Blockchain Mirage or Silver Bullet?

A Requirements-driven Comparative Analysis of Business and

Developers’ Perceptions in the Accountancy Domain

Claudia Negri Ribalta¹⁺, Marius Lombard-Platet², Camille Salinesi¹, and Pascal Lafourcade³

¹CRI, Université Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 90 Rue de Tolbiac, 75013 Paris, France

claudia.negri-ribalta@etu.univ-paris1.fr, Camille.Salinesi@univ-paris1.fr

²Département d’informatique, École normale supérieure, CNRS, PSL Research University, 45 rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris, France

marius.lombard-platet@ens.fr

³Université Clermont Auvergne, LIMOS, CNRS, UMR 6158, 1 Rue de la Chebarde, 63178 Aubière, France

pascal.lafourcade@uca.fr

Abstract

Over the last decade, blockchain has gained popularity and researchers, as well as companies, are investigating new fields that could be impacted by blockchain technology. Among them, accounting has been identified as a promising field, as blockchain is said to bring trust and transparency to data, as well as tamper-resistance. However, there might be some issues in the adoption of such a new technology, for instance for misunderstanding the goals of using blockchain based accounting systems. Hence, the goal of this exploratory paper is to investigate, based on the question of whether blockchain will impact accounting, the differences in the developers and accountants mental models, and to identify goals and high level requirements for blockchain-based accounting software. For this, we used semi-structured interviews, concept analysis and goal based requirement engineering, on the concepts related to transparency and trust, on blockchain potential and challenges. Even though further research is needed, our results highlight that accounting is a socio-technical field, and that blockchain will shift the conception of trust and transparency, but not completely revolutionize the field, rather make it evolve.

Keywords: Blockchain, Accounting, Mental Models, Requirements, Software Engineering

+: Corresponding author: Claudia Negri Ribalta
CRI, Université Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 90 Rue de Tolbiac, 75013 Paris, France

Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications (JoWUA), Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 85-110, March 2021 [pdf]

Received: January 3, 2021; Accepted: February 18, 2021; Published: March 31, 2021

DOI: 10.22667/JOWUA.2021.03.31.085