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Blockchain technologies originally emerged to support new forms of digital currency, but now hold promise as a new foundation for transactions in society. A blockchain is both a database recording transactions between parties, and also a computational platform to execute small programs (called ‘smart contracts’) as transactions. A blockchain is a distributed database, replicated across many locations and operated jointly by a collective. Blockchains transactions can support services for payments, escrow, notarisation, voting, registration, and process coordination. These are key in the operation of government and industry. Conventionally, these services are provided by specific trusted third-parties such as banks, legal firms, accountancy firms, government agencies, and service providers in specific industries. With a blockchain-based system, rather than relying on third-party organisations, we could instead choose to rely on the blockchain software and on a majority of the collective that jointly operates the blockchain system.

The report describes some of the technical risks and opportunities in the application of blockchain technologies within government and industry, and how to assess whether blockchain-based systems will meet critical requirements. The project explores this primarily through the description and analysis of high-level design alternatives for illustrative ‘use cases’. Three use cases have been selected after a number of initial workshops and preliminary research: remittance payments, open data registries, and agricultural supply chain. These provide reasonable coverage of various kinds of requirements and regulatory concerns …