Blockchain: An Empirical Investigation of Its Scope for Improvement

General Purpose Technologies, or GPTs are defined in the economic literature as the key technologies that shape the economy. Despite the large conceptual literature base on Blockchain potential to revolutionize the current economic system, there is a lack of empirical research on its economic nature and the course of technological development. The paper at hand covers this research gap by providing the quantitative approach aimed at understanding the evolutionary path of Blockchain and its scope for improvement – an acknowledged feature of a GPT - in line with the industrial dynamics and GPT literature. The longitudinal analysis of Blockchain-related patents from PATSTAT and their rule-based classification both from technological and application perspectives is complemented by the study of Blockchain media landscape to provide insights into the social context in which it emerges. The increasing amount of patents addressing essential technical issues, such as security, scalability, and usability contribute to wider adoption of the technology, whereas the positive sentiment in the media associated with Blockchain creates beneficial social context for its development. The empirical results advance the claim that Blockchain does show a positive scope for improvement peculiar to the GPTs in the making and, therefore, deserves attention as a technology that will define macroeconomic dynamics in a long term.