Why blockchain, and when not

A blockchain adds a few things that an ordinary system does not. Whether they count for you depends on who keeps your records and who has to trust them.

What it adds

Several organisations hold one record together, and none of them can change an entry alone.

The history cannot be rewritten after the fact, so an audit reads what happened.

The people who use the record can check it themselves, instead of trusting whoever runs the server.

It works across borders and legal systems, where no shared institution exists to run a database for everyone.

It can move value with the record, so a payment is released when the agreed condition is met.

An ordinary shared database gives you none of the first four. A bank gives you the fifth only within its own reach.

When that matters for an NGO

Several agencies serve the same people and none can be the lead everyone accepts. A shared record gives each the same list without any one of them owning it.

Cash goes to people through banks that take days and charge fees. A payment tied to the record can arrive when the condition is met.

Donors want to check for themselves what happened to a grant. A shared record lets them read the same entries you do.

What it costs

On the public networks a record cannot be corrected or deleted, so personal data stays off them and the ledger holds only proof that a record exists elsewhere. A private network run by the parties can be built to allow removal, and then you have to agree who may remove what. Someone has to hold the keys, and losing them loses access. It needs a connection to work, which field teams do not always have. Each of these is a design question before it is a technology question.

When an ordinary system does the job

A database does the job when one organisation holds the records and everyone involved already trusts it to keep them. It does the job too when the records rarely cross a border, or when the trouble is the process, such as late reports or two teams with different lists. A shared spreadsheet or a database with proper access control fixes these faster and for less money. This is the common case, and the tool says so when it finds it.

What the tool does

It starts from your problem and finds the uses of blockchain that match. It then asks whether one of them fits your case and whether your organisation is ready for it. The verdict is yes; yes, with conditions; yes, once these change; or no.

Once these change means something in your organisation has to change first, and the brief says what. No means a simpler tool does the job, and the brief says which kind. The tool recommends no product and sells nothing.

Who has tried it

The case studies list organisations that have used blockchain for each of these uses, with no connection to this tool, and what came of it. A project that worked for one of them tells you what to ask, not what you will get.

Next

Check one idea, or talk it through if you would rather start from the problem. The use cases page lists everything the tool covers.