30 Blockchain Platform Business Factors

Random Observation/Comment #648: Pick a solution to solve your problem. When you treat blockchain like a hammer, then everything looks like a nail (because everything involves data storage, consensus, and retrieval).

Why this List?

When picking a blockchain platform that’s “ledger-appropriate” to your business use case, you likely want to do some due diligence and create a rubric that justifies your business and technical choices to your stakeholders and team. Here are some business factors that might be considered for your platform choice.

See Part 2 for the 30 Blockchain Technical Factors (will update when posted).

Note: This does not represent the opinion of ConsenSys, R3, EEA, Hyperledger, other affiliations I might be involved in, or any particular projects I’ve worked on. I just like lists of 30.

  1. Main supporting company of the platform – Who is it? Are there many companies supporting the same platform?
  2. Supporting company’s long term support strategy – Will the company stay around and play a significant role maintaining the code releases? Is it split from the network?
  3. Supporting company’s financials – Digging deeper into the financial runway and valuation of the supporting company.
  4. Unique business value proposition – Was this blockchain built specifically for a certain environment to cover specific functional/non-functional requirements?
  5. Platform’s target market – Does the platform have a clear target market that will directly buy the top of stack dapps and build on top of the platform?
  6. Platform’s go-to-market plan – What is the approach towards more adoption of the market?
  7. Volume of Technology vendors – How many companies are building top of stack apps on top of the system?
  8. Quality of Technology vendors – Which of these companies are reputable and have delivered previous projects or have existing market buy-in?
  9. Type of Apps released – Are the apps released useful and being used by the market?
  10. Marketplace saturation – Has the marketplace reached a level of commitment that shows opportunity to join? Is it already saturated?
  11. Available developers – Is there a strong developer community looking for job opportunities?
  12. Cost of developers – Are specialized blockchain developers too expensive to hire or too evangelist to join a traditional institution?
  13. Ease of integration with existing applications – Will these applications connect to existing systems using traditional technologies?
  14. Marketplace of live dapps – How many dapps are live?
  15. Roadmap of features – What additional features will be added to the platform?
  16. Open Source vs Enterprise version compatibility – Are both open source and enterprise versions interoperable?
  17. Open Source vs Enterprise additional features – What additional features must be purchased or built by the vendors?
  18. Licensing costs of blockchain layer – How much will the blockchain layer (e.g. node/clients/infrastructure/foundation membership) cost?
  19. Licensing costs of dapp – How much will the dapp cost? How does the dapp make money in the ecosystem? Will it lock up money within a smart contract by selling tokens or charge a fee within the contract per transaction?
  20. Upside to building your own dapp vs buying a published one – Is it economically viable to build a dapp and sell it to others in the ecosystem for a pure technology play?
  21. Support incident management and business continuity – Who is able to provide support at all levels and make sure things work if you adopt a new technology?
  22. Internal hiring for on-going maintenance – Who do I need to hire within devops or infrastructure to support the system? Is there a conversion opportunity within the institution?
  23. System integration components – Are there existing components that can be deployed or reused from existing systems?
  24. Standards support – Does the tech stack align with the institution’s tech policies?
  25. Enterprise-grade audits – Has the platform gone through enterprise-level audits of the software and backed company for deployment?
  26. Vendor agnostic – Are there multiple technology providers contributing to the different layers?
  27. Global testing of security – Are there sufficient whitehat hackers and history of review on the platform in terms of security measures?
  28. Market valuation – Is there a network with existing value that can be traded?
  29. Market landscape maturity – Have enough intermediary parties claimed positions within the successful launch of the market?
  30. Execution with Preferred Vendor – Does my Preferred Vendor (the consultancy most used by your company) suggest this platform for the use cases that might solve our business problems?

~See Lemons Pick a Blockchain

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