What is Adoption Curve?

An adoption curve shows how quickly new technology can integrate into a market. New technological advancements in the market are not adopted by consumers all at once. The adoption process is separated into stages, where the adoption increases from a small testing group to the mass public.

At their inception, computers were only available to governmental and military organizations. Personal computers later became accessible to some private consumers. The network progressively spread around the world, and consequently, the user base increased.

As the technology became increasingly adopted, it started improving, and thus became even more accessible. The process of adoption is prominent in a wide array of markets and is not limited solely to technological or digital developments. Adoption stages may vary across the board.

Throughout the history of crypto, blockchain technology has posed the perfect example of a positive adoption curve. Prototypical technology of cryptographic security modeled as a chain has been available since the 1990s.

However, the whitepaper for a blockchain that the current model is based on was written and published by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. The genesis block of this blockchain model was mined in 2009.

Blockchain technology progressively became more widely known and available to users who started adopting it for a variety of utilities. By 2022, about 90% of Bitcoin (BTC), the cryptocurrency built on the initial blockchain, has been mined.

Thousands of other blockchains have been developed and launched using this technology, demonstrating the increasing pace of the adoption curve. As of March 2022, the total number of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies exceeds 18,000. This demonstrates the tremendous pace of the blockchain adoption curve.