The Great Transformation of the Blockchain Industry in 2025: Entering a Maturity Phase Focused on Practicality and New Growth Drivers
Editor
As of late 2025, the blockchain industry has completely emerged from the shadow of past cryptocurrency speculation, establishing itself as a core technology for practical enterprise solutions and government digital infrastructure development. The global blockchain market size recorded $67 billion in 2025, growing by 18.7% compared to the previous year, with the enterprise blockchain solutions sector accounting for 62% of the total market, highlighting a clear structural shift towards B2B. At the center of this transformation are application areas providing substantial value, such as supply chain transparency, digital identity management, and the development of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
Notably, the Asia-Pacific region, including Korea, has expanded its share in the global blockchain market to 34%, emerging as the second-largest market after North America (38%). In Korea, the government-led Digital New Deal policy is accelerating blockchain adoption in the public sector, achieving tangible results in areas such as digital IDs, electronic voting, and real estate transaction transparency. Samsung SDS (Seoul-based) recorded 120 billion KRW in revenue from its blockchain business in 2025, achieving 45% growth compared to the previous year, while LG CNS (Seoul-based) secured 85 billion KRW in orders for its supply chain management blockchain solutions, indicating that domestic IT giants’ blockchain businesses have entered a full-fledged profit-generating phase.
Acceleration of Enterprise Blockchain Practicality
The most prominent feature of the blockchain industry in 2025 is the rapid spread of enterprise solutions. According to Deloitte’s latest survey, 73% of large corporations worldwide are pursuing business process improvements using blockchain technology, with 42% having already reached the commercialization stage. The adoption of blockchain in supply chain management is surging, with global consumer goods companies like Walmart, Nestlé, and Unilever actively implementing blockchain-based systems for product origin tracking and quality management, leading the related market to grow to $18.5 billion by 2025.
This trend is directly impacting the business strategies of technology companies. IBM (New York-based) announced that its blockchain-related revenue reached $3.2 billion in 2025, accounting for 8.5% of its total software revenue. Notably, IBM’s Food Trust platform, with participation from over 300 food companies worldwide, surpassed an annual transaction volume of $150 billion. Microsoft (Redmond, Washington-based) is also providing blockchain infrastructure to corporate clients through its Azure blockchain services, with related revenue increasing by 67% year-on-year to $1.8 billion in 2025. Oracle (Austin, California-based) achieved $8.5 million in quarterly revenue from its blockchain cloud services division, solidifying its position in the enterprise blockchain market.
Domestic companies’ achievements are also noteworthy. SK Telecom (Seoul-based) provides digital asset trading and identity verification services within the metaverse through its self-developed blockchain platform ‘ifland Chain,’ with related revenue reaching 34 billion KRW in 2025. SK Telecom’s blockchain-based carbon credit trading platform, involving over 200 domestic companies, expanded its annual trading volume to 5 million tons of CO2, accounting for 15% of the total domestic carbon credit trading volume. This demonstrates how blockchain technology is creating new business models by combining with ESG management.
In the financial services sector, the transition from DeFi (Decentralized Finance) to TradFi (Traditional Finance) is accelerating. Traditional financial institutions like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup are commercializing payment systems and trade finance solutions using blockchain technology, leading to a full-scale adoption of blockchain technology by institutional investors. JPMorgan’s JPM Coin surpassed a daily transaction volume of $30 billion in 2025, establishing itself as a new standard for inter-company payments, reducing payment times by 90% and fees by 60% compared to the traditional SWIFT system.
Expansion of CBDCs and Government-led Blockchain Ecosystems
Another key driver of the blockchain industry in 2025 is the widespread adoption of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). According to the latest report from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 114 countries worldwide are participating in CBDC research and development, with 26 countries entering the pilot test or commercialization phase. China’s digital yuan, in particular, surpassed a cumulative transaction volume of 7 trillion yuan (approximately 960 trillion KRW) in 2025, being evaluated as the most successful CBDC case globally. The People’s Bank of China announced that the number of digital yuan wallets exceeded 260 million, with an average daily transaction count of 3 million.
The Bank of Korea also successfully completed the second pilot test for the introduction of the digital won, accelerating preparations for commercialization in 2026. Korea’s CBDC project focuses on enhancing offline payment functions and programmable money features, collaborating with major domestic manufacturers like Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics to develop automatic payment systems between IoT devices. This approach is noteworthy as it aims to build a comprehensive digital economic ecosystem connected to smart cities, beyond simple digital currency.
The European Central Bank (ECB)’s digital euro project also set an important milestone in 2025. The ECB completed the technical design of the digital euro and initiated the establishment of a legal framework for its introduction in 2026. By adopting a hybrid architecture that ensures both privacy protection and financial stability, the ECB presented an innovative model combining centralized issuance with decentralized verification. This is evaluated as a compromise that overcomes the limitations of existing blockchain technology while maintaining the effectiveness of central bank monetary policy.
The use of blockchain in the government sector is also rapidly expanding. Estonia’s e-Residency program surpassed 150,000 members in 2025, establishing itself as a successful model of a digital nation, and Dubai is nearing its goal of processing all government documents on a blockchain basis by 2025. The Singapore government processes $200 billion in annual trade transactions through its blockchain-based trade platform TradeTrust, achieving an 80% reduction in trade document processing time and a 40% reduction in related costs.
In Korea, government-led blockchain projects are yielding visible results. The Ministry of Science and ICT’s ‘Blockchain-based Trust Society Implementation’ project was conducted with a total budget of 45 billion KRW in 2025, commercializing blockchain-based public services in six areas, including online voting, real estate transactions, and academic certification. Notably, Seoul’s blockchain-based citizen card surpassed 2 million subscribers, deeply integrating into citizens’ daily lives, and Busan’s blockchain regulatory free zone grew into an innovation cluster, generating annual revenue of 120 billion KRW with over 70 blockchain companies residing.
The success of these government-led projects is driving the growth of related industries along with enhancing social trust in blockchain technology. According to Accenture (Dublin-based) analysis, the government sector blockchain market grew to $7.8 billion in 2025 and is projected to expand to a $28 billion market by 2030 with an average annual growth rate of 31%. Demand is surging in areas such as digital identity management and supply chain transparency, securing continuous growth momentum in line with macro trends such as accelerated digital transformation and the spread of ESG management post-COVID-19 pandemic.
From the perspective of blockchain technology maturity, 2025 marked a significant turning point. With the complete transition to Ethereum 2.0, energy consumption decreased by 99%, and transaction processing capacity expanded to 100,000 transactions per second, enabling the construction of large-scale commercial services. Layer 2 solutions also showed rapid development, with platforms like Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism surpassing an average daily transaction volume of 5 million, resolving scalability issues to a significant extent. This indicates that major technical barriers that deterred companies from adopting blockchain technology have been removed, and indeed, the pace of blockchain project adoption by large corporations has noticeably accelerated since the second half of 2025.
As of late 2025, the blockchain industry has evolved into a mature technology ecosystem focused on creating real value, leaving behind the era of speculative frenzy. The widespread commercialization of enterprise solutions, accelerated adoption of CBDCs, and government-led digital infrastructure development are acting as new growth drivers, positioning blockchain technology as a core infrastructure of the modern digital economy beyond mere innovative technology. Particularly, the proactive technology adoption and innovative application cases in the Asia-Pacific region, including Korea, are emerging as new growth axes of the global blockchain ecosystem, with continuous growth of over 25% annually projected over the next five years, significantly enhancing the investment value and growth potential of related companies.
**Disclaimer**: This content is for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as investment advice or solicitation. Investment decisions should be made at one’s own discretion and responsibility, and losses may occur when investing in the mentioned companies or technologies.
