FirstPartner's 2016 Blockchain Ecosystem Market Map helps to decrypt the blockchain landscape with a visual overview of the emerging ecosystem, players, technologies and trends. It clearly summarises three main areas of focus emerging around the core blockchain or distributed ledger protocols: 1) Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies: Providing an alternative to centrally managed "fiat" currencies, this sector includes Bitcoin exchanges, Bitcoin wallets, miners and cryptocurrency payment processors. The map illustrates how these companies interact and features some leading players including Coinbase, Circle, Kraken and 21 Inc. 2) The Financial Services Blockchain: This has been the main area of focus over the last 12 months as attention shifts from Bitcoin to Financial Services applications. An increasing number of players are focussing on commercialising blockchain technologies for banks, securities, derivatives and asset markets and institutional investors - and are attracting VC funding to do so. Ripple and Ethereum are leading candidate protocols for payment processing and smart contracts and players including Ripple, Chain and Digital Asset Holdings are gaining traction with Financial Institutions. The Map highlights leading technology companies and some of the banks, card schemes and processors who are investing in or evaluating distributed ledger technologies. 3) Other Use Cases: The distributed ledger concept and its ability to support transparent and tamper-proof asset registration, proof of ownership and asset transfer transactions makes it potentially applicable to multiple non financial use cases. The Map highlights a number of candidate use cases including publishing, legal, distributed data storage, document management and IoT. Some of the pioneering initiatives and companies exploring these applications are included. Crucially the Map also provides a clear pictorial explanation and summary of the leading protocols at the heart of the ecosystem and concepts including coloured coins and smart contracts that supplement them to make a number of the proposed services possible. A printable version of the map can be downloaded from www.firstpartner.net.

1. Protocol Components
Commercial platforms &
services targeting Financial
Institutions
Retail & Commercial Banks Central Banks & Initiatives
Liquidity Provision Complaince Policy
- Bank of England
- Banque de France
- Deutsche Bundesbank
- European Central Bank
The following major central banks have undertaken assesments or
issued statements on regulation, potential risks to financial systems
and/or benefits but none yet has a definitive policy stance.
National Clearing
Market
Insight
Proposition
Development
Product
Launch
Customer
Engagement
2016 The Blockchain Ecosystem
www.firstpartner.net
Richard Warren
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Introduction
The blockchain combines cryptography &
distributed computing to deliver secure, direct
peer to peer transactions without the need for a
central party. At its heart is the Distributed Ledger.
This is a tamper proof, public, network-hosted,
record of all consensus verifiedtransactions.
Initially realised via Bitcoin & similar “cryptocurren-
cies”, focus & investment is now shifting to the
potential of blockchain technology to revolution-
ise the infrastructure & processes of established
Financial Institutions & other enterprises.
This Map summarises the key principles behind the
blockchain & the emerging ecosystem addressing
payments, banking & other potential use cases.
Blockchain numbers
Sources:
1 CoinDesk & Crunchbase
2 Venturescanner.com reviewed Nov 2015
3 FirstPartner research
4 CoinDesk State of Bitcoin Report Q3 2015
5 Blockchain.info checked 16th Nov 2015
6 Bitcoinity.org
7 Coin ATM Radar checked Oct 2015
The Distributed Ledger
Payment Use Cases
Retailing Financial InclusionRemittancesPerson 2 Person Interbank Clearing Trading & MarketsForex
The Cryptocurrency Ecosystem Specialist companies facilitating transaction validation, currency exchange,
storage & payment on existing cryptocurrency newtworks (primarily Bitcoin)
Established Financial Ecosystem Regulated financial instutions & platform vendors exploring blockchain technology
as an alternative to centralised & correspondent payment processing
Other Use Cases
Data
Distributed storage of and
access to business data
Legal
Executing smart legal
contracts
e-Identity
Registering and validating
individual identity
IoT
Registering and validating
connected devices
Crowd Funding
Raising finance & distribut-
ing equity
Proof of Ownership
Tamper proof registration &
“stamping” of physical &
digital assets
Market Places
Trading & sharing of
physical & digital assets &
services
Publishing
Digital asset rights manage-
ment, distribution &
payment
Blockchain
Distributed P2P
Networks
Dogecoin
Consensus: Proof of Work
Currency: Doge - on & off-network
Issuance: Mining Reward. Unlimited
Latency: 1 minute
Litecoin
Consensus: Proof of Work
Currency: LTC - on and off-network
Issuance: Mining Reward. 84M Limit
Latency: 2.5 minutes
Anatomy of a
Transaction
Bitcoin Debit CardsWallets
Exchanges
Mining
Mining Technology & Commercial Operations
21 INC
Mining Pools
- Ghash.io
- F2Pool
- AntPool
- Slush'spool
International
Remittance
BitCoin ATM Money Transfer Operators
Stellar
Validation: Distributed consensus
Currency: Lumens on-network only
Issuance: 100 BN then 1% issued PA
Latency: 2-5 seconds
Ripple derivative. Financial focus
Crypto 2.0 - Building
on the Bockchain
Smart Contracts
Encode & validate
“conditions” for a
transaction between
parties. Potentially
faciliate legally
binding transactions
over the blockchain
Securities Markets
Open Protocols for
Institutions
Bitcoin Based
Cryptocurrencies
Securities & Derivatives & Asset Trading Platforms
Smart contracts
& blockchain for
transparent
trading & post
trade settlement
Financial Infrastructure & APIs
Enable implementation
of private Blockchains/
sidechains &/or the
development & securing
of financial applications
Institutional Investment
Interbank Networks
Colored Coins & Open Assets
Bitcoins altered to
represent an asset.
Exchanged via the
Open Assets
Protocol. Allows
trading of physical &
other assets
$ $
£
¥€
Merchants
Users
sender
2 Verification
Consensus
Prevents “double spend” or validation of fraudulent transactions:
Proof of work: miners compete to validate blocks by solving highly
processor/RAM intensive cryptographic problems for reward
Distributed consensus: majority validation by trusted subnetworks
of peer nodes within the network. Used by Ripple & Stellar
Proof of stake: achieves distributed consensus by network users
proving their ownership of currency. Used by Peercoin & Bitshares
The Currency
The medium for transaction settlement within the
newtork & rewarding miners. Cryptographically
generated, protocol rules detremine issuance &
destruction. May be tradeable “off the newtork”
(e.g. Bitcoin) or only exist on network (e.g. XRP)
BTransaction Instruction
-prior transaction(s)
-recipient address
-value & conditions
-digital signature
nodes or miners:
-propogate
Verified Block
1 Initiation
3 Completion
the
network
-group into “candidate blocks”
-validate signatures
-verify through “consensus”
“Value”
recipient Blockchain
The Ledger
AKA the Blockchain. A Public record of all
transactions - stored across a distributed P2P
network of servers. Verified transactions are added
in “blocks” and the history provides proof of value or
assets “owned”.
Core Blockchain Protocols
The R3 Consortium
Technologyy led
initiative of 30+
banks to design
& apply distributed
ledger technology to
global financial markets
Protocols,
platforms & SDKs
that build on
top of core
blockchain
protocols to
enable
additional
transaction
types & services
Enabling Layers
- The Federal Reserve
- Monetary Authority of Singapore
- People’s Bank of China
- Reserve Bank of India
Card Schemes
Market
Makers
Ethereum
Validation: Proof of Work
Currency: ETH on-network only
Issuance: Mining Reward.
Latency: 12 seconds
Smart contract & distributed app focus
475 Bitcoin ATMs installed
worldwide
$921million Cumulative VC invest-
ment in Bitcoin &
blockchain companies
to Oct 2015. $462 million
of this in 2015 alone.
1
805 Number of early stage Bitcoin &
blockchain companies identified by
Venture Scanner 2
11mNumber of registered Bitcoin wallets in
Sept 2015 - up from 6.6m in Sept 2014 4
106,000 Number of merchants who
accept Bitcoin4
$4.9bn Bitcoin capitalisation Nov 2015.
Bitcoin accounts for around
90% of the capital value of all
cryptocurrencies5
$2.7bn value of Bitcoin trading in Sept
2015 6
30+ Banks & Financial Institutions known to
be testing, analysing or investing in the
blockchain technologies 3
$121million Largest cumulative
funding total - raised by
Bitcoin computer
developer 21inc.1
7
Data & Analytics Investors
Enabling the Financial Services Blockchain
Balancingthe Benefits
Risks
- Unproven technology
- Untested capacity/scalabilitty
- Low transaction speed
- Possible concensus prototcol flaws
- Cryptocurrency price volatility
- Uncertain regulatory status
Blockchain Benefits
- Ecosystem simplification
- Faster interbank clearing & settlement
- Lower transaction costs
- Reduced counterparty risk
- Transaparency & auditability
- Ease of software development/integration
Merchant
Payment
Processing
Bitcoin Processing PSPs Supporting BitcoinBitcoin PoS Risk & Fraud
Management
Multiservice
Companies
Mining Exchange Wallet Processing
Resilience
Vs.
Protocol Commercialisation
Ripple: facilitating multiple
Financial Institutions focussing on
payment solutions
Consensys: building an
Ethereum based ecosystem &
partnered with Microsoft for
Ethereum Blockchain as a Service
Key Security/HSMs
Ripple
Validation: Distributed consensus
Currency: XRP on-network only
Issuance: At inception -100 BN units
created.
Latency: 3 seconds
Consensus based protocol designed
specifically for existing financial
institutions. Supplementing existing
processes & directly suporting fiat
currencies, lead use cases are
international paymemts & inter
Financial Institution settlement
Bitcoin
Validation: Proof of Work
Currency: BTC - on and off-network
Issuance: Mining Reward. 21M Limit
Latency: 10 minutes
Created as an alternative to central
bank controlled fiat currencies, Bitcoin
was the first working Cryptocurrency.
It remains dominant but lack of
scalability and other inherent flaws will
likely prevent mass adoption.
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