170  Blockchain

Porter’s five forces

• Bargaining power of Suppliers: High for Blockchain Suppliers: It is

determined by the number of suppliers, uniqueness of their products

and the degree of their control over proprietary technology or capa-

bility. Fewer the suppliers and uniqueness of the products, the more

powerful the bargaining power of each supplier is.

With respect to blockchain platform and product providers, the most

important use case is within financial and healthcare sectors. Having

said that, there are other sectors such as supply chain, entertainment

and so on that can also create competitive advantages by using block-

chain. Enterprise Ethereum, Hyperledger, R3 Corda, IBM Blockchain

and ConsenSys are leading the development of products and platforms

to provide enterprise ready blockchain solutions. The supplier side is

concentrated to a few players as they have invested a huge amount over

the years on infrastructure and standards and have universal reach and

a global client base. It is very difficult for any new entrant to enter or

replicate this infrastructure on a global scale. There are new start-ups

emerging for blockchain solutions, but it is still difficult to replicate the

universal reach, support and/or client base of companies like Hyperledger

Fabric, Ethereum, R3 Corda, Consensys and IBM. There is also high

power of suppliers as all the cloud providers and software companies

that had a massive customer base and establishment have also started to

The following table explains the stakeholders of this model. We will apply

blockchain-specific stakeholders within this model to assist in formulating

the strategy later in this chapter

Strategic force

Stakeholders

Rating

Bargaining power of suppliers

Blockchain platform providers and

early innovators, e.g. Ethereum,

Cardano, Ripple, IBM Blockchain, R3

Corda, Hyper Ledger, etc.

HIGH

Bargaining power of buyers

Buyers of blockchain technology, e.g.

banks, healthcare providers,

Government, supply chain and

logistics providers

HIGH

Threat of new entrants

Start-ups providing blockchain

products and services, e.g. Cardano,

Polkadot and Chainlink

LOW

Threat of substitute products or

services

Start-ups or existing technologies to

provide similar or better solutions,

e.g. centralised databases, hashgraph

ledger and IOTA

LOW

Rivalry among existing

competitors

Competition among suppliers of

blockchain platforms, products and

services

HIGH