Answers
Why Blockchain Evaluation Needs Assurance, Governance and Standards
Quick answer
A blockchain can meet technical requirements without resolving whether an enterprise can trust and govern its use. Assurance, governance and standards belong in the evaluation because they address evidence, transparency and accountability alongside architecture. For business leaders and enterprise architects, these are strategic requirements for adoption that can endure beyond an initial application.
Look beyond whether the technology works
A technical assessment can examine an application’s architecture, scalability and interoperability. It should also ask what evidence supports confidence in the application and how its use will remain transparent. Those questions are part of evaluating trusted blockchain adoption, not a separate exercise after a technical choice is made.
Treat governance as an adoption question
Enterprise evaluation needs a view of how blockchain use will be governed as well as how it will be built. Rohan Hall’s viewpoint is that trust, transparency, governance, assurance and standards are strategic requirements for durable emerging-technology adoption. Bringing those topics into the assessment helps business and technology leaders discuss the conditions for continued use, rather than focusing only on an initial implementation.
Apply the questions to the use case
The emphasis will vary across blockchain applications. Interoperability and scalable applications raise questions about how systems work together. Supply-chain traceability brings the evidence behind a recorded history into focus. Verifiable credentials and decentralized identity bring identity and trust into the discussion. Payment technologies spanning cryptocurrency and fiat environments give leaders another setting in which to consider governance and assurance. These are reasons to evaluate the complete use case, not to assume one approach fits them all.
Frequently asked questions
- Does interoperability alone make a blockchain application ready for enterprise use?
- No. Interoperability addresses how applications work together; an enterprise evaluation should also consider evidence, transparency, governance, assurance and standards.
- Where do identity standards enter the discussion?
- Verifiable credentials, decentralized identity and W3C Self-Sovereign Identity concepts are relevant to blockchain identity work. If identity is part of your use case, include those concepts in the evaluation rather than assessing the ledger alone.
- Is this perspective based only on general principles?
- Rohan Hall has built and led technology for blockchain interoperability and scalable applications. He also served as Chief Technology Officer at RocketFuel Blockchain, leading technology strategy, architecture and a distributed global engineering team.
Before selecting an approach, bring enterprise architects and business leaders together around the technical use case and the evidence, governance, assurance and standards questions it raises.