Going Beyond the Blockchain Hype: In Which Cases are Blockchains Useful for IT Applications?

Blockchain technology is today proposed as a new technical infrastructure for several types of IT applications. This interest is due to its unique property that allows two entities to perform transactions, in a very secure manner, without going through a TTP. However, a blockchain comes along a number of other intrinsic properties, which may not be suitable or beneficial in all the envisaged application cases. Consequently, we propose in this paper a decision tree to identify when a blockchain may be the appropriate technical infrastructure for a given IT application, and when another system (centralized or distributed peer-to-peer) is more adapted. This tree is based on a comparative study between the blockchain and classical "centralized and distributed peer-to-peer" systems.