Institute For The Future

Over the past decade, an alternative digital paradigm has slowly been taking shape at the
edges of the internet.

This new paradigm is the blockchain. After incubating through millions of Bitcoin transactions and a host of developer projects, it is now on the tips of tongues of CEOs and CTOs, startup entrepreneurs, and even governance activists. Though these stakeholders are beginning to understand the disruptive potential of blockchain technology and are experimenting with its most promising applications, few have asked a more fundamental question: What will a world driven by blockchains look like a decade from now?

The Blockchain Futures Lab is proud to be a winner of the ONC Challenge of Health and Human Services for the blockchain in health IT. Our paper, entitled “A Blockchain Profile for Medicaid Applicants and Recipients” introduces a strategy for creating smart health profiles that can provide easy access to health services while protecting privacy and security of individual health, financial, and citizenship information.

The Blockchain Futures Lab seeks to answer the question of a world driven by blockchains through foresight, prototyping, and community-based investigations into the social, economic, and political implications of this new paradigm.

The Blockchain Futures Lab at IFTF is a research initiative and a community for identifying the opportunities and limits of blockchain technologies as well as their social, economic, and political impacts on individuals, organizations, and communities over the coming decades. The program brings together the leading developers of blockchain tools and applications with organizations that seek to understand the implications of this highly disruptive technology—and perhaps also to create parts of the new ecosystem of infrastructures and markets that it will drive. The program delivers:

• Blockchain Map of the Decade
• Set of blockchain foresight perspectives
• Blockchain expert workshop-in-a-fishbowl
• An immersive cross-industry forum on blockchain solutions

By focusing not just on the near-term opportunities for new products and services but also on the important long-term implications of the technology, the Blockchain Futures Lab will complement and extend the value of other blockchain initiatives.

EXPLORE NOW:

• Bitcoin is the Sewer Rat of Currencies—an interview with computer scientist Andreas Antonopoulos by Mark Frauenfelder for Blockchain Futures Lab
• Blockchain Futures Lab Blog
• 2016 Research Agenda for Blockchain Futures Lab (PDF)

The Blockchain Futures Lab at IFTF is led by a team of seasoned technology futurists, including David Pescovitz, Mark Frauenfelder, and Kathi Vian.

The Blockchain Futures Lab is a platform for the creative collision of ideas, tools, and motivations. It is a meeting place for the community of blockchain developers, organizational strategists, and civic leaders who are building disruptive new ecosystem infrastructures and markets.

Seeing Beyond the Blockchain Hype
Get concise expert forecasts of the most useful zones of innovation and disruption that blockchain technologies will seed over the coming decade. The BFL will provide high-quality, honest foresight about the real potential of blockchain technologies to help you decide when to invest and when to walk away.

Tapping a World-Changing Network
Meet and work with the people who are building the blockchain ecosystem of the future. Today, there is a strong but small community of developers, designers, and thought leaders who deeply understand the blockchain paradigm. The BFL will foster a steady flow of communication between this community and the people who are in a position to bring their launch blockchain innovations.

Shaping the Ecosystem of Innovation
Take the lead in forging new forms of organization, innovative markets, and vital communities. As blockchain strategies begin to ripple through the digital world, they will disrupt existing ecosystems across sectors. The BFL community will help shape the social, economic, and political vision of what the blockchain world will look like.

View Full 2016 Research Agenda (PDF) »