The corporate world has been paying close attention to blockchain over the last few years, with major banks and institutions opening up their minds that this new technology might just be what they need.
How big exactly is their interest though? How many corporations are building and using blockchain solutions themselves?
Extensive research has been done into the top 100 public companies in the world and examined their involvement in the blockchain space.
- Which blockchains/DLTs are they using for their solutions?
- At which stage of development are these solutions?
- What kinds of products or services are they building?
Companies have been using blockchain from as early as 2014
Interest in blockchain technology by major corporations was already starting to take off as early as 2014. Many announced their intentions to join consortia or build their own ledger networks and many claimed they would go live soon afterwards.
Over the years, we have seen most of them at least embrace the idea that blockchain technology is a serious innovation to help improve their current business models and/or operations.
As of September 2021, 81 of the top 100 public companies are using blockchain technology.
This includes those who are in a research phase (meaning they are exploring opportunities and deciding on which technologies they could use for their blockchain initiatives).
However, if we remove the research phase, we find that there are still an impressive 65 companies that are actively developing blockchain solutions.
So what did we find in terms of technology adoption? Let’s take a look!
Hyperledger is the most preferred DLT used by the top 100 institutions
Throughout our research, we found that there were 30 different technologies used by the top institutions for building their blockchain solutions.
Out of the 30 technologies, Hyperledger Fabric is the most preferred DLT of choice by the top 100, with 26% of them currently using the technology. This is followed by Ethereum with 18%, and Quorum with 11%.
Using multiple technologies for the right solutions
11 of the top 100 public companies are working on multiple solutions with different blockchain technologies.
Some of them are using different technologies because they are better suited for the use cases, others are simply testing the waters to see which technologies work best.
A great example is Samsung Group, which is currently working on a number of blockchain initiatives with various technologies. Its subsidiary Samsung SDS provides blockchain security and tech solutions to Samsung’s customer base.
A few of their initiatives:
- Nexledger
Samsung SDS’s enterprise-grade blockchain platform. It was released in 2017 and can combine customized features on Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum. - Samsung Blockchain Wallet
The wallet lets you store bitcoin, ether, ERC20 tokens, tron and TRC tokens in a Galaxy smartphone. - Accelerator
Built together with IBM to increase the throughput of Hyperledger Fabric by x15. - Cello Platform
Is Samsung’s blockchain logistics platform to ensure tamper-proof, secure information across all stages of a supply chain.
