The trouble with hypes is that they have an expiration date. From that date on they either need to be made real for some very good purposes within a reasonable timeframe, or they go bad. There have been quite a few hype topics around recently. But there have not been many single topics that have been covered by media at a frequency and from many different angles and with as many different focal areas as the Blockchain (or distributed ledgers in general). And most probably none of those articles failed to include the adjective "disruptive".

There have been books, conferences, articles, reference implementations, hackathons, webinars and lots more indicators proving that the blockchain is somehow the prototype of a hype topic.

But apart from the bitcoin currency as one regularly cited (and initial) usage of this technology, there have not been too many clearly visible use cases of the blockchain for the everyday user. Actually, it could be doubted that even bitcoin really is something for the everyday user. Other than every now and then needing one of those for paying ransom to get your encrypted files back...

Many great ideas have been developed and implemented in PoC (Proof of Concept) scenarios, but the truth is that the technology still is not very visible in general (which is quite normal for infrastructure concepts) and that there are no commonly known outstanding blockchain use cases in the wild, at least any that everybody knows. The main challenge is the identification of an adequate use case that can be implemented with blockchain technology and that is immediately offering benefits for the end user and the provider of the service.

This might change with the announcements a major insurance company, namely Axa, has made recently. The geeky name "fizzy" stands for an Ethereum-based implementation of a modern insurance concept that allows user-travelers to be covered by an "automatic" insurance policy, in case of a booked (and insured) flight being delayed for more than two hours. Blockchain technology provides adequate security. Automation, smart contracts and parameterization make it adaptable and available.

By doing this, “fizzy” provides smart, real-life benefit while leveraging the advantages of the blockchain technology. This is exactly what we should expect manifestations of this technology to look like. Instead of aiming at disrupting complete business models, organizations across industries should look into implementing smart and adequate solutions that provide real benefit to the end-user. Until this has proven successful at a convincing scale we might want to postpone the task of "reinventing and disrupting complete industries" into the next project phase.