Developmental Trajectories in Blockchain Technology Using Patent-Based Knowledge Network Analysis

The blockchain is a technology with high growth potential that increases social benefits by streamlining procedures, reducing costs, and innovating the way we work. Considering the growth potential of blockchain technologies, countries around the world are attempting to graft into various fields such as finance, logistics, and healthcare, and actively promoting technology development. Tracing and analyzing the developmental trajectories of blockchain technology can give great insight for R&D direction and strategies. We developed an improved knowledge persistence-based main path approach to identify technological trajectories of the blockchain technology. In addition, future technological directions for each sub-technology under blockchain technology were identified by the knowledge unconventionality metric. The results show that the blockchain technology can be divided into five sub-technologies, and each sub-technology has evolved with high technological interactions among other sub-technologies. Based on the last knowledge streams of the main paths, this paper suggests potential future directions for each sub-technology in the blockchain technology.