International Organization for Standardization's Tokyo meet for Global Blockchain Standards is a significant move for the Blockchain Industry.
Future standardization in this area can take the development of these technologies to the next step by providing internationally agreed ways of working, stimulating greater interoperability, speedier acceptance and enhanced innovation in their use and application. - Craig Dunn, the Chair, ISO/TC 307
California, USA (PRWEB) November 17, 2017
In what could be the largest collaboration spanning across the globe on a technology, 27 member countries has come together to establish ISO/TC 307, the committee formed to establish global standards to propel Blockchain technology forward.
The committee which comprises of international experts from around the world are meeting in Tokyo this week and setting the future course of standardization in this area.
They are formalizing the formation of working groups around terminology, reference architecture, taxonomy and ontology, use cases, security, privacy and identity and smart contracts.
Blockchain Technology once owed its popularity to the Bitcoin network. But now it has gone far and beyond Bitcoins and found applications in Banking, Manufacturing and Healthcare among many other areas. It uses a distributed ledger that acts as a single version of the truth, with copies held by multiple parties, rather than each party holding its own ledger. This makes recon or the process of comparing accounts among parties, redundant.
Craig Dunn, the chair of ISO/TC 307, ISO’s member for Australia said, “Future standardization in this area can take the development of these technologies to the next step by providing internationally agreed ways of working, stimulating greater interoperability, speedier acceptance and enhanced innovation in their use and application.”
Raj Chowdhury, Managing Director of HashCash Consultants, representing the Bureau of Indian Standards in the ISO committee said, "At ISO, we are building the technical specifications to be used by Blockchain platforms around the world to achieve Standardization and Interoperability. We have all come to realize that we would certainly see many blockchain platforms at play and even more instances of their private versions. We would experience a truly connected world if these blockchains are able to seamlessly communicate with each other. A global standard would accomplish that.”
ISO is working on the standards at a time when there had been a call from the industry for such standards to elevate the utility of blockchain based system. There were several open source and company driven initiatives that aimed to create standards around this technology but had failed to gain consensus among platforms and users.
An ISO driven initiative is likely to solve this problem.
The next meeting for the technical committee is due to be held in six months time, in London.
Those interested in getting involved in blockchain standardization should contact their national ISO member.