Investigation of the Reasons for Failure in Blockchain Applications Using Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

The utilisation of blockchain technology has gained significant traction across multiple sectors, notably finance, healthcare, supply chain management and real estate, by offering decentralised, secure and transparent data management systems. Introduced in 2008 with Bitcoin, this technology has garnered attention for its smart contracts, various data tracking applications, and cryptocurrencies. The decentralised structure and high security features of the blockchain have led to its emergence as an alternative to traditional systems. The present study aims to examine the reasons for the failures encountered in blockchain applications through bibliometric analysis by reviewing and analysing the extant literature to reveal the conditions and reasons for blockchain technology’s failure. The researchers obtained a dataset containing 2779 documents by searching the Scopus database using the keywords ‘blockchain’ and ‘failure’. These data were analysed using Biblioshiny, a bibliometric analysis tool. The analysis provides a comprehensive statistical perspective by revealing quantitative data such as the number of publications on the research topic, the number of citations by years, the number of publications by countries, the most cited documents and their abstracts, the word cloud, the periodic distribution of the most used words, the thematic map of keywords and the association network. The bibliometrix library of the R programming language was utilised to analyse and visualise the data. The results indicate that factors such as scalability issues, cross-platform incompatibility, network security concerns, lack of user experience, inadequate real-world testing, and legal uncertainties complicate the implementation of blockchain technology. This analysis provides findings to guide future blockchain applications.

Keywords

• Blockchain
• Failure
• Bibliometric Analysis

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