Blockpool: How do SMEs in Europe deploy Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies? - Early insight and assessment around this new technology to guide SMEs and investors

Blockchain technology and other Distributed Ledger Technologies (BDLT) possess several unique attributes that have a potential to disrupt many industries and their respective markets. The innovative aspects of this new technology concern particularly the ability to record and share information between parties that do not necessarily trust each other, in a decentralised way. Due to the risk associated in general to innovations, start-ups and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) deploying BDLT solutions often struggle to obtain financing in the early stage and subsequently in the scale-up phase. However, in contrast to other innovative SMEs, blockchain companies experience further obstacles that decrease their chances for successful commercialization of the product. The early insights and examples provided in this paper were collected within the Blockpool acceleration programme. Blockpool has selected out of 109 applications from all over Europe, 25 SMEs to enhance their innovation capacity. The intention of this paper is to show that these (intermediary) insights of Blockpool demonstrate that the acceleration concept works effectively, and to raise awareness on promising BDLT use cases and SMEs, both to motivate private investors, and to encourage other start-ups, SMEs or corporates to follow and replicate.