Distributed Ledger Technology: ITU to provide guidance to blockchain adopters.

Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) are proving applicable to a wide range of business operations. DLT use cases are emerging in telecom, finance, energy, supply chain and government, to name just a few of the many sectors interested in DLT application.

DLT is now under study in ITU standardization work on security and trust, identity management, environmental sustainability, protocols and test specifications, combatting counterfeiting, multimedia, digital financial services, smart cities, and data processing and management.

ITU standardization work is contribution-driven, and ITU has received a flood of contributions on blockchain and DLT.

ITU Focus Group to support DLT decision-makers

“Industry and government have very high hopes for DLT. We see evidence of this in the great number of DLT-relevant standards projects underway in ITU,” says David Watrin, Swisscom, Chair of the ITU Focus Group on ‘Application of Distributed Ledger Technology’.

This Focus Group aims to deliver an ‘assessment framework’ to support efforts to understand the strengths and weaknesses of DLT platforms in different use cases.

“This assessment framework could assist in building the necessary confidence to invest in compelling DLT use cases,” says Watrin.

Focus Groups are open to all interested parties.

“The work of our Focus Group is guided by the vast amount of innovation in the field,” says Watrin. “We plan to deliver tools of value to all DLT innovators and practitioners, recognizing that DLT applications will take a wide variety of forms.”

The group is also developing a high-level DLT architecture – a reference framework – detailing the key elements of a DLT platform.

“We aim to build clarity around how DLT platforms should be described and assessed,” says Vice-Chair of the Focus Group, Wei Kai, Team leader of the blockchain research group at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).

The Focus Group is studying high-potential DLT use cases and DLT platforms said to meet the requirements of such use cases. These studies guide the Focus Group’s abstraction of the common requirements necessary to describe a DLT architecture and associated assessment criteria.

“We believe that this approach could help industry and government to undertake their DLT journeys with greater certainty,” says Wei Kai. “We welcome your contributions – no matter their source, contributions will be judged on their merits by a very diverse, dedicated group of engineers.”

Meet China’s blockchain community in Beijing

The Focus Group will meet next week in Beijing, China, 9-12 October 2018, within the second annual Trusted Blockchain Conference, a conference bringing together over 1,000 experts to discuss the innovation required to fulfill the blockchain ambitions of China’s national development strategy.

The following meeting will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 14-17 January 2019, in conjunction with a workshop focusing on blockchain innovation in BRICS countries.

Join the group’s mailing list, request access to documents and sign-up to a working group on the homepage of the ITU Focus Group on ‘Application of Distributed Ledger Technology’.