These are the findings of an expert survey by ESMT Berlin and Grid Singularity . Around 80% of those surveyed expect that blockchain business models will be implemented in the next one to three years. The participants are hoping for a reduction in process costs of 20 to 60% as a result. More than half of them also believe that network costs will fall. The share of peer-to-peer business, by contrast, is estimated to be less than 20%.

One argument that is clearly important to the respondents is that blockchain technologies could counteract excessive regulation from the outset – this would also significantly increase acceptance of smart meters in the home (to 91% among the 200 participants who were surveyed at the EventHorizon 2017 conference in Vienna ). Blockchain technology uses a continuously extendable list of data sets for transactions, which are linked by means of cryptographic procedures. So-called smart contracts on this basis control one another themselves, as it were.