invezz.com
As the crypto and blockchain adoption continues to progress, the European Commission decided to start its blockchain initiative that will result in an EU-wide DLT platform. However, the Commission decided to hire a number of projects and companies that will work on developing the platform and making it operational.
One of the seven projects turned out to be the Iota Foundation, a non-profit organization that developed its open-source DLT platform called Tangle. The Foundation will support the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), and help with making it cross-border and connected to governments, businesses, and citizens of various European countries.
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The platform is meant to be used for the digital management of educational credentials, establishment of trusted digital audit trails, as well as things like document traceability, data sharing among authorities, SME finances, digital identification, and alike.
The network itself will consist of nodes dedicated to conducting EU-centric transactions, expanding the EU supply chain by adopting emerging technologies, and reducing the European carbon footprint. The nodes will be managed by the European Commission itself, with a 27-member EU jurisdiction. Individual members of the European Blockchain Partnership in individual regions will also participate.
The competition for the best developer is about to start
Interestingly, the Iota Foundation was chosen alongside six others from a total of 30 different candidates who applied for the role in November 2020. After receiving the EBSI approval, the project is preparing to start a two-year pilot scheme, with a grant of 6.2 million EUR dedicated to the seven applications.
Over the next two years, the participants will go through rigorous testing across different applications, and the ones that fail the tests or prove inefficient enough will be eliminated, with only two projects remaining for the final round.
The project that successfully completes all phases over the next two years will receive a service fee of 1.6 million EUR, and it will be the sole project to work on the EU Commission’s DLT infrastructure and eventually deliver it.