Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that offers lots of useful features such as transparency, immutability, security, and removing intermediate roles for businesses as well as non-profit organization activities. Blockchain today is getting more and more widespread through trading cryptocurrencies since Bitcoin is the first application that using blockchain technology and it is quite trendy nowadays. Moreover, blockchain technology is also used in different industries by creating decentralized applications (DApps), which are expected to change their traditional way of doing business. Thus, blockchain is often called as a disruptive technology.
Even though blockchain seems to have a bright future, it must go through the innovation diffusion process just like any other innovations. The purpose of this study is to explore potential blockchain diffusion options and also evaluate blockchain based on innovation diffusion criteria to see how much blockchain technology fits on those criteria which are an essential evaluation that can lead to the mass adoption. On the other hand, we also emphasized on blockchain startups since it has a crucial role to help blockchain to have a successful innovation diffusion process in the quadruple helix context.

Abstract I
Acknowledgment II
List of Figures and Tables V
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1
1.1. Research Background 1
1.2. Research Motivation 2
1.3. Research Questions 4
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5
2.1. Blockchain Introduction 5
2.2. The Technical Background of Blockchain 6
2.2.1. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) 7
2.2.2. Cryptography-Hashing 7
2.2.3. Blockchain Types 8
2.2.4. Consensus Algorithms 9
2.2.5. Smart Contracts 11
2.3. Innovation Adoption 12
2.4. Rate of Adoption and Adaptor Categories 15
2.5. Blockchain Startups 17
2.6. Quadruple Helix (QH) 20
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 23
3.1. Research Objectives 23
3.2. Research Design 23
3.3. Data Collection 24
CHAPTER 4: CASE STUDY ANALYSIS 27
4.1. Kronos 27
4.2. DEXON Foundation 30
4.3. COBINHOOD 33
CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION 36
5.1. Evaluating Blockchain Diffusion in Adaptor Category Context 36
5.2. Evaluating Blockchain in Attributes of Innovation Context 40
5.3. Blockchain Startups in Quadruple Helix Framework 46
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 52
6.1. Summary of Major Findings 52
6.2. Limitations and Further Research 53
6.3. Practical Implications 54
REFERENCES 55

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