**1. Introduction**

Coined as a disruptive innovation, blockchain technology (Nakamoto 2008) has potential for creating and increasing socio-economic welfare as well as increasing the financial industry's reputation. Moreover, the use of blockchains simultaneously interacts with and challenges firms, stakeholders and financial markets. However, as identified by our study, literature solely focusing on corporate governance adoption of blockchain remains sparse. Most slightly touch on one or two applications but are primarily focused on other blockchain-related topics such as Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) or cryptocurrencies. In addition, our study would particularly be relevant in a post-COVID-19 world, where the ability to digitally conduct business online will be paramount in the "new normal". Thus, we systematically review prior academic and industry literature for the current use of blockchains (BC) in corporate governance (CG) and regulation and link its implications to traditional theories in corporate governance. Our study identifies how academic and industry literature evolved through time and across key areas relevant to blockchain adoption in corporate governance. We further identify similarities, trends and gaps between academic and industry literature. Furthermore, we provide a behavioural, ethical and managerial perspective on blockchain adoption in corporate governance and regulation. In addition, we compile a unique empirical database and conduct an empirical analysis

of blockchain and related start-up investments globally and forecast future blockchain investments. Finally, we develop a blockchain adoption framework in corporate governance.

We pose the following research questions: 1. What are the current and future use cases of blockchain applications in corporate governance? 2. What are the trends, gaps and similarities between prior industry and academic literature? 3. What are the implications of adopting blockchain in corporate governance and links to theories in prior literature? 4. What are the advantages, challenges, misconceptions and limitations for blockchain adoption in corporate governance during COVID-19 and post COVID-19? 5. What are the links between investments in blockchain internationally and future forecasts? Although there is a growing literature on the development of blockchain technology, few studies explore blockchain applications, particularly with regard to corporate governance. Our study is most related to Yermack (2017), who focuses on the impact of blockchain adoption in corporate governance on various stakeholders such as managers, small shareholders, institutional investors and other parties. Yermack (2017) finds blockchain adoption in corporate governance would result in reduced cost, increase in liquidity, transparency and bookkeeping accuracy. Our study differs from these papers and prior literature in several aspects. 1. We develop a framework for blockchain adoption in corporate governance. 2. We compare academic and industry literature to identify common trends, over- and under-explored areas and evolution of literature through time for a large sample of articles (183). 3. We provide an empirical analysis of blockchains and related start-up investments globally. 4. We link theories in corporate governance to implications from blockchain adoption. Thus, this study contributes to the behavioural perspectives and structural changes not limited to firms due to technology shocks such as blockchain but including market participants, developers and regulators alike. From a social paradigm perspective, this study would appeal to academics, industry practitioners, governments, law- and policymakers, entrepreneurs and investors of blockchains.

Selected key findings from the systematic review of 851 records and a final article sample of 183 for the sample period 2012 to 2020 include the following. We identify nine primary themes from prior literature that has some relevance to blockchain adoption in corporate governance, discussed in detail in the results (Section 5.1). On one hand, academic articles mostly focus on the regulatory theme (49 studies) and ICO theme (46 studies). On the other hand, industry articles primarily focus on exchange-related themes (10 studies) and the cryptocurrency theme (9 articles). We observe a significant interest in both academia and industry during 2017 (48 studies) and 2018 (42 studies) in aggregate. With China's renewed investments in the Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) and COVID-19 lockdowns driving many firms towards digital transformation, interest in blockchains is most likely to further increase in 2020.

Selected findings from the textual analysis include the following: We identify that both industry and academic literature is largely concentrated around 1. Bitcoin, 2. markets, 3. technology and 4. fintech application themes. However, the industry and academic interests diverge in the following cases, where the industry focuses more on 1. privacy, 2. business and 3. global themes and academia concentrates on 1. governance, 2. networks and 3. ledger themes. Giving context to these themes from the content of these literatures enables us to observe that the industry focuses more on blockchain potential on a global scale, with business applications and features of blockchain such as privacy. Meanwhile, academic literature tends to have a narrower focus, with much concentration on exploring blockchain governance and architecture.

We compile a unique empirical database from industry data sources such as PwC, ICO insights, token data, CB Insights, Statista and Hutt Capital. Primary results from our empirical analysis for quarterly data from 2013 to 2019 includes the following. A growing linear trend is observed for investments and deal count beyond 2020, with investments and deal counts in 2020 and 2021 reaching 6.173 and 6.051 USD billion and 822 and 937, respectively, despite the COVID-19 crisis. We observe a negative correlation between European blockchain investments and Asia (largely driven by China). However, there is a strong correlation between global blockchain investments and Asia. These key

results and additional results from our systematic review, textual analysis and empirical analysis are discussed in more detail in the results and discussion (Section 5).

This study is organised as follows. Section 2 provides a literature review. Section 3 outlines the research design. Section 4 discusses blockchain technology. Section 5 includes the results and discussion from the systematic review, textual analysis and empirical analysis, including the Decentralized Autonomous Corporate Governance (DACG) Framework. Section 6 outlines blockchain adoption in corporate governance, impact and present and future use cases. Section 7 identifies the governance and ethical aspects of blockchains with regard to corporate governance applications. Section 8 explores blockchain potential in corporate governance during COVID-19 and in the post-COVID-19 environment. Section 9 discusses the limitations of our study. Finally, Section 10 concludes the study.
