (2008), who trembled the financial market by presenting Bitcoin, blockchain has been a topic of controversy while attracting much attention (Swan, 2015; Wright & De Filippi, 2015; Tascott & Tascott, 2016; Kelley, 2017). The rationale behind the blockchain “fiasco” lays in the opportunities it augments through transforming the way individuals and organizations digitally own and exchange assets without the control of a central authority (Gramoli, 2017). The array of opportunities presented by this revolutionary technology, and the risks they adhere, have sparked interest not only for industries facing pressure, but also in academia, where numerous researchers have been analyzing the blockchain phenomenon, from its implication in the financial sector through the emergence of Bitcoin, to using smart contracts in healthcare or educational system (Swan, 2015; Benchoufi & Ravaud, 2017; Webach & Cornell, 2017; Cong & He, 2018).
With the number Blockchain wallet users reaching almost 25 million for the first quarter of 2018, to IBM launching a myriad of blockchain pilots, blockchain’s power is being recognized and this is illustrated by the parade of startups fathoming the new technology, and multinationals investing large amounts in experiments (Number of blockchain wallet users, 2018; IBM Blockchain, 2018). Global funding for blockchain startups reached a staggering $1,030 million USD, with an 87.63% increase in only one year (Funding & investment of blockchain startups companies, 2018). Blockchain’s startup environment has fully grasped and solidified blockchain’s capabilities, stimulated by the technology’s peer-to-peer decentralized network, hence creating a strong network of organizations which are disrupting numerous
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industries by redefining business models and transforming how services are provided (Lam, 2018). The rise of Fintech startups is threatening the financial industry by providing trust & transparency through decentralized solutions to traditionally fully-centralized services, hence putting big players & incumbents in danger (Tondreau, n.d.). The financial services are considered to be only the beginning of blockchain’s journey of influence, as several pilots have emerged for supply chain management, healthcare and government, amongst many more (Krishnan, 2018). Innovative products have caught everyone’s attention such as Pindify’s decentralized market platform for music, art and media, or Odem’s PoC (Proof of Concept) in trying to diminish intermediary costs in education by directly linking teachers with students, as to make education available on a global scale for everyone (Polites, 2017). Corporations, on the other hand, are still reluctant, given the complex reality upon which they work (Chaudhry, 2017). R&D investments in multinational companies and highly reputable firms are continuously on the rise in regard to blockchain PoCs, greatly expanding the scope of industries exploring the technology, yet the processes have yet to go further to a full-scale blockchain implementation, primarily due to the current state of the technology considered as immature by many (Lannquist, 2018).
A recent wave of discussion has shifted the attention from US’s Silicon Valley, to Europe’s initiatives in fostering blockchain technology (Roeder, 2018). The European Commission has expressed great interest in providing means for blockchain implementation, firstly by launching the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum, to further establishing a European Blockchain Partnership for participant countries to share and communicate insights for a faster development of blockchain technology ("EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum - Call for contributors", 2018; Sundararajan, 2018). Among the participant countries, the Netherlands has distinguished itself as one of the most technologically-forward and wired countries within the EU, creating innovative spaces of startup innovations, and recently heavily
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exploring blockchain technology (Start up, 2016; Ozelli, 2018). It is upon this rationale that this study considers the Netherlands a location of interest in exploring an upcoming technology such as blockchain.
In an attempt to analyze how blockchain’s role as a disruptive technology is being shaped in the Netherlands, an exploratory study via textual analysis and interview data is conducted, as to paint a greater picture of blockchain as an upcoming technology. The current study is structured as follows. The first section introduces the basics blockchain by firstly creating an overview of how the technology works to further encompassing its capabilities through applications and areas of influence. Further, the Netherlands’ journey as a front runner in technological advancements is touched upon. The second section portrays this study’s research question and respective sub-questions taking in consideration the theoretical rationale, followed by a thorough specification of the methodology used in this study. In continuation of the paper, findings will be presented from the textual analysis and interview data, along with the elaboration of the theory extracted from the research in the discussion part. To end, limitations and further research are presented as advances for the current study.
2. Theoretical Background
2.1 Blockchain basics
Elements & architecture
“The novelty of blockchain is a genuine combination of well-known research results taken from distributed computing, cryptography and game theory” (Gramoli, 2017).
The following represents the author’s definition of blockchain by retrieving concepts from diverse sources as cited below:
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Built on a purely distributed peer-to-peer network (P2P), Blockchain entails a large
decentralized digital ledger, composed by diverse sequences of data blocks, integrity of which
is ensured by cryptography and a consensus mechanism (Crosby et. al, 2016; Kehril, 2016; Patil & Gupta, 2017). To fully understand the means of action on a blockchain, this section aims to explain each crucial element consisting a blockchain layer, to further painting the overall picture of this upcoming disruptive innovation.
By definition, a P2P network is a network consisting of two or more peers (computer systems) working on the same program to share computational resources, be it information, storage capacity or processing power (U.S. Patent No. 7,343,418, 2008). All peers in this network, differently regarded as nodes, are equal in responsibilities and roles providing both supply and demand in the network, without having a central point of control. In an architectural point of view, P2P networks can be based on a centralized or distributed system. The most well-known approach of a centralized P2P network was Napster, which disrupted the music industry by completely replacing music studios as intermediaries and giving full power to artists and consumers to communicate and share their music, while maintaining a central database of all nodes in the system, as well as information stored on those nodes (“Blockchain basics”, 2018). This example solidified the potential of P2P networks: reshaping every industry by getting rid of the middle men (Swan, 2015). The innovativeness and disruptive power of Blockchain comes from the fact that it strives to completely remove intermediaries by providing a fully decentralized system based on a purely distributed P2P network.
How does it actually work? Blockchain consists of data chains composed from sequential “data blocks”, which contain in itself multiple transactions (Nofer, Gomber, Hinz & Schierek, 2017). Each block contains a unique identifier called hash, the previous transaction’s hash, a timestamp and a nonce (random number verifying the hash) (Crosby et. al, 2016). These elements of the blocks ensure the validity and integrity of the blockchain, by making it possible
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to backtrack every action within the sequence. A simplistic block sequence is illustrated as follows:
Figure 1: Blockchain overview (Retrieved from: Zheng, Die, Xai, & Wang, 2018)
The security of information stored in each of these blocks is provided through a cryptographic mechanism, which compiles techniques in securing digital information and safe transactional communications, hence intensifying the disintermediation that blockchain offers (Samuel, 2016). Cryptography ensures the privacy of sensitive information that goes through the blocks by making sure that it is only viewed by the intended respondent. It does so by using public-key cryptography, which allow information to be encrypted and decrypted through a combination of user’s (sender/receiver) private & public key (“Blockchain Basics”, 2018). While the private key is personal and has to be kept confidential, the public key of the receiver allows the sender to share information with whichever node in the system. This type of cryptography is utilized through a digital signature which secures the data being communicated and the identity of the sender by making ownership legally binding. A three-step cryptography example is shown below:
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Figure 2: Simplistic view of blockchain cryptography
To prevent fraud and ensure trust within the network, Blockchain functions on a consensus mechanism, which requires the majority of the nodes in the network to agree upon the validity of information stored in a block (Glaser & Bezzenberger, 2015). This validation is conducted based on a set of rules, which allows maintaining a coherent set of facts within the participating nodes (Swan, 2015). As a term, ‘consensus’ means that the nodes on the network agree on the same state of a blockchain. Consensus mechanisms allow a blockchain to be updated and ensuring its legitimacy to the participants, as well as prevents a single entity to control the chain.
A challenge that many networks face, is that they are unpredictable in their entity and may contain faulty nodes, differently known as Byzantine nodes, which send out conflicting information to different parts of the system (Swan, 2015). The term Byzantine comes from the Byzantine generals’ problems, in attempt to coordinate for attack, while one of the generals might be a traitor or captured by one. This brings about a trustless environment where reaching a consensus is a challenge (Lamport, Shostak, & Pease, 1982). In a Byzantine process, node A tells node B one thing and C another causing them to conclude different information in the network, which can bring about a safety breach by a simple majority vote. Blockchain regulates the risk of faulty nodes in Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) by making use of diverse consensus algorithms (“Blockchain basics”, 2018).
Plain text
information from sender
Encryption
use receiver's public key & sender's private key to encrypt information create cypher text
Decryption
use sender's public key & receiver's private key to decrypt information receive plain text as intended11
One consensus algorithm that is suited to check for BFT is Proof of work; firstly introduced by Bitcoin and widely used by cryptocurrencies, which comes in the form of a mathematical algorithmic puzzle that needs to be solved – such process is titled as mining (“Consensus achieved using Proof-of-work”, 2018). Puzzles are solved by miners (nodes) which undergo a verification process that the answer to the specific puzzle does not correspond to a previous transaction (Wright & De Filippi, 2015). When one miner finds the value, all other nodes must mutually confirm the value by giving consent to its truth. Further, to incentivize miners, a reward system is in place which usually contains a certain amount a cryptocurrency or previously agreed fees (Khudnev, 2017). A more energy-saving alternative to PoW is Proof of Stake (PoS), and it is widely used in cryptocurrencies for block validation due to its high security and network efficiency. In a PoS system, the creator of the next block is selected randomly, based on the amount of the same cryptocurrency that is owned, and length of ownership of that cryptocurrency. This randomization encourages participation and prevents centrality in the network. Further advancements in algorithms have introduced Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) which gives the nodes the right to vote who will participate in the chain, hence getting rid of the dishonest delegates; Ripple which makes use of collectively-trusted subnetworks within the blockchain network; and Tendermint which proposes a three- step proposer selection for nodes to be fully validated (Zheng, Dai, Xie, 2017). Such consensus algorithms provide safety, efficiency and convenience in the decentralized network.
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Figure 3: Blockchain system (Retrieved from Glaser, 2017)
Types and examples
Now that there is a general overview of how the technology works, it is important to make a distinction between three types of emerging blockchains: public, private, and permissioned or consortium blockchain. A public blockchain is fully decentralized, visible and accessible by anyone in the network, hence making every participant node part of the consensus process (Meng, Tischhauser, Wang, Wang, Han, 2017). This type of blockchain is almost impossible to tamper, but the level of efficiency is not that high given the large number of nodes and respective transactions (Zheng, Die, & Xai, 2017). Examples of a public blockchain are Bitcoin, world-famous cryptocurrency, and Etherium, an open-source platform based on smart contract functionality which has been widely used by developers to create decentralized applications (Nakamoto, 2008; Wood, 2016). Private blockchains, on the other hand, provide a centralized system within a specific organization, and although it could sometimes be viewed
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by the public, but not altered, only members of the organization participate in the consensus determination (Lin, Liao, 2017). The relatively low number of nodes brings the benefit of high efficiency on the one hand, but also makes the system prone to tampering (Zheng, Dai, & Xie, 2017). An example is the Hyperledger Fabric, created to cater enterprise requirements, making it highly secure and scalable (Jayachandran, 2017). A permissioned or consortium blockchain meets the aforementioned types in the middle, by providing a semi-centralized system where there’s usually permission to read by writing access is only giving to a certain number of nodes, which would then be responsible during the consensus determination (Zheng, Dai, & Xie, 2017). An example is Quorum, a permissioned blockchain built upon Etherium (Infinity Blockchain Labs, 2018).
Principles and beyond
In their book “Blockchain Revolution”, authors Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott bring forth seven design principles upon which the blockchain technology is built: Networked Integrity; Distributed Power; Value as Incentive; Security; Privacy; Preservation of Rights and Inclusion. These principles give blockchain immense power to act as a catalyst for protecting every individual’s rights, communicating only the truth and distributing integrity and prosperity into the society (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016). It is of great interest to see how the aforementioned blockchain architecture and underlying principles can be applied to real-life cases, which are further illustrated in the following section.
2.2 Blockchain revolution in business
Since the Industrial Revolution in late 18th century, there has been a parade of new technologies and scientific breakthroughs, enjoying such power as to transform and prosper economies. The true aptitude of technological advances remains in their embodiment in society by creating value, which incites businesses, policy makers and governments to understand the
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capabilities of such technologies and envision how to exploit it for the greater good. While the array of evolving technologies has been relentless, there are those who stand out by questioning the status quo and transforming systems of working, often through the mastery of disruption. Examples of such technologies are Mobile Internet, Cloud Technology & Internet of Things, Advanced Robotics & Artificial Intelligence, 3D printing and so forth (McKinsey Global Institute, 2013). Schumpeter (1942) was the first to come up with the term creative destruction, which essentially describes how the most momentous shifts in economy are those accompanied by the process of creative destruction in which (often) technological breakthroughs disrupt and revolutionize economic structure from within, eventually displacing the current “mondus apparatus”. Further, Christensen (1997) coined the theory of “Disruptive innovation” where he presents disruptive technologies as those that introduce unique attributes to the public and are often disregarded by the mainstream customers in their genesis, to eventually threatening industry front-runners. Christensen (1997) additionally theorizes that new comers, fueled by the emergence of a disruptive technology, can challenge the powerful incumbents which are embedded to their legacy systems. Such theories have aroused much discussion in academia by being the starting point of what one can consider a disruptive technology to be.
Nowadays we continuously see rapidly evolving, potentially transformative technologies coming ahead, and what has remained to be a challenge even in today’s highly tech-invasive society, is depicting which technologies are truly disruptive against the incremental innovations in a world full of unicorns and black swans (Deloitte University Press, 2015). In order to identify technologies with meaningful potential, McKinsey Global Institute (2013) analyzed emerging technologies against four main principles that the technology must meet in order to be considered a disruptive technology. First and foremost, the technology is advancing at a rapid rate. This characteristic is quite common amongst disruptive technologies, as they all tend to experience breakthroughs in terms of performance and innovative approaches.
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Secondly, disruptive technologies have a broad scope of impact, hence affecting diverse markets and industries. The third principle regards the significant economic value that the technology affects – this is seen in terms of value pool disruption, and productivity enhancement. Lastly, the economic impact of such technologies is potentially disruptive, by transforming how people or business work, and creating new opportunities for driving growth. Arguments consist in posing blockchain as a foundational rather than disruptive technology, as it can create new foundations for business as societal value, not necessarily undertaken incumbents (Iansiti, & Lakhani, 2017).
A much favorable tool in assessing emerging technologies, and their lifecycle, is Gartner’s Hype Cycle which places technologies in 5 stages: Innovation Trigger where the new technology kicks off accompanied by a publicity hype; Peak of Inflated Expectations where success stories are appraised and little companies take action ; Trough of Disillusionment which is induced from the challenges that the technology experiences in implementation; Slope
of Enlightenment where the technology’s capabilities come to light and several project pilots
emerge, while corporations pay attention; and Plateau of Productivity where the technology experiences a growth and its accepted in the mass market (Linden & Fenn, 2003). In a report conducted for Blockchain Business, Gartner (2017) places diverse Blockchain applications as illustrated below:
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Figure 4: Gartner's hype cycle for Blockchain technology (Retrieved from Gartner, 2017)
At first glance, it is visible that Blockchain’s first domain of application, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, are ahead in the curve, expecting to reach Plateau of Productivity in 5 years at most. This comes as an analogy of the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) buzz triggered by the emergence of Bitcoin which reached its peak on August 2017. On the contrary, applications in industries such as investment and banking, education and manufacturing would need up to 10 years to experience mass adoption, while healthcare and supply chain stand quite behind in only expecting a long-term Plateau of Productivity. According to Gartner, this is illustrated in the propensity of CIOs to express interest and devise strategic plans for implementing the technology, where there is a scarcity in enterprise readiness to adopt blockchain, mainly due to inadequate technical skills, thus positioning blockchain in a more experimental rather than implemental phase. Similar results were previously found by Wang, Chen and Xu (2016), who
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altered the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), widely applied in the IT sphere of influence, to fit the Blockchain technology by constructing the Blockchain Maturity Model (BCMM). BCMM faces the 5 stages in the CMM: initial, repeatable, defined, managed and optimizing, towards 4 main technology indicators: networks, information systems, computing methodologies and security and privacy. The analysis conducted by the authors concluded that Blockchain is yet to meet the appropriate level of maturity for the process of adoption, mainly due to challenges faced in upgrading and integrating blockchain architecture as well as an insufficiency in the standardization of computing methodologies. Yet, the hype continues to accelerate as the global spending on blockchain solution is said to reach $2.1 billion USD by the end of 2018 and the worldwide Blockchain market is expected to be worth around $20 billion USD by 2024 (Statista, 2018). Blockchain’s potential is starting to get apprehended as there is a noticeable manifestation of the technology’s applications in various industries. Theoretical frameworks upon blockchain are experiencing a shift in discussion in trying to explore blockchain’s value in business, giving rise to management initiatives in understanding the technology (Swan, 2015; Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016; IBM, 2018).
According to Swan (2015), blockchain technology has experienced its own transformation, going from the first tier of decentralization of money and payments, to second tier of decentralization of markets including smart contracts, properties, decentralized applications (Dapps), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and decentralized autonomous corporations (DACs). A third tier of Blockchain evolution is present, where there are applications in science, healthcare and educational learning (Swan, 2015). Such quick evolution of Blockchain itself, further illustrates its capabilities on reshaping the interrelationships of business, society and the world. This section aims to depict Blockchain’s advancement by analyzing several applications in its breadth of impact.
18 Financial Services
The global financial crisis of 2008 made a clear exemplification of the excess leverage, lack of transparency and aggravation in the system which disabled the identification of the problem. Tapscott & Tapscott (2016) elegantly use the term “Franken-finance” to describe the paradoxical realm of financial services rooted in inconsistencies, contradictions and legacy systems. Even though technological advances transformed paper-based operations to semi-automated and digitalized processes, the logic behind such operations in the financial services still remained paper-based. The unnecessary complications are visible starting from money transactions or trades which take days to settle, to excessive intermediaries needed for governments to facilitate bonds. This happens primarily due to the monopoly economics of the financial services, which add costs, time and surplus benefits through intermediaries (Swan, 2015). Such elements make the global financial services industry exclusive, centralized, and hindering innovation due to its outdated status quo (Swan, 2015; Crosby et al., 2016). All these issues can be confronted by Blockchain, the potency of which aims to bring profound changes in offering individuals and institutions better ways of creating value, as the financial services experiences metamorphosis (Ollerus & Zhegu, 2016).
Trust and identity verifications are two of the main reasons of the emergence of intermediaries in a financial transaction. Blockchain minimizes and almost diminishes the role of intermediaries in a financial transaction through identity management and a cryptographically secure ledger which build a trust protocol upon transaction history, reputation scores and economic indicators among the network’s peers (Smolanaers & Boersma, 2016; Savelyev, 2018). Trust in financial transaction can be built upon a much discussed and studied upon protocol in the Blockchain system: smart contracts (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016; Christidis & Devetsikiotis, 2016). Like a normal contract, a smart contract satisfies the terms of a contract through computerized transactions and aims to minimize fraud and arbitrary costs.
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Blockchain also enables transaction of value with dramatically lower costs and rapid speed (Infosys, 2017). The Bitcoin network takes an average of 5-10 minutes to settle all transactions within a time period compared to the average of 3 days in the stock market of the 23 days to settle a bank loan. To add, Blockchain extremely minimizes back-office expenses in banks, rounding to an amount of $20 billion which can be utilized to create a greater good.
A key benefit emerging from blockchain implementation is in Risk Management. In trade finance there are several types of risk to be aware off, such as settlement risk, in which your trade can bounce back due to a glitch; counterparty credit risk where the other person can dodge the payment; operational risk which results from internal breakdowns and so on (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016). The worst of them all is systemic risk, which can cause the collapse of an entire financial system and compiled a great deal of the 2008 financial crisis. Through instant payments and irrevocability of transactions and Blockchain’s consensus mechanism which provides traceability and identification, Blockchain can attack several financial risks by making transactions much safer. Additionally, Blockchain provides decentralized systems for insurance, which makes the use of derivatives for risk management much more transparent and secure. This can be done via reputational systems and other indicators which can paint a more actuarial picture when accounting for risks.
Another innovative and practical application of Blockchain is being recognized in entrepreneurial finance: Initial Coin Offering (ICO). An ICO is a mechanism through which new ventures raise capital by selling blockchain tokens, mostly cryptocurrencies, to investors (Fisch, 2018). The first ICO was conducted by Mastercoin, built on Bitcoin’s blockchain, which raised around 5,000 Bitcoins from 500 investors (Fisch, 2018). This led to the wide-spread implementation of ICOs based on their novel mechanism on funding blockchain ventures. The mass-appeal of ICOs comes from its attractive returns and their offering for investment diversification, primarily due to the fact there is little correlation between price
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volatilities of blockchain tokens with the traditional asset market (Conley, 2017). Like crowdfunding, ICOs give equal rights and opportunities to all investors. Through this democratization of access to ICOs and their global availability, Blockchain provides a highly enticing asset to invest on.
The financial sector has experienced large investments in blockchain, not only through start-ups but also from large enterprises. The first big step was taken in 2015 by several multinational financial institutions, such as Goldman Sachs, J.O. Morgan, and other banking giants, who began to formulate plans in implementing blockchain and additionally, investments were evident in the stock exchange market, as Nasdaq Stock Market and New York Stock Exchange started experimenting with blockchain technology (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016). In a survey conducted by IBM Institute of Value (2016), 91% of the banks were investing on blockchain solutions for the years 2018, and it was believed that there would be a mass adoption of blockchain in the banking starting from 2018 to 2020. A setback amongst 50% of the respondents was the immature technology capabilities.
Healthcare
Technological advances in the health-care system have brought about major scientific breakthroughs, enabling the delivery of exceptional care to the patient, but this is not epitomized in the industry (Schumacher, 2017). The traditional health-care industry encompasses a complex network of intertwined stakeholders with a patient-centricity work-flow, where the patient is involved in every aspect of the health-care process (Capgemini, 2017). The three main models applied in health care are: push, where there is medical-data transmission between two providers; pull, where one provider can ask information for the patient from another provider; and view where one provider can view all the patient’s data in another’s provider’s file (Halamka, Lippman, & Ekblaw, 2017). The main issue that hinders
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such flows, is the unavailability of patient data for all stakeholders in the flow and there is a lack of a secure data-sharing process which connects all health systems together and protects patients’ privacy while ensuring data integrity. Further advances have been made in order to create a better patient experience through the emergence of Health Information Exchange (HIE, Protected Health Information (PHI) and Integrating Health Care Enterprise protocol (IHE), but such approaches are affected from institutional variation, local practice and state laws which have enticed a crisis in the health-care industry due to extreme costs, limited access to care, delayed communication and lack of interoperability (Halamka et al., 2017; Zhang, Schmidt, white, & Lenz, 2018). An approach to attack such challenges is to implement Blockchain in order to provide a foundation for a distributed and decentralized medical-data management system.
The main benefit coming from Blockchain implementation in the healthcare system is through interoperability & trustful data sharing that it can provide upon its decentralized and distributed architecture. Health care providers have to check and update a patient’s clinical data, including standard and unique information, every time a new service is required by the patient; information which is later stored within a single organization or a predefined set of stakeholders. Via Blockchain systems, health providers can distribute standardized information for each patient to be globally available and sharable through the patient’s private key. This way Blockchain removes the current-pain points in the data-sharing process by making a document transaction fast and trustful. Such decentralized system makes possible scalability of the health-care industry by making data available to be accessed globally at real-time. Krawiec et al. (2016) suggests using Blockchain architecture as a transaction layer for medical data by storing two types of information: “on chain” data which is standard data directly stored in the system and “off-chain” data which links to abstract information (such as MRIs, notes) stored in traditional databases. The standardized data would include demographics, medical
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history, and previous services. By making standard data available in one click, and off-chain data as supplementary, Blockchain can offer a main secure system for organizations to submit and share medical information (Engelhardt, 2017).
Further, Blockchain can tackle a much worrisome phenomenon that is present due to medical errors, which is wrongful patient identification in 10/17 errors which result to yearly deaths (Zhang, Schmidt, & White, 2018). This mismatch in patient identification contributes to duplicated patient records and missing or incorrect medical data. Blockchain can correct such problem through the digital identity which can be backtracked through all blocks in the system. The latter can also be applied to an additional unprecedented problem which lays in over-prescription due to inadequate tracking of patient’s data. Taking a more proactive stance, health-providers can also incentives patients to take proper medication at the time needed by offering cryptocurrencies if their prescription regime is being followed.
To improve patient’s experience and increase participation, Blockchain offers high data access security and privacy, meaning that the patient fully owns his/her data and decides how it is shared (Esposito, Santis, Tortora, Chang, & Choo, 2018). By providing a transparent environment, the patient can fully track the usability of medical data through a timestamp and identifier in the blocks. Here’s when smart contracts come to use again, which through the digital signature, give full control and transparency to the patient by deciding which health-care provider to give access to. Another crucial perk of smart contracts is reducing the time and cost of a service settlement from 7-14 days to 7-14 minutes. This is useful not only with the patient-provider relationship but also when the insurance company comes into the picture. Smart-contracts diminish the need for the patient to inform the insurance company for every service they receive, hereby significantly reducing time as everything is verified in real-time via the contract (Till, Peters, Afshar, & Meara, 2017). Moreover, the aforesaid extent of data sharing, evokes improvements in R&D. By having the possibility to share genomic information
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globally without restrictions, researchers can extensively improve their efforts in fighting deadly diseases by conducting a much more effective analysis.
The aforementioned challenges and respective solutions provided by Blockchain, are broadly acknowledges by several health-care organizations. Resulting to the same conclusions as in the financial sector, health-care providers believe that there will be a mass-adoption of blockchain between 2018 and 2020 and the main benefits were believed to be present in clinical trial records, regulatory compliance, and medical records (IBM, 2016). Schumacher (2017) brings about many real-life examples that manifest what blockchain can offer to the health-care system. One illustration is MedRec, a software system developed by MIT researchers and adopted by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where the primary benefit is seen upon assigning permissions for access and sharing data. MedRec stores all the data on the blockchain system and makes a distinction between ownership of the data and permission to view, to further accounting for time and place of data retrieval. In spite of the countless benefits, challenges also await in implementing Blockchain, such as data protection regulations and technical difficulties in storing lengthy medical records in the system.
Supply Chain Management & Logistics
The basic pattern upon which a company’s supply chain is based on is : (1) Production, which answers 3 main questions: What, How much, and When; (2) Inventory, which regards the primary and secondary purposes as well as finding the optimal levels for price/cost ratio; (3) Location, deciding different locations for different purposes within the supply chain while being cost-efficient, (4) Transportation, for when to use which mode, and (5) Information, where collection of data & further usability is deemed critical in improving the supply chain management (Hugos, 2018). Over a hundred years ago, such elements wouldn’t have been difficult to manage, given the local commerce, but as innovation has shifted the global
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expansion of supply chain; managing the latter has become quite complex (Lambert & Enz, 2016). Understanding how the flow of process goes from raw materials to after-sale support within a supply chain, is not only useful for maximizing efficiency, but also a critical point for the organization (IBM, 2018), thus finding a way to address several pain points in the supply chain management (SCM) & logistics has been an ongoing search. Blockchain can tear into the cracks and provide a more unified and ameliorated framework for SCM & logistics (Marr, 2018).
One of the key goals of logistics within SCM is to get the product in the right condition, at the right time, with the lowest cost (IBM, 2016). What hinders the achievement of this goal is the much-needed transparency and traceability in the manufacturing supply chain, which Blockchain has the ability to offer. Given the multiple stakeholders, physical resources, knowledge, processes and contracts comprising a supply chain system, it is very difficult to access all transactions in the system, which is why Blockchain can offer a distributed storage to collect permanent data and create e user access system to benefit the customer. Abeyratne & Monfared (2016) provide a blockchain system framework than could provide a fair and transparent supply chain. Such systems is composed of 5 elements which access the network via user interface: (1) Registrars, which provides digital identities to all actors in the supply chain; (2) Standards Organizations, which defines the standardized schemes a supply chain flow must go through; (3) Certifiers, which give actors access to the network via necessary certifications; (4) Manufacturers, distributors, retailers and waste management organizations, which enter specific data on the blocks; and (5) Consumers, who purchase the products and also add product specific data. The specific kind of data that each of these actors can add and access very from ownership data, to time stamps & locations, attributes of a product and the environmental impact (Maras, 2017).
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Another model for supply chain optimization is brought forth by Gao et al. (2018), which makes use of Blockchain’s public accessibility, immutability and resilience. The model, named CoC, aims to provide a unified supply chain overview that connects different entities that normally would have issues with trusting each other. It does so by using a two-step block construction model which provides a high level of security to the stored information and expert identity management, in order to overcome some pain points such as cargo tracing, bill of lading, international trade compliance certifications and customs clearance. By groups the network’s participants into “Ordinary Users”, the major information-givers of CoC, “Third Oarty Users”, who use CoC for monitoring purposes, and “Supporting Entities” comprised by identity management and financial institutions, CoC creates a seamless link between all stakeholders in the supply chain, while maintaining the security and integrity of data collected.
Inspired by another external motive, food-safety in the agri-food supply chain, Tian (2016) introduces a combination of RFID technology and Blockchain technology to tackle the challenges in food-traceability management. The model uses RFID technology to implement data acquisition and sharing in all stages of delivering a product in the supply chain, as well as integrates blockchain technology to assure reliability and authenticity of the collected data. This establishes a legitimate traceability system which not only brings about a framework of entities but also delivers transparency in food quality and supervision throughout the supply chain flow.
Kshetri (2018) provides an overview on use cases of blockchain in the SCM, illustrating the continuously increasing application of the technology. One of the selected cases regarded a pilot project for the implementation of blockchain in Maersk, the world’s largest container carrier. In an analysis overview by IBM is was noticed that there were cases that goods were held up in a port for several days just because one paper work was missing. This in hand resulted in goods being spoiled, hence more marginal costs for Maersk. The pilot project
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included several agencies such as Customs Administration of the Netherlands and the U.S Customs and Border Protection and was considered to be a successful way for Maersk to track its shipments as it provided a safe and reliable way to assess quality, prevent fraud and minimize cost and time (“IBM blockchain partnership aims to shape up shipping logistics”, 2017). A challenge facing blockchain implementation in SCM is firstly to make sure all necessary parties are included in the system, which takes an extensive time for negotiation. Further Blockchain, at the time being, doesn’t take in consideration any maritime laws, legislations, regulations or institutions, which are crucial in SCM.
Governmental Institutions
Although, its historical purpose has been to reach a consensus between different groups of individuals, centralized political organizations, particularly the government, is prone to challenges in meeting societal demands due to the inflexibility of the system (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016). Further, governments are said to be poor in transparency and integrity, shifting the governments’ primary purpose to create a greater good for the people, in leading to corruption and misconduct of power. An approach to diminish such malpractices is to shift the current centralized vertical authority towards a more decentralized and distributed system provided by Blockchain as to achieve political effectiveness.
The perfect example of a decentralized government, pre-Blockchain, is presented by Tapscott & Tapscott (2016) which illustrate the benefits of a transparent government in the country of Estonia. After declaring its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Estonia’s leaders had to make a choice on how to drive its country’s future and came to a decision of starting from scratch and creating what is regarded today as the “Digital Republic”, composed around decentralization, interconnectivity, transparency and cybersecurity. From a small country like Estonia this was a revolution, as through digitalization and automation, it would
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only take 100 people to create the same economic value as 12,000 people (Hoe, 2017). Not only was everything digitized such as schools, cabinet meetings and laws, but in the year 2000 the government declared access to the internet as a human right. Today, almost every service is done digitally starting from taxes, health-care services, school grades to e-voting. The pinnacle of this system, which has ranked Estonia second in the world in terms of social progress index for personal and political rights, is its digital identity system tempered by a policy of full transparency through a public key infrastructure. Given this infrastructure integrates fully with Blockchain, Estonia has proved that incorporating all documents currently in multiple databases, onto a single blockchain brings forward a transparent and powerful government upon which citizens can rely on.
Atzori (2015) delves into the possibilities of a blockchain-based governance, by exploring the interactivity between state and society, shifting the attention from central institutions to individuals and markets. The author considers the blockchain integration as the cherry on top of the final stage in working towards a decentralized government, presenting a deliberative democracy, based on a bottom-up approach to politics where citizens have a direct participation in decisions affecting society. Blockchain implementation recognizes markets over politics, given their added value on economics, and further promotes peer-to-peer independent global networks with a goal in decentralizing hierarchical institutions in order to enhance citizens’ freedom. “Imagine a world of governance services as individualized as Starbucks coffee orders.” (Swan, 2015, pg. 44). Blockchain can offer a personalization in government services, pushing against the current service generalization paradigm.
On the same line as Atzori, Swan (2015) pushes on the concept of markets before institutions, by placing the benefits of franchulates. Franchulates present a more proactive attitude of governments in their interactivity with the society’s needs, hereby offering a more tailor-made service to different classes and segments of the society. Further, the use of smart
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contracts and DACs can help reduce marginal costs within the government, in turn promoting equality in society. To achieve such immense goal, would need cocreation from all fields of human knowledge to better assess the use of upcoming technologies in building smart cities, which in itself presents a challenge.
Energy sector
Digital innovation has also encapsulated the energy sector, by making it possible for the consumer to participate on both sides of the market. The emergence of distributed energy resources (DERs) has remodeled the energy sector by lowering costs, increasing reliability in the system and introducing several renewable energy resources, but the current technology architecture for DERs is still prone to conventional and centralized generation systems, which hinders the mass-market deployment and effectiveness of DERs (Zhang, Wu, Long & Cheng, 2017). Blockchain can be employed to transition the energy sector towards a decentralized architecture which fosters innovation and replies to a continuously changing environment.
Applications of blockchain in the energy sector have created much interest in academia and policy makers (Chitchyan & Murkin, 2018, Munsing, Mather & Moura, 2017). Main purposeful advantages are visible in payments, data control and fraud detection. Firstly, a way to utilize payments would be via electric vehicles using blockchain to find the nearest charging station, hereby creating a process flow to find the best price and location. Another popular and requested application is energy efficiency in smart homes, which can be achieved via data control and decision support in smart contracts. Blockchain fraud detection would find its use in emissions trading in order to ensure safe and transparent transaction via Blockchain’s reputation system. Blockchain transforms the energy ecosystem as a whole given the removal of intermediaries by providing P2P energy trading.
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A study conducted by Zhang, Wu, Long, & Cheng (2017) provides a comprehensive overview of user case studies of decentralized systems, two of which display under development platforms running on blockchain. One of the cases is TransActive Grid, which makes use of smart contracts on Blockchain’s Etherium in order to enable members to buy and sell from each other in a safe and transparent method. Also, this allows for members to sell their surplus to nearby members, hence reducing energy waste. The second case describes how Electron, a newly-distributed platform provides a secure and honest system for gas and electricity metering and billing. It serves its goal by makes using of smarts contracts and distributed consensus. Trends show that several companies have manifested the power of blockchain in the energy sector, but it still remains a novel phenomenon which requires further developments upon the potential of the technology in the energy sector.
Cultural services & Educational purposes
Further applications of Blockchain are visible in the market for cultural goods, initiating from the complex music industry to digital art. Given the advent of Internet of Things and the convenience of online streaming platforms, the music industry has experienced a transformation in terms of the interconnectivity between artists, labels, and streaming providers. In search of transparency between the stakeholders within the streaming process, a combination of blockchain platforms and smart contracts can empower the music ecosystem (Crosby et al, 2016; Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016). Blockchain architecture could further evolve into creating an artist-centric model, creating equality in the system by delivering fairness on the value created. First off, blockchain can provide a comprehensive, transparent and standardized database of music rights ownership information within the ledger (O’Dair, 2016). Upon that information, smart contracts are used to solidify the relationship between stakeholders and automate the royalty process. An important element of this model is the digital
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rights management aiming to manage rights and maximize value in the process. To add, data analytics and reputation systems can aid to design an artist’s image and credibility. O’Dair (2016) considers the limitation of a single token use, given that different artists or distributors use different blockchain applications, thus limiting adoption and limitation, as well as governmental regulations which can affect the integrity of the data in the ledger.
An eminent application of blockchain in the world of art is associated with intellectual property of digital art, and data exchange and the exclusive nature of the art market itself. The traditional art market represents a vague and unregulated environment, where the largest share is represented by a small number of artists and barriers of entry minimize the chances for emerging artists to thrive in the art world (Lotti, 2016). Bitcoin’s Blockchain can disrupt and transform the unbalanced market as illustrated by Artley, considered as the new art economy. Artlery is an art app representing artists who share a percentage of their earnings with network peers that socially engage with their art works, hence providing incentive for all stakeholders in the market to participate. It does so by launching initial public offerings (IPOs) of the art pieces online, which can be purchased via Bitcoin tokens. In an attempt to discover blockchain opportunities in the art community, Scherling (2017) explores how 3 non-financial blockchain platforms, Etherium, ConsenSys, and Monegraph, offer new possibilities for networks and value-creating in digital arts. Monegraph is a digital platform that enables the creative community members to create licenses for their work which, giving intensification to ownership and intellectual property of digital art. Etherium is a decentralized transactional ledger, upon which ConsenSys was built, with the purpose of creating solutions for people, businesses and the environment. Such platform can be utilized for an inclusive and transparent environment in the art community, by giving equal power and control to each peer in the network. Such platform can guide the art world towards a better place, socially and economically, but challenges await due to lack of participation in such projects.
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“Just as Bitcoin is reinventing the remittances market and bringing about financial inclusion, so too the foreign aid market can be reinvented with blockchain-based, peer-to-peer smart contracts.” (Swan, 2015; pg, 61) Given the myriad of applications smart contracts present, once emerging view is the latter’s benefit in ameliorating the educational system. To start, Blockchain technology can make everyone’s life easier by securely storing educational certificates based on identity management and provide management of such certificates from authorities through the use of smart-contracts (Kolvenbach, Ruland, Gräther, & Prinz, 2018). Further, blockchain in education can be used for pedagogy purposes, such as storing exam grades and student information, hence increasing the reliability and authenticity of qualifications (Sharples & Domingue, 2016). Towards a more social and impactful purpose, Blockchain can tackle illiteracy through smart contracts between a learning peer and a sponsor (Swan, 2015). Peers would receive learning tokes from their sponsors from anywhere in the world and use such tokens to invest for their education. In this case Blokchain’s reputation system can be used to track learner’s progress as to comply to the smart contracts.
2.3The Netherlands: Europe’s Silicon Valley?
Despite having had the largest percentage of Blockchain startups globally, the US is experiencing a set-back when it comes to blockchain initiatives. This is visible primarily due to the fact that most new companies were built purely on Bitcoin’s Blockchain, leaving little room for innovation, followed by the large barriers challenging Blockchain adoption due to legacy systems in multinational companies (Lundy, 2016; Kaal & Dell’Erba, 2017). Europe, on the other hand, has expressed extensive interest in investing on Blockchain, taking the lead with the highest share of funding directed to Blockchain (“Europe may become the hot-spot for Blockchain disruption”, 2017). In an attempt to access the need for an EU blockchain infrastructure, in February 2018 the European Commission launched the EU Blockchain
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Observatory and Forum, aiming to invest up to €340 million in blockchain-related projects from 2018-2018 (Floyd, 2018; European Commision, 2018). To further enhance technological innovation, on April 2018, 25 European countries established a European Blockchain Partnership, amongst of which stands the Netherlands (European Commision, 2018).
Being one of the most wired countries in the world, The Netherlands has some of the most advanced data centers in Europe, along with top-notch logistics infrastructure, making it a hotspot for technological operations (Invest in Holland, 2016). The country is most well-known for its openness towards entrepreneurial behavior, which has created one of the best-connected startup ecosystems, putting Amsterdam in the top 20 pool regarding the global startup raking (European Digital Forum, 2016; Compas, 2015). Having had established a reputation of being at the forefront of every innovation, it is no wonder to see how the Dutch are investing in blockchain development and implementation (Ozelli, 2018). The Dutch Blockchain Research Agenda was published recently, with a vision to identify and make us of opportunities in blockchain towards creating a societal good (dutch digital delta, 2018). Further, The Dutch Blockchain Hackathon attracted numerous entrepreneurs, city officials, and executives, illustrating the great interest of the Dutch in exploring what blockchain can offer (Schenker, 2017). Inspired by the successful conference, more than 30 blockchain pilots were settled by November 2017, which included the participation of the Dutch Tax Agency, Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, Central Judicial Collection Agency, and the like, showing an inclusion in participation and investigation of new economic prospects via blockchain (Bhunia, 2018). Amid the myriad of startups, large multinationals have already shown perspective in implementing Blockchain, such as ING which worked on 27 PoCs for different applications such as payments, trading, identity management and the like, or the collaboration of IBM TenneT and Sonnen for an exploration of permissioned blockchain in the electrical grid (Schenker, 2017).
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Given the parade of initiatives, along with the opportunistic behavior exemplified throughout the years, this study finds it of vast interest to explore how The Netherlands stands in terms of Blockchain applications and long-term policies.
3. Research Question
The current study is inspired by the power blockchain, as a disruptive technology, has proved to possess, starting from its genesis. To add, aiming to explore the opportunities and challenges of such technology in Europe, the Netherlands is selected as the country of analysis due to its continuous initiatives towards technological advances, nowadays also with blockchain implementation. Based on such pinnacles of reason and the foregoing theory, the main research question of this study is as follows:
RQ: How is blockchain’s role as a disruptive technology being shaped in the Netherlands? To fully fathom the phenomenon, the research question is answered through a thorough analysis of the following sub-questions:
RQ1: What are the main industries affected by blockchain technology in the Netherlands? This question aims to create an overview of the main industries, or areas of impact, currently affected by blockchain. This is accomplished by depicting respective applications, and differences in opinion between startups and corporations.
RQ2: What are the challenges encountered in implementing blockchain?
Diverse challenges are explored through the investigation of initiatives and barriers in blockchain start-ups and large corporations, hereby presenting a comparative analysis.
RQ3: What are the main strategies to further develop and implement blockchain in mass-markets?
To fully conceptualize blockchain technology in the Netherlands, short-term and long-term strategies are analyzed.
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Figure 5: Theoretical Framework
4. Methodology
To fully grasp blockchain’s current nuance in the Dutch nation, and to explore underlying concepts and principles, this study follows a mixed methods approach through a combination of deductive and inductive logics. It is deductive as the initial sub-questions
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are based on the theoretical background, topped with a taste of inductive approach as sub-questions and main research question are revisited after the data is collected. This is done in order to present a thematic analysis of the derived concepts (Bryman, 2016). To do so, the current research diverges into two consecutive studies. The first study regards a textual analysis of articles in order to provide a macro view of opinions, while the second study presents a thorough thematic analysis conducted through interviews. Both studies are presented in detail in continuity. An overview of how the current research is conducted, is illustrated below:
Figure 6: Research Overview
Study 1: Textual analysis
Textual analysis is a data-gathering tool widely used by researches to understand how members of a society make sense of a specific concept (McKee, 2003). The use of textual analysis can present a contextual meaning behind diverse types of texts, which is the primary reason of conduct in the current research (Fürsich, 2009). The purpose study 1 is not to
Theoretical Background Intial Research Question Textual analysis of articles Revisit main themes exctracted from theory Interview protocol Participant selection & contact Interview process Interview data analysis Finalize Rsearch Question & Subquestions
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thoroughly encapsulate the interrelationship of different textual themes, but rather to present a macro view of the situation, in this case blockchain in the Netherlands.
Data collection
The data used for the textual analysis consists of articles retrieved from the Dow Jones Factiva. The articles were selected by filtering on the topic of “blockchain” and “The Netherlands”, creating a batch of 335 articles in total. The availability of the selected articles has a time frame from October 2014 to May 2018. To follow, the selected articles are loaded in R. Firstly, the data loaded is cleaned by eliminating any common words through a “stopword” function (such as “am”, “I”, “you” and the like; list available in Appendix). Additionally, all special characters were substituted with empty spaces. By conducting a preliminary word-frequency measurement, further words containing the same root were manually added to the “stopword” function (i.e. use-using, talk-talking), as to remove insignificant text from the analysis. The words “blockchain”, “Netherlands” and “technology” were also removed from the analysis as they were used as a filter for the text retrieval.
Data analysis
The first step of the analysis consists of visualizing a Wordcloud of the most frequent words within the articles. This gives an overview of the commonality of different words, creating a general overview of the media stance regarding blockchain. The common words are used to extract a meaning of the most discussed topics related to blockchain in the Netherlands.
To delve a bit deeper on the applications of blockchain in the Netherlands, a textual analysis is conducted based on specific keywords of choice. These keywords are chosen based on blockchain’s areas of influence dissected in the theoretical background. The eight main categories are: cryptocurrencies, financial sector, healthcare, supply chain & logistics, government, energy, culture, and education. For each of these main categories, several keywords were selected to encompass the findings of the specific category. More specifically:
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for cryptocurrencies, words such as cryptos, bitcoin, etherium, and digital currencies are selected as keywords due to their frequent usage in academic articles (Swan, 2015; Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016); for financial services keywords include banking, trade finance, insurance and ICOs (IBM, 2016; Fisch, 2018; Chuen, Guo, & Wang, 2018); for healthcare the chosen words related to patient experience, hospital, prescription, and medical data (Krawiec et al., 2016; Halamka et al., 2017; Zhang, Schmidt, white, & Lenz, 2018); for the energy sector keywords such as electric grid and electricity were chosen (Zhang, Wu, Long, & Cheng ,2017); for supply chain & logistics keywords varied from manufacturers and suppliers to goods and logistics (Abeyratne, & Monfared, 2016; Hugos, 2018; Gaio, 2018); for governmental services words such as egovernment, evoting, and franchulates are chosen as keywords (Swan, 2015,; Atzori, 2015; Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016); for cultural services words including music, artist and digital art are used (Crosby, Nachiappan, Pattanayak, Verma, & Kayanaraman,2016; Scherling, 2017); and for education some of the keywords are educational system, illetiracy and online learning (Swan, 2015; Kolvenbach, Ruland, Gräther, & Prinz, 2018). The purpose of this analysis is to observe the frequency of mentions related to these categories over time, creating a clearer picture of news opinion regarding blockchain in the Netherlands.
The third step of the study consists of investigating the opinions, attitudes and emotions in the text, achieved through opinion mining and sentiment analysis. Opinions are considered to be key influencers of human behavior, thus through sentiment analysis one can hypothesize how the public acts upon the topic, based on his/her emotions (Liu, 2012). The sentiment is calculated as the difference of positive and negative words, hereby painting a picture of how public media opinion has been shifted over four years. To conduct the sentiment analysis the Loughran package is used.
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Study 2: Interview Analysis
In order to extract insights at a micro level, study 2 is conducted on a basis of interviews for a more in-depth conceptualization of blockchain in the Netherlands. Qualitative data are powerful in providing rich descriptions of processes or situations occurring in local context and further enable access to causality and new theoretical integrations (Miles, & Huberman, 1984). Upon this rationale, study 2 aims to extract main themes and conduct a cross-case analysis through data retrieved from interviews.
Interview protocol
To assess the research question, 7 in depth-interviews were carried out. The current study makes use of semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions, primarily to leave room for the interviewee to elaborate more freely on the concept he/she finds more of value on the topic (Bryman, 2016). Further, given the exploratory nature of the study, semi-structured interviews aid the interviewer in receiving rich data and unexpected information which lead to grasping new insights (Saunders et al., 2009). The interviewer has assured confidentiality in order to make the interviewees feel more as ease and answer the questions in a more personal level (Leech, 2002). Further, the interviewee has asked for permission to record the interviews for research purposes, and to present transparency in the research process (Shenton, 2004).
The list of questions included in the interview were shaped as to capture every aspect of blockchain and grouped in 4 main groups: “applications”, “opportunities”, “challenges” and “adoption in the Netherlands”. Following a deductive approach, the groups were constructed based on theoretical background and preliminary results of study 1. The “applications” group encompasses questions which aim to retrieve blockchain’s impact in different industries as well as respective projects. The “opportunities” group strives to capture blockchain’s characteristics and implications, while “challenges” take a look at the level of maturity of the technology, as well as technical or organizational difficulties. Last but not least, “adoption in the Netherlands”
