In this final section, we would like the readers to get engage with blockchain's journey and evolution. There are many ways to do this, ranging from direct contribution to various open source and Hyperledger projects to steering your enterprise projects in the right business direction and the right application of the blockchain technology—an acumen we hope that the topics in this book helps strengthen.

We, as practitioners, have do this a few observations from our engagement with clients and the industry in general. These observations reflect not only on the trajectory of innovation and subsequent adoption but also challenges (and the opportunities head). These observations have been summarized in the following lists. While this summary does not represent an exhaustive list, it certainly captures the essence of the state of blockchain evolution at the time of writing of this book.

Business-related observations are as follows:

• Despite currently lacking unanimous definitions and standards, blockchain technology is viewed as the next-generation technology that will disrupt the status quo in the existing market infrastructure and change the way financial institutions operate their day-to-day businesses.
• blockchain will first prosper in markets (and Eco-systems) that are less automated, less regulated, and less heavily traded but with high clearing and settlements risks.
• Systems built on top of a permissioned blockchain with a focus on logic optimization (enhancing workflows and business procedures) are more suitable candidates for markets and current ecosystems adoptions.
• Clearing and settlement (the last mile for most value-based transactions) use cases are often identified as the most suitable for blockchain applications in markets and current ecosystems adoptions. We are cautiously optimistic about the capital markets' adoption of blockchain technology as we look out for the steady increase of IT spending in the space of the next 5 years.
• It is unlikely that blockchain technology will end up replacing the entire markets and current ecosystems (especially capital markets).
• Despite the lack of successful implementation in markets and current ecosystems to date, all of the discussions about blockchain's potential benefits have resulted in at least one positive outcome—increased public discussions on how certain parts of capital markets, industry ecosystems, are woefully inefficient and how technology, such as the blockchain, and industry acknowledgement and consensus around existing shortfalls could help key market participants to make tough choices that could create a solid foundation for future growth.
• Blockchain is creating opportunities for businesses to come together and create value in new ways by disintermediating participants in a business network, optimizing ecosystems, and reducing risk. Blockchain intrinsically supports a complete view of provenance of transactions and assets being traded on the network. These benefits are addressing complex challenges across all industries, including supply chain management, health information exchange, financial services, and international trade.

Technology-related observations are as follows:

• With a distributed ledger, information can be shared between any participants on the network, eliminating the cost and complexity of involving intermediary layers to interconnect participants. When such a market-level approach can be achieved, we eliminate the need to implement the bilateral transactions for each of the trading parties.
• Technology standards and protocols are still emerging and entities such as Linux Foundation with Hyperledger (for Technology standards), Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA for Industry Standards), Soverin Foundation (for Identity standards), and several other foundations are paving the way for the community with diverse technology applications, ideas, and ideologies to come together to define a model and ensure that the evolution and subsequent adoption is truly a community-driven process.
• There is a divide between the enterprise adoption patterns which are largely permissioned and the crypto asset world which is token/crypto-asset based and often permissionless.
• The underlying technology application however is similar in both the permissioned and permissionless blockchain networks.
• Scalability, privacy, and confidentiality remain key challenges in all blockchain networks and technologies.
• Economic viability—transaction processing is low and predictable costs is vital, and the race is on to reduce the computation overhead and cost with an advent of new and improved trust systems and consensus protocols.
• There's a severe shortage of blockchain technology skills and talent leading to a further focus on the standardization and normalization of protocol adoption.

Having agreed that business and technical observation leads to understanding systemic issues, we need to work together as a community to not only promote not only the stability of technical design, but also the business adoption of the technology to fulfill the promise of blockchain. At the outset, we discussed the importance of understanding the business domain and fully applying the technology to address complex systems that we are attempting to create. It is, therefore, vital to have the right balance of domain and technology skills as a part of solution development skills that are needed to effectively tackle the blockchain project challenges. In that spirit, we, as practitioners have taken the liberty to introducing focus areas that we, as a community need to come together to not only make blockchain real for businesses but to also realize the full potential of the technology. The focus areas we introduce are by no means cover an exhaustive list that may be domain-specific or need additional technology-specific focus, but do represent foundational elements we will need to focus on in order to address the business facets of the digital transaction network we are attempting to redesign.

Our focus should be on developing the following blockchain domain:

• Focus on digital identity constructs: Digital identity constructs are one side of the coin that address tents such as ownership, audit, KYC, and other business facets that are related to a transaction with respect to transaction initiations, contractual agreements, establishing ownership, culpability, and tracing for business and co-creation elements.
• Focus on digital asset and digital fiat: This is vital to address the duality of a transaction and ensure the linkage of a digitized asset to either physical assets or de-materialized assets. A digital fiat or a collateral backed digital asset is vital to address the last mile issue of settlement. This is true for every transaction that involves a financial institution or financial instruments.
• Technology design for digital asset tokenization: blockchain aims to build a trusted digital transaction network, and this network is envisioned to create a value network. Digital asset tokenization is a vital area to focus on in order to ensure that the digital manifestation reflects the real-world assets movement. This focus areas will also reflect on focus area 2—Focus on Digital Asset and Digital Fiat. Technology design for digital asset tokenization represents an important technology design consideration as it encompasses various facets of trust, business models, incentive economics, and governance structure.
• Security design of the enterprise blockchain system: Security design becomes another vital technology design consideration. This is due to the fact that we are building a digital transaction network with digital assets and digital identities (addressed in Focus areas 1, 2, and 3). The blockchain business network and network infrastructure security becomes an important consideration along with trust systems comprising crypto artifacts, consensus, transaction finality, and network communication. Cybersecurity concerns are heightened due to the severity and consequence of network breaches. This is not only to address business functions such as non-repudiation, privacy, and confidentiality, but to also to address the foundational tenets of the trust network we aspire to build.
• Devising appropriate blockchain business models: Appropriate business models becomes a business design consideration. This focus area is vital for economic viability, business growth, and the longevity of the business network powered by blockchain. This focus area ensures the economics of investment, returns, membership, and derived benefits for an equitable participation by various ecosystem players to promote co-creation models and give birth to new business models and synergies that did not exist before.
• Devising an appropriate governance structure: Governance structure ensures the active and equitable participation from the blockchain ecosystem and network participants. This focus area is a business design consideration. The root of this focus area ranges from self-governing models (permissionless networks) to consortium or business entity (JV) defined quasi-autonomous governance structures. Governance structures are also instrumental in achieving business attributes such as an audit requirement, dispute resolution, and reporting requirements.