Blockchain is a team sport – collaboration is needed to truly unleash the full potential and value of this technology. After a few years of proofs of concept, solutions are now set to be adopted at industry scale. The difficulties of scaling from proof of concept to industry-wide solutions have emerged as a top area of exploration – and a topic of much debate – in recent World Economic Forum publications and events, including Industry Strategy Meetings. Building on vital insights from these and other Forum meetings and research, the Forum launched an initiative to inspire blockchain collaboration and thereby increase the likelihood of success.

This paper explores forward-looking practical options for different dispute resolution mechanisms derived from case studies, various existing solutions and blockchain-based dispute resolution protocols. In particular, we focus on dispute resolution protocols for on-chain transactions to be used by enterprise users – that is, protocols for organizations rather than individual users.