Evidence-Based Blockchain: Findings from a Global Study of Blockchain Projects and Start-up Companies

Abstract

Evidence-based applications of resources remain one of the greatest challenges faced by governments, businesses, and policymakers. The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) evaluated ten large programs, which together cost more than $10 billion/year, through randomised control trials-the highest standard of evidence-based practice (EBP) [1]. The evaluation found that nine of them had 'weak or no positive effects' on their participants. Many programs were not evaluated at all [2]. In January 2019, U.S. President signed the 'Foundations for Evidence-based Policy Making Act' into law [3]. A USAID (US Agency for International Development) study looked at 43 blockchain projects and companies claiming to have solved various problems using distributed ledgers [4]. The study found that almost no company was willing to share their results and MERL (monitoring, evaluation, research and learning) processes [5]. Other observational data revealed that 80-90% of blockchain-based token offering projects failed to deliver on their promises [6], a prediction also made by Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum blockchain, in 2017 [7]. The concept of evidence-based blockchain (EBB) was first introduced by Naqvi in 2018 [8]. We conducted an evaluation of 517 blockchain firms against PCIO framework of evidence-based practice: Problem-Comparison-Intervention and Outcomes. We define the fundamentals of EBB (Ask, Acquire, Appraise, Apply, Assess), provide a review of the literature on EBB, report findings of our study and propose an Assessment Framework of Evidence Based Blockchain (Figure 12).