The authors express gratitude to Steven S. Nam, Managing Editor of the Stanford Journal of Blockchain Law and Policy, for his time and support. While Bitcoin has popularized the notion of the blockchain, the underlying architecture is versatile enough to be employed in a wide range of non-cryptocurrency-related applications, such as food tracing, bills of lading in the shipping industry, and secure mobile voting. Over the past two years, there have even been a handful of commentaries expressing mixed views on how blockchain technology could be applied to protecting a company’s most valuable trade secrets.

Before tackling this dilemma, we take a step back and evaluate whether and why (or why not) the blockchain may be a good fit for realizing this objective conceptually, make reference to the inherent blockchain trilemma, correlate any complementary technological merits to business needs or legal requirements, and then ambitiously set the stage for analyzing real-life implementations and the value-add.