The most expensive blockchain projects are the ones that could have been a PostgreSQL database. These questions help you figure out which one you are looking at before the budget is committed.
Who are the parties, and do they already trust each other?
If all participants sit within the same legal entity or already share a trusted intermediary they accept, blockchain adds complexity without solving a coordination problem that actually exists.
What happens when the smart contract needs to change?
Upgradeable proxy patterns in Solidity introduce their own security surface area. Immutable contracts cannot respond to regulatory changes. Neither option is neutral, and the answer to this question shapes your entire architecture.
Where does external data enter the system?
Any oracle connection is a centralisation point and an attack surface. Chainlink and similar services reduce but do not eliminate this risk. Map every external data dependency before writing deployment code.
What is the dispute resolution mechanism?
Smart contracts do not handle ambiguity. When a condition is met technically but not commercially, who decides? This is a legal and governance question that no amount of code elegance resolves.
What does the infrastructure cost at 3 years, not at launch?
Model validator node costs, storage growth at current transaction volume, and audit costs for any contract updates. The 3-year number is usually two to four times the launch estimate.
What is the fallback if the network is unavailable?
A system with no offline fallback has a single point of failure regardless of how distributed the underlying ledger is. Design the failure mode before the success mode.