The CSIRO's Data61 team has published two detailed reports on blockchain, assessing how blockchain technology could be further adopted across government and industry in Australia to deliver further productivity benefits and drive local innovation.Australia already has a number of world recognised blockchain developments including the work of the Australian Securities Exchange (in collaboration with Digital Asset Holdings) to examine the use of this technology in its clearing and settlement system for the Australian equity market.Momentum in exploring these technologies has been building recently with developments by Australian firms including major banks, Australia Post and AGL; and blockchain innovators such as agricultural supply chain application AgriDigital.One of the CSIRO reports, "Risks and opportunities for systems using blockchain and smart contracts," takes a technical approach by exploring design alternatives for blockchain systems in three illustrative use cases: remittance payments, open data registries and agricultural supply chains."Looking at the range of critical requirements in these specific context helps us understand how blockchain-based systems can support new markets and business models," Mark Staples, group leader at CSIRO's Data61, said.The study highlights that the path towards widespread adoption of blockchain based systems is still not clear. "Further research is required to create evidence that blockchain systems will work as intended and how they will operate with legacy systems," is one conclusion in the report.It also recommends that further trials of blockchain systems should demonstrate responses to 'rainy day' scenarios when problems arise like disputed transactions, incorrect addresses, exposure or loss of private keys, data-entry errors or unexpected changes to assets on blockchains.Another, more obvious conclusion drawn is that while a full picture of all opportunities for blockchain technologies is not apparent - a situation that is "inevitably unpredictable for innovation with any new technology" - some initial lessons are apparent:•    the key advance from blockchain technology is distributed trust - removing the need to rely on a specific single trusted third party (or small number of specific trusted third parties) to facilitate transactions; and •    this provides a distinctive opportunity when either a specific trusted third party is unknown or not sufficiently trustworthy, or when they are extracting fees that are high in relation to the transaction value."Although not explored in detail, the combination of distributed integrity, digital currency, and smart contracts in a blockchain may enable new kinds of 'programmable money'", the report notes.It also explains how remittances to Pacific Islands from Australia could be streamlined, and the high costs and delays from Know Your Customer applications and anti money-laundering rules reduced.The other report, "Scenarios for the Australian economy over the coming decades" was developed by Rob Hanson and Stefan Hajkowicz in Data61's Strategic Insight Team."Scenarios allow decision makers to consider if similar possibilities were to occur, what should they do to prepare for the future ahead of time," Hanson said."Most importantly, each scenario examines the aspects of critical uncertainty for the use of blockchain technologies; human behaviour, technology and development, regulation and user adoption."