In its latest report, Gartner has predicted that companies that use blockchain smart contracts will increase overall data quality by 50% by 2023 – but reduce data availability by 30%.

Lydia Clougherty Jones, senior research director at Gartner said: “When an organisation adopts blockchain smart contracts — whether externally imposed or voluntarily adopted — they benefit from the associated increase in data quality, which will increase by 50 per cent by 2023.”

Jones noted the governance frameworks for blockchain participation, or the terms and conditions within the smart contract, can dictate the availability of the data generated from the smart contract transaction, from none to limited to unlimited. “This variable could leave participants in a worse position than if they did not participate in the blockchain smart contract process,” she added. “As such, an organisation’s overall data asset availability would decrease by 30 per cent by 2023.”

Another Gartner study titled “Leverage Blockchain Developments as Catalysts for Strategic Technology Planning Across the Supply Chain”, predicted that 80% of supply chain blockchain projects will remain either proof of concepts or pilots through 2022.

Andrew Stevens, senior director analyst with the Gartner supply chain practice, said: “Modern supply chains are very complex and require digital connectivity and agility across participants. Many organisations believed that blockchain could help navigate this complexity and pushed to create robust use cases for the supply chain. However, most of these use cases were inspired by pilots from the banking and insurance sector and didn’t work well in a supply chain environment.”

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