4
Understanding the landscape of Distributed Ledger Technologies/Blockchain
Standards ‘A standard is an agreed way of doing something. It could be about making a product, managing a process, delivering a service or supplying materials – standards can cover a huge range of activities undertaken by organizations and used by their customers.… Standards are the distilled wisdom of people with expertise in their subject matter and who know the needs of the organizations they represent – people such as manufacturers, sellers, buyers, customers, trade associations, users or regulators.… Standards cover a wide range of subjects from construction to nanotechnology, from energy management to health and safety, from cricket balls to goalposts. They can be very specific, such as to a particular type of product, or general such as management practices.’ Source: BSI, 2017
1.1.1. Current standardisation-related and industry initiatives associated with DLT/Blockchain A range of standardisation-related and industry initiatives have commenced across the globe examining different aspects of DLT/Blockchain. Various activities, including exploratory workshops14 and cross-industry collaboration initiatives, such as the Hyperledger project (Hyperledger, 2017) have served as forums for discussion of potential technical challenges around the widespread adoption of DLT. Such initiatives as Interledger (Interledger, 2017), the Chain Protocol (Chain Protocol, 2017), and Blockcerts (Blockcerts, 2017) have sought to advance open standards and protocols in different areas of use. In addition, an ISO technical committee15 was set up in 2016 to develop standards on DLT/Blockchain based on the market need (ISO, 2017a). The aim of the committee is to ‘support interoperability and data interchange among users, applications and systems (ISO 2017a).’ The committee is being
led by Standards Australia and includes, at the time of writing, 20 participating countries (including the UK, represented by the BSI) and 15 observing countries (ISO, 2017b).16 We summarise examples of these initiatives in Table 2.
1.2. Research objectives Understanding the current landscape of the DLT/Blockchain market and the priority areas for the UK regarding the development of standards will be an important step in developing a strategy to maximise the benefits of this technology for UK and global stakeholders. Even though the technology is at a relatively early stage of adoption, it is becoming apparent that DLT/Blockchain present major opportunities for several sectors. Furthermore, as noted above, standardisation efforts related to DLT/ Blockchain have recently gathered momentum with the setting up of the ISO technical committee on Blockchain and electronic distributed ledger technologies (ISO, 2017a).17 Against
14
See, for example, a workshop held by W3C in June 2016 (W3C, 2016).
15
The ISO technical committee is called ISO/TC 307 Blockchain and electronic distributed ledger technologies (ISO, 2017a).
16
The first international meeting of ISO/TC 307 took place in Sydney, Australia, in April 2017.
17
As a constituent member of the ISO, the BSI will be a key voice in the international discussion regarding the development of the DLT/Blockchain market and utilisation of DLT/Blockchain by public and private bodies.