As Enterprise Blockchain Matures, ETSI Launches Industry Specifications Initiative
This week, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization in Europe with more than 850-member organizations worldwide, announced the creation of a new Industry Specification Group on Permissioned Distributed Ledgers.
ETSI is one of only three bodies officially recognized by the EU as a European Standards Organization (ESO).
The group will analyze and provide the foundations to operate permissioned distributed ledgers to be deployed across various industries and governmental institutions.
While the majority of blockchain development in the early phases used permissionless ledgers (the “public blockchain” supporting cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin), ETSI is focusing on the enterprise IT blockchain permissioned approach.
A blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, linked together with cryptography. By design, the data from a blockchain cannot be modified. It is an open distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties in an efficient and secure manner.
Permissioned blockchains are increasingly being used for digital identity attributes, object tracking, or the verification of service level agreements.
The founding members of the Permissioned Distributed Ledgers group include Alastria, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Mineco, NEC, Telefónica, and Vodafone.
“The new ETSI group will work on the challenges related to the operation of permissioned distributed ledgers, business use cases, functional architecture and solutions for the operation of permissioned distributed ledgers, including interfaces/APIs/protocols and information/data models as well as other topics,” the organization’s announcement said.
The work focus will be discussed during the kick off meeting where officials of the group will be elected on 24 January 2019 at Telefónica, Madrid.
ETSI provides members with an open and inclusive environment to support the timely development, ratification and testing of globally applicable standards for ICT-enabled systems, applications and services across all sectors of industry and society.
Arti Loftus is an experienced Information Technology specialist with a demonstrated history of working in the research, writing, and editing industry with many published articles under her belt.
Edited by Ken Briodagh
