#EUBlockchain

Do not miss the opportunity to attend the EBSI Masterclass at the first ebcTALKS held by the European Blockchain Convention. This event will take place on 15 December 2020 and will explore the capabilities and services offered by EBSI.

The European Commission has just opened a call for tenders for novel blockchain solutions that will allow the EBSI to support new use cases - the call closes on 28 January 2021!

If you missed the latest "Piloting with EBSI, explained" webinar on EBSI roadmaps, you can find the full recording here!

Please contact us if you have any questions, comments or suggestions for future content.

CEF SMO Team

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EBSI team to give a Masterclass at first ebcTALKS on 15 December 2020

The European Commission is proud to be speaking at the first ebcTALKS, hosted by the European Blockchain Convention to discuss the future of blockchain in Europe.

The CEF EBSI is at the forefront of the blockchain revolution, leveraging on blockchain technology to support the delivery of cross-border digital public services throughout Europe. The European Blockchain Partnership (EBP) has selected seven use cases:

1. European Self-Sovereign Identity Framework;
2. Notarisation;
3. Diploma management;
4. Trusted Data Sharing;
5. European Social Security Identification Number;
6. SME financing and;
7. Asylum management process.

This Masterclass will provide useful insights into the aforementioned use cases. You will also learn about the evolution, structure, operations, governance and legal aspects of EBSI.

This event is free and open to anyone! You can register here.

EBSI piloting webinars

On 19 November 2020, we held our second "Piloting with EBSI, explained" webinar on how to 'Roadmap your Pilot'.

At the event, participants learned first-hand about the EBSI roadmap, focusing on the diploma use case. This event was a unique opportunity for participants to actively discuss the roadmap and the expected benefits and impact of the pilot roadmap with our experts.

Do not worry if you missed it - you can find a full recording of this event here.

European Blockhain Partnership discusses the role EBSI can play in delivering enhanced public services in national recovery and resilience plans

The digitalisation of public administrations is one of seven flagship areas for investments and reform under the €672.5 billion Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). At the initiative of the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP) co-chairs, during their quarterly meeting on 27 November, members of the EBP Policy Group discussed how EBSI, and blockchain technology more generally, can contribute to achieving this goal. Materialised as a network of distributed nodes across Europe delivering cross-border public services, EBSI tangibly demonstrates how blockchain technology can enhance the way citizens, governments and businesses interact digitally. To access the RRF, Member States must submit to the European Commission a national Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) that allocates at least 20% of its budget to supporting the digital transition.

News from the European Blockchain Observatory and Forum

The European Blockchain Observatory and Forum has published its report on the latest development in the EU Blockchain Ecosystem. This report captures the current state of technological, market and regulatory developments of the 27 EU Member States, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. It is available to download at https://www.eublockchainforum.eu/reports. It is the first in a series of reports that will be published addressing topics selected in accordance with the European Commission priorities.

The findings of this report will be debated in an online workshop organised by the European Blockchain Observatory and Forum in the first quarter of 2021. Subscribe to the European Blockchain Observatory and Forum to stay informed.

EU Blockchain pre-commercial procurement call for tenders launched

The European Commission has launched the call for tenders for the EU blockchain pre-commercial procurement (PCP) to develop new capabilities for EBSI. This supports the development of new capabilities for the future version of EBSI to enable the implementation of various use cases with high volume and velocity requirements whist enhancing the sustainability, security, interoperability and robustness aspects. The aim is to go beyond what existing blockchain solutions can offer. PCP progressively selects the best value for money solutions that the market can develop by awarding R&D service contracts to a number of providers in parallel in a phased approach that covers solution design, prototyping, solution development, installation and testing. PCP thus provides a first customer reference for contractors with innovative solutions. For more information please visit the webpage of the EU Blockchain PCP and Tenders Electronic Daily.

New CHAISE project to prepare a blueprint for sectoral cooperation on blockchain skills development

The CHAISE Erasmus+ skills alliance will develop a 5-semester VET qualification programme in 11 EU languages. In addition to technical skills specific to blockchain, the CHAISE Curriculum will also include non-technical soft skills to respond to the specific needs of modern work environments (problem-solving, team work, and a customer-oriented and entrepreneurial mindset). All learning materials developed by the project will be consolidated into an open online course. CHAISE will also develop the first-ever “blockchain specialist” occupational profile in line with existing competences and qualification frameworks to guarantee a common language for digital skills descriptions.

The EBSI Technical Office has been interacting closely with Convenors and other stakeholders to prepare the development and deployment of the first production version of EBSI v2, which is scheduled for the end of Q1 2021.

The technical team has drafted multiple proposals on how the different groups of stakeholders will be involved in the technical governance of the production environment of EBSI.

Further alignment is planned around the EBP quarterly meetings and beyond. The technical team has further analysed how the production networks will be deployed and will discuss this subject with the Member States.

On the security front, the risk assessment is complete and the security plan is in development.

The Trust and Data privacy track is still ongoing. It is focuses on:

• GDPR aspects, including risk-based assessment of the GDPR compliance of EBSI and its use cases, roles and responsibilities of accountable actors, data subject’s rights and data protection;
• Legal agreements on e.g. DLT, SSI, trusted registrar and trusted issuers registries;
• Legal analysis and legal requirements of the use cases.

• 9-10 December 2020: Paris Blockchain Week Summit – This event will gather the most prominent blockchain and digital asset organisations from all around the world for two days of insightful talks.
• 15 December 2020: ebcTALKS, "Blockchain Revolution inside Europe" – The CEF EBSI team will speak about various aspects of EBSI, as well as the use cases that have already been implemented.

Blockchain and remote voting

In the wake of the US elections, where a record number of remote ballots were cast via post as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the debate on traditional versus modernised voting systems has never been more relevant.

Recently, the uses of blockchain have become more and more diverse. Blockchain is emerging as a potential solution to many of the problems people associate with traditional voting: centralised authorities whose processes are opaque to the public, voting fraud, human error, not to mention the vast amount of time and resources that go into counting of votes.

Blockchain has the potential to solve many of these issues:

• As a digital system, it would virtually eliminate human error;
• The 'immutable' addition of each block to the chain would make fraudulent votes easy to trace;
• It would make the results of elections available more quickly;
• It could lead to increased voter turnout among young people, making for stronger democracies.

However, what is most exciting about the prospect of blockchain voting systems is the switch from a centralised, physical source of records to a decentralised, digital one. While traditional elections are "black-box' processes controlled by centralised state power, a blockchain voting system would be distributed throughout the population. Each voter could have access to an authentic, immutable record of their own vote, and the voting record as a whole could be made more transparent to everyone. Blockchain's distributed ledger system would take power away from centralised authorities and put it in the hands of the people, building the foundations of a bottom-up democracy.

Blockchain has yet to be widely adopted at the level of national elections, but has already been piloted as a voting solution within political parties, and by private companies for their cross-border stakeholders.

Of course, this solution in its current state is far from perfect. There are still the problems of voter anonymity and personal data protection, while ensuring that all citizens have equal access to the system. Nonetheless, if we can address these problems openly and improve the digital literacy of voting populations, perhaps people will start to put greater trust in blockchain, which in turn could build greater faith in democracy itself. It is already a well-established solution for online cryptocurrency exchanges - perhaps the potentials of this new, promising technology can be harnessed to help build a truly participatory democracy.

Encryption

Encryption is the process of encoding information with an algorithm from the original form of information, called plaintext. The encrypted message is called ciphertext. Only authorised parties can decipher the ciphertext and convert it back to the original plaintext.

Decryption

Decryption is the process of decrypting data that was previously encrypted (made unreadable) back to a readable form.

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