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Challenges facing DLT/Blockchain

• Lack of clarity on the terminology and perceived immaturity of the technology.
• Perceived risks in early adoption and likely disruption to existing industry practices.
• Insufficient evidence on business gains and wider economic impact.
• Lack of clarity on how the technology is/would be governed.
• Uncertainty around regulation.
• Multiple non-interoperable implementations and resulting fragmentation.
• Maintaining security and privacy of data.
• Ensuring integrity of data and strong encryption.
• Energy-intensive nature of the technology.
• Lack of clarity regarding smart contracts and how to implement them through DLT/Blockchain.

Opportunities for DLT/Blockchain

• Providing efficiency gains (including cost savings) for businesses and end-users.
• Enabling new economic and business models.
• Improving resilience and security in transactional systems.
• Empowering end-users and improving trust in transactions.
• Offering benefits for recording and reporting of data and activities through immutability capabilities.
• Enabling management of digital identity through public key cryptography.
• Providing the underlying mechanism for smart contracts and enabling smart auditing capabilities.

Prospective role of standards in relation to DLT/Blockchain

Although it is too early to consider standards related to technical aspects, standards can potentially play a role in the following areas:

• Establishing consensus on consistent terminology.
• Ensuring interoperability between multiple implementations.
• Addressing security, privacy and data governance concerns.
• Fostering trust, including managing end-user identity.
• Facilitating implementation of provenance tracking.

In this report, we present an overview of the current landscape of DLT/Blockchain developments and closely examine the issues that are central to the development of DLT/Blockchain. We articulate a set of areas for further consideration by the DLT/Blockchain community regarding the potential role of standardization. Rather than providing a definitive list of topics, the aim of the study is to provoke further discussion across the DLT/Blockchain community about the potential role of standards in supporting the development and adoption of the technology. The research has been carried out using a mixed methods approach involving a focused review of the literature, in-depth interviews with experts from public and private organizations, and an internal workshop.

• Chapter One

  Introduction and overview

• Chapter Two

  Study design and methods

• Chapter Three

  Assessing the challenges and opportunities in relation to DLT/Blockchain

• Chapter Four

  The prospective role of standards to support DLT/Blockchain

• Appendix A

  Overview of definitions of DLT/Blockchain

• Appendix B

  List of search terms used in the accelerated evidence assessment

• Appendix C

  Protocol for semi-structured interviews