Announcing techUK's October Blockchain Leader
The purpose of techUK's Blockchain Leader of the month campaign is to showcase tech leaders that are playing a crucial role in driving forward the development of emerging enterprise solutions that can establish trust, help organisations with adoption and bring to life use cases across sectors.
This is also an opportunity to learn from those working in Blockchain about the latest developments and trends in this exciting, emerging and potentially transformative technology.
You can read techUK's full interview with Duncan below:
What are your current responsibilities in your role and what does a typical day involve?
As co-founder and CEO of an enterprise blockchain startup my primary responsibility is driving the business forward working closely with my co-founder and our CTO Kevin O’Donnell. Since Kevin is based in New York and our VP DevOps Ivo Delmis is on the West Coast (San Francisco not Glasgow!), when I’m in the UK the first thing I generally do is catch up on any Slack traffic that has come in overnight. Then it’s time for my daily catchup with our VP Marketing & Strategy Csilla Zsigri in Barcelona. These sessions can vary from a short update on an ongoing campaign to an extended discussion about a strategic initiative.
There is no such thing as a typical day but this session and a final roundup with Kevin around late afternoon Eastern, unless we are both on a call with someone in APAC, are typically the bookends of my working day and help frame it.
We’ve been distributed from the outset which should come as no surprise to people that know me and means we can operate across multiple timezones pursuing opportunities based on whether they are a good strategic fit rather than being constrained by a specific geography.
What do you most enjoy about your work?
That’s easy. Having the privilege to work with a great team and play my part in creating an inclusive culture which because we are heavily involved in the open source community encompasses a wide variety of partners and collaborators as well as our core company.
Why is Blockchain so important to the UK right now and what does the future hold for adoption and maturity of Blockchain in the UK?
The current pandemic - and the resulting economic downturn - has not only accelerated digital transformation in the corporate world, but also highlighted the specific need for technologies that can help improve transparency and trustworthiness in our business interactions, and remove operational inefficiencies from business processes across organizations as well as industries. I firmly believe that blockchain technology plays a fundamental role here.
Europe has been one of the top regions driving the adoption of blockchain technology in the last couple of years, and the UK, in particular, is one of the most active countries within the region. From an adoption perspective, I believe that many organizations today have a better understanding of blockchain technology and its benefits, and are now setting their adoption strategies based on a more realistic assessment of the technology’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as use cases and what it takes to move projects into production. I see organizations focusing on those pragmatic projects that do not require large initial networks to provide value, but solve current pain points in business processes - driven primarily by efficiency and trust.
What industries or sectors of the UK economy do you think could benefit from adopting and using Blockchain technology and why?
Blockchain - or more broadly distributed ledger technology (DLT) - is essentially a behind-the-scenes or middleware technology that has a number of applications and benefits, as well as the potential to yield significant economic value across industries. Key application areas that have turned out to be real proving grounds for the technology, include provenance, payments and financial instruments, and identity.
What do you think are the key challenges, issues or barriers that need to be broken down if we are to make the UK Blockchain ready?
With activity and innovation intensifying in the enterprise blockchain space - in areas outside of the core distributed ledger layer - the vendor landscape has become more complex and fragmented. Navigating this landscape may present challenges for end-user organizations. Educating end users continues to be crucial, as does freeing them from the technical and operational complexity that blockchain technology may bring. As a product company we address the latter but we believe it is just as important to help end users orient themselves. To facilitate this we sponsor the DLT Landscape which is curated by Csilla. You can find out more about this and how Csilla has leveraged her experience as an influential industry analyst in her guest techUK blog Walking the DLT Landscape: Deciphering the evolving distributed ledger technology market
How can the Blockchain industry and market equip organisations with the understanding, skills and knowledge to make the right Blockchain decisions for now and for the future? Do we have everything we need?
Overcoming shortages in IT skills and resources is a key challenge associated with DLT, and platform vendors and professional services providers are focusing on addressing that challenge - by freeing organisations from pains involved with building and running blockchain networks and applications, and also continuing to educate them about where and how this technology can benefit them the most.
What is your prediction for how Blockchain and DLT Technologies will change the way organisations operate in 2021 and beyond?
Blockchain, and DLT more broadly, is a foundational technology that has the potential to make organizations more efficient and trustworthy, at the very least. We also see attention shifting to new revenue and business models, and more generally, to a more open, digital collaboration. We believe that once blockchain, smart contracts and other decentralised services become mainstream, the economic benefits will increase rapidly.
Laura Foster
Laura is techUK’s Associate Director for Technology and Innovation.
Sue Daley OBE
Sue leads techUK's Technology and Innovation work.
