From the approximately 30 startups receiving funding in that time, more than a third of all investment was accounted for by 3 companies: Circle (social payment provider), Blockstream (sidechain developer), and Digital Asset Holdings (distributed ledger solutions provider).
The new research report called “The Future of Blockchain: Bitcoin, Remittance, ID Verification & Smart Contracts 2016-2021” pinpoints the banking sector as being particularly proactive, giving the example of the several banks that have already adopted the Ripple blockchain protocol and others piloting competing solutions.
The research claimed that in areas such as transaction settlement, the introduction of a blockchain-based system would considerably reduce both the risk of error and the time taken for error checking. What’s more, it argued that in cross-border remittance, the technology could level the playing field by allowing new entrants to offer services at significantly lower costs to consumers.
Yet, the research forewarns that if smart contracts use blockchain technology, then their contents, including, potentially, bugs or flaws, are visible to all the users of that blockchain. It cited the recent case where a flaw on the DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) network was exploited by a third party, resulting in the misappropriation of cryptocurrency worth nearly USD 80 million.
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