A post by Erwin Voloder, Senior Policy Fellow, EBA
On October 25, 2022, we had the pleasure of premiering a webinar done in partnership between the European Blockchain Association (EBA) and Blockchain-Based Service Network (BSN) on cross-border blockchain services between Europe and Asia. (Watch the recording here)
Today, blockchains exist in various forms and structures with differences across their degrees of decentralization, consensus processes and scaling solutions just to name a few. What this means is data and asset transfer between blockchains is difficult and delays mass technological adoption. What is needed, especially in a cross-border context, are unifying standards regarding interoperability, governance and data safety standards for industry.
These standardized frameworks will enable the handling of regulatory and operationally compliant microservices. The focus of the webinar was to take a closer look at how different macroregional distributed infrastructures are forming in Europe and Asia, and what is being (and can be done) on an implementation level to ensure smoother cross-border blockchain services in the future.
Shedding light on the work under EBSI and BSN
To shed more light on the current work under the European Blockchain Service Infrastructure (EBSI) we invited representatives from the European Commission including Joao Rodrigues Frade – Head of Sector DG DIGIT and Maxine Lemm Policy Officer, DG DIGIT to give their take on how Europe is preparing for the future of cross-border multichain services.
Their counterparts from East Asia included Yifan He, CEO of Red Date Technology and our moderator Tim Bailey, Vice President Global Sales, Red Date Technology, who provided complementary insights on what the BSN/Chinese approach has been with regards to the issues under discussion.
Considering the corporate angle with guests from the industry
The panel would not be complete without input from corporates who stand to benefit equally from an integrated and standardized business environment. Pedro Lopez-Belmonte, Web3 and Technology Innovation Manager at Richemont and Peter Wong, CTO at Prenetics gave the corporate angle from a European and Asian perspective – telling us more about what they currently see as emerging trends and what industry requires from the public sector to drive mass adoption further.
From status quo of implementation to SSI – the topics discussed
Our panelists gave important insights into various topics such as
- the status quo of blockchain implementation in Europe and China,
- the existing types of standards in the blockchain industry and where more emphasis should go in the future,
- the treatment and transfer of different digital assets across regions and
- how cross-chain communication between different cross-border approaches to self-sovereign identity (SSI) will look in light of existing data regimes and frameworks such as the GDPR.