Blockchain Initiatives | European Blockchain Convention

foreign [Music] yes that works great well first of all uh thank you all thank you all for being here with us on a Friday afternoon I know you're all dying to get your drinks but that's why I would like everybody to actually do a big round of applause for yourself for being with us together all until the end of this great European blockchain convention so great thanks a lot thanks a lot for the European blockchain Convention of course for inviting us for organizing these amazing three days of debates we're good everybody has a mic yes great well then we can get started so my name is Thomas astatsi I'm the head of Regulatory Affairs at blockchain for Europe brussels-based trade Association representing the blockchain sector I'm really happy to be here today to talk about different blockchain initiatives we're gonna have a nice little tour around the whole European Union to talk about different initiatives and I'm very happy to do that today together with these three experts and uh here we have uh JJ from the alastria blockchain ecosystem we have Nana dukazov from the Slovenian government and we have joao Rodriguez Friday from the European commission so a big round of applause for our speakers thank you and then let's get started as we said we wanted to have a bit of a round right a bit of a tour around Europe and where else should we start if not from Brussels I mean I might be nice there sorry but everything actually does start in Brussels when we talk about the European Union so let's start in Brussels let's talk with the European commission and let's ask joao then what is happening in Brussels we know that you've been working at the European commission since 2014 on a lot of different interesting initiatives aimed at the digitalization of services and infrastructure so can you tell us a bit more about for example the European blockchain service infrastructure so thank you very much to the organization to have us again in uh well in this amazing event really in the blockchain convention it's the first time in person we have already been present several times but it was always remote so it's really great to be here and meet all of you um my name is Robert I come from the European commission but I don't really do the regulation side so don't look at me for Mika or any of the other regulations I'm on the side of the implementation of Information Systems one main project that we are involved in is the so-called European blockchain Services infrastructure or ebsi some of you might have heard and indeed the European Union is deploying its own blockchain so we are talking about a totally separate blockchain that is run by the member states and that blockchain will be used for something that we are discussing now as decentralized government or digoff it is a public permissioned blockchain which means that everyone can read from that blockchain but only permissioned entities can write on the blockchain we are basing the blockchain on common open source protocols so you will be able to have access to the nodes the nodes are run as I said by the member states the European commission supports the deployment of those nodes we don't really run a node Nana is here from the European blockchain partnership that is responsible for the governance of this blockchain it includes all EU member states as well as Liechtenstein and Norway and this is I think a very interesting way also of presenting web3 because we were looking at web3 only from the D5 perspective meaning cryptocurrency or crypto projects but government is also part of this movement of web 3 of the decentralized web as I said we are using ebsi for fundamentally provide Public Services which are based in the same principles as decentralized Finance so it's to use that same way of thinking but for public services and epsi is one of those projects and of course what we want to avoid is the fragmentation across initiatives of the member states and to find synergies because we want to build a very large ecosystem where the private sector can also be a part of so you are all invited to participate great very very interesting and it's great to hear that you know the European commission as we also heard this morning in the very first panel debate there is people in the European commission that are actually looking at this technology for its potential rather than just for the risks so that is great but I'm sure that as we talked about last week when preparing this panel debate you told us that it's also quite challenging talking with your colleagues in the European commission and showing them what why are we even doing this what are the benefits of these Technologies and why should they care about it can you tell us a bit about those challenges yes indeed I mean this transition from the web to with over Reliance on platforms everyone like was absolutely let's say and fundamentally trusting those platforms not so long ago today it's not the case so that opens a space for this idea of let's look at web3 let's look at D5 let's apply it to other public services so for example we are working with many policy dgs because you might not know but when a year regulation or Au directive comes out it usually foresees exchange of information between the member states or a totally new information system so there we are helping the policy dgs to actually use this technology for their own purposes I give you an example because examples are very important here um the case of a diploma as you might not know or might know a deployment PDF actually is quite easy to fake right so the idea today is where do you go you go to social media you go to LinkedIn you go to the usual platforms or you call whoever has issued a diploma and you try to see whether or not that specific document is authentic we decentralized government what we are trying to do in epsi is actually to make that information verifiable so to turn things around today information is very difficult to verify but very easy to fake if we turn that diploma into a verifiable credential if we put that verifiable credential on a wallet and the wallet will not come from evsi it comes from public and private initiatives it can then be shown to any verifier that can also look information into the blockchain the blockchain does not contain any personal data whatsoever that's all on the wallet but the blockchain helps because it contains a comments of data that everyone can trust which in this case is actually the information about the issuers the universities that can issue that type of information and the accreditation that they have to do it so we bring these kind of examples using verifiable credentials for verification of information or track and Trace that we are working with the uipo the European IP office to show that these are Innovative Technologies but they are not experimental we can actually use them in the real world in the real life and can improve the life of citizens because this verifiability is privacy preserving as I said there is nothing on the blockchain regarding you know personal data so it means that it's a win-win it's win for governments they have a much more decentralized let's say system operating at the same time for the private sector for example the wallets come from the private sector you can make your wallet compliant or conformant to ebsi and finally for the citizens because it's privacy preserving so this win-win-win is what we are trying to explain to all the policy dgs so that in the future we can have more examples such as the one that I just explained great that was a great answer great example of how this can be a challenging effort but of course one that someone needs to do so thanks a lot also for that work and let's move on then as you also mentioned the European blockchain Partnerships and we have here Nana who's a the Slovenian representative for the European blockchain part the Partnerships so great to have you here would you like to tell us a bit more about that these European initiatives and then maybe also what is happening in Slovenia that you couldn't want to share with your audience yeah thank you [Music] introduction of blog uh actually this was the first win for Europe when we established this in 2018 um and it was a clear stream that we want to develop um either European blockchain Services infrastructure and the use cases um this is uh how can I say a unique network of member states uh and in cooperation with the European commission usually we have on the European commission some expert working groups that are constant and everything like this but this specific European blockchain partnership was dedicated really to start to develop a common European infrastructure for blockchain on one hand and also the primary use cases that would show how that infrastructure functions uh in the cross-border and interoperable manner so what was very important was that we decided at the first stage 2018 to start to develop SSI self-saver identity which was developing the further years to the stage that we can now really talk about that interoperable um identity that we can use it on blockchain there are there was um another case which was mentioned by johau it was a diploma use case it is also in very mature stage of development and we had the traceability use case actually notarization which we will Revitalize now uh from that moment on because we are going to develop that trace for EU use case but I will talk about this a little bit later so the structure of European blockchain partnership was the policy group where the members of Representatives of member states are members and this is the policy orientation Group which is a deciding on the use cases which is deciding on development of the infrastructure and how a blockchain will be positioned within the European institutions and also on the national levels so we started to open the appsi notes or in each member State and it was quite long time to test the pilot phase of epsynotes and FC infrastructure but now when we have it in production phase it is even more demanding okay because um all the times new standards are required but it's very very useful thing to start to work on this and use this in uh really interoperable manner this was the first thing then the second thing we established technical group and now the technical group is taking care of development of the use cases and the FC infrastructure and also use case groups that were dedicated to develop certain use cases on blockchain and this was two three years I think um after that to also DG digit contributed a lot of knowledge and human resources for development of Epsy for further development and now we are at the stage when um we are going to further upgrade SSI through social security pass use case through diploma use case but I'm very proud of one project that we win on the call digital Europe program call it is called trace for EU um it will be dedicated for creation of the umbrella traceability um first the traceability of the data and the documents uh and on the other hand the traceability of products and materials so I would when it comes to the point that will be mature and the common architecture will be established I will I would like to invite you all of you to participate and to develop your use cases also from the private part here from the European part I would like to mention some more things um we are in the very historic moment that at this moment creating the first European I call it Institution for blockchain it will be edic for EBP and FC this is European digital infrastructure infrastructure Consortium for European blockchain partnership and FC and it will function like a governance structure governance system for uh every part of the uh that blockchain ecosystem either for the infrastructure for use cases but also very close connections uh with them um ecosystem in Europe you know we have very strong ecosystem in Europe I will mention here uh European blockchain Observatory and Forum it was uh established even before European blockchain partnership it is very strong um network of uh researchers of companies that have a lot of track records and knowledge on specific areas then a commission initiated also the establishment of inadba this is international industrial organization and we have also very close cooperation uh I have to mention um for example blockchain for Europe is also one of the partners and European blockchain convention is as well very welcome here because um you have a lot of knowledge and a lot of good track record here within this ecosystem this would be for the European side maybe later About Slovenia or wrong no as you want if you have a couple of examples that you want to give quickly to the audience about the Slovenian initiatives I think you know everybody will be interested yeah of course okay I'm also proud for Slovenian initiatives you know um because we were one of the initiator of this European blockchain partnership um communicating the Declaration that was adopted 2017 in Slovenia for uh blockchain after that uh we were one of the first uh countries that adopted a strategic document on blockchain it was called our action plan or strategy um and we were also the first country launching a national blockchain infrastructure and what is good uh that infrastructure called C chain was also tested and was listed among the three um ones that was were tested within them FC uh because it was the one moment of time it was a case to onboard um the different National infrastructures probably we will hear about Alaska later on but now we didn't leave the idea behind okay and this is still the case that after certain um steps of the development of Epsy that integration for scaling up of FC will uh also be the case um also to mention maybe um because we heard about a lot about metaverse and nft and everything like this we were also the first country launching nft nft for uh like digital memorables for Expo and we showcased five industrial industrial design projects for the industry and we showcased five tourists destinations on NFD showcasing how the people can use that nft for coming to Slovenia and see how this can be marketed um the the last thing um okay we established last year last year we had one huge conference on the metaverse and the web3 so we established a World metaverse Council I also invite you uh all to to connect with me on LinkedIn or anywhere else and to join World metaverse Council it is becoming very strong organization having um the work streams like regulatory like sustainability standardization and everything like this so we will somehow come close to all the topics that were discussed in this conference and I hope that we can develop this also together thank you thank you so much and I think just the enthusiasm that you're you know that you're using when talking about this project shows how proud you are and I think you know for every I hope that you didn't get scared with all the abbreviations that we might have used on this stage of course there's a lot of different projects but as you can see that's the beauty of it right there is a lot of different initiatives happening in Brussels at EU level and also in Slovenia for example and now we actually wanted to end our leader European tour coming to Spain in the beautiful country that hosted Us in these past few days and I'm very happy to talk now with JJ and please if you want to introduce yourself introduce the illustria blockchain ecosystem and tell us a bit more about what is happening in this country thank you thank you Tomaso and thank you the European blockchain convention Organization for having us it's a great pleasure to be here um yeah we we started with alastria which is a different concept but but but Chase is kind of the same principles we started in 2017 is um it grew a lot it's already now 600 members all private and uh we we got to this plateau of stability in in blockchain and the blockchain implementation in the country all through contributions we are a non-for-profit Association what we provide is first infrastructure for the entrepreneurs for the Shapers for the for the builders but also for the big corporates to deploy different use cases in our networks networks are best effort networks provided by by our different partners and uh we we work with different Technologies we are agnostic and we have one uh one network called uh called t for telsus built on Quorum other one uh built on besu uh for different use cases and uh as I mentioned is fully private what we've been doing in this what we call elastra 3.0 I've been appointed um to to run the organization for a couple of years and the obsession has been also together and to convince the government to join um it's been totally private built on contributions and now we got lucky because we're more and more signing arrangements and an agreements with the different uh regions in Spain to provide what what we call isbe which is the infrastructure Services blockchain Espana which is quite inspired in ebsi is kind of an acronym is what we do uh because yeah the European Union level we're 27 member states but when you look through Spyglass in every single country you have these nuances the details the different jurisdictions and of course Spain is quite a decentralized country we behave a bit as a Federation of different regions so there you need also blockchain to to implement we're going to implement one single node per region is 17 regions so um and we'll be deploying it um it took a while to to to to convince but uh for sure it's going to be fruitful and unsuccessful and we got profit of the Next Generation EU funds and we will be implementing these uh these this network in a higher standard able to sign contracts able to provide a service level agreement to every single player out there in the ecosystem that that wants to play with blockchain that has a blockchain strategy and even if they don't have we're also providing a strategy and guidance to the companies that want to gather with us and want to to play the network effect as I mentioned this more than 600 members already and hopefully we'll have this network in uh in a year time year and a half something like that providing the best standards in the market of course federating networks public permission with other protocols that are out there the so-called Layer Two we're working with the polygons with the Avalanche with the polka dots of this world trying to connect and Federate something that is usable that is interoperable and that is multi-sectoral which is the most important part that is a very interesting also overview of what is happening in the Spanish ecosystem and with the illustrate blockchain ecosystem in the lead of that and I think one thing that you mentioned uh in our conversations but also just now the role of private Public Partnerships how how what do you think of that what do you think that is the key for the future development of what we are all talking about here can be pure public use cases I think these ones can be deployed and for sure when we speak with the government with the central government but also with the different layers of government we have they're all pursuing different uh administrative and bureaucratic processes that they know by heart that that blockchain could play an interesting part but they don't really they're not really that expert to figure it out so we're helping them so this is the pure public of course the pure private the large companies they already know they've been you know uh fiddling and and testing different Technologies now it's not about testing it's about implementing that is for sure we know we heard it before here in this in this in this Congress and uh but the interesting the The Sweet Spot is the is the combination of public and private in order to pay taxes more efficiently in order to uh to to cross different processes that are super important for a country and for the whole for the whole European region so I think this is a sweet spot is the way we is is the place where we're performing um it's not an easy one but nothing is easy um but bringing together the private and the public and also liaising with other networks that are out there for example the blockchain or lacnet protocol that is a neutral operator that is there in Latin America and the way we can Bridge European businesses to Latin America is super cool and uh and uh and this is this is the way we understand uh the challenge and this is the way we are going to provide value to our to our partners and to our members that is great thanks a lot and I think as we are moving closer to the end of this panel debate and then also this beautiful three days of convention I want to start again with you JJ because we also uh took you know discussed this report that you worked on with the vision for a tokenized Europe and I think if we're a whole year everybody who's here probably has or shares parts of that Visions but after three days of discussions and debates and conferences how do you see the net the clear steps that we need to take to reach that Vision what is the message that these people should all bring back home as as you know one of the main use cases or one of the main streams in in working with blockchain is tokenization for sure is not the only one because it appears to be the only one for some people but it's not uh but for sure I encourage the audience here to download the the tokenized Europe 2025 which is a report that we've collaborated with other firms Santander is there other banks of the European Banks has come else bank and the important side is also the corporate side and the factories and in the industries and the non-financial players that are yelling for having this tokenization phenomenon which is a level of growth in this very uncertain moment of time and history we're living and the the the main finding of the of the of the report is that is that tokenization is going to add a lot in terms of GDP for Europe from now to 2025 what we need we need the standards we need interoperability we need we need to stitch the fragmentation that we have in Europe there are Front Runners there's people that run maybe faster but we have to no one no one can be left apart and or behind and uh it's going to be for sure an important level of growth and uh and we will will be encouraging it from alastria and from the different the different parts of the ex-system great thanks a lot and maybe then let's ask Nana and Java what do you think about this how do you define the net steps that we need to take in Europe to reach that vision of a tokenized Europe okay um I liked the term that was used and I think that with all the things that we are doing now we are very uh getting very close to that digong um first um I think that we think we need to think about three um pillars okay one is a regulatory pillar we are we were talking a lot about Mika about the other data act maybe data governance act EI this is under preparation and there will be a lot of discussion on this in even in the further years on the other hand here we have a very strong pillar on the technology development and use case development um and the third pillar is ecosystem so we all need to to take into account to put all this together and I hope that appsi will manage to present the ecosystem to present the tool for integration of other protocols and also the tool for testing and application of the use cases on on blockchain so this would be that's for for the future I think we said it all so exactly that that's what we will continue to do and open decentralized ecosystem that you can also join so do have a look we keep in contact don't hesitate to reach out and it was really a pleasure to be here today and to see so many of you and the Young Generation as well involved in wanting to contribute it's really encouraging it energizes us and we keep in touch that is a great message to leave I think our audience with so thanks again a big round of applause please for our speakers [Applause]