IOTA set to enable European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI)
The IOTA Foundation’s distributed ledger technology is competing to enable fully digitized cross-border e-government services for citizens and enterprises in Europe
BERLIN (September 2021) --The IOTA Foundation, the non-profit driving open source distributed ledger technology for a new digital economy, has been selected to participate in the pre-commercial procurement process for the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), a network of blockchain nodes across the European Union (EU).
Established in 2019 by the European Blockchain Partnership, the EBSI aims to develop a distributed ledger network across the European community to support cross-border services between governments, businesses, and individuals. Its goals are to enhance cross-border mobility, reduce waste of resources, enforce compliance with EU regulations, and encourage the growth of tech hubs and projects. Thanks to EBSI, verified information will flow quickly and reliably Europe-wide.
The EBSI network’s nodes will be run on both by the European Commission and by individual member states. Current and planned use cases include the digital management of educational credentials, the establishment of trusted digital audit trails in notarization, SME financing, data sharing among authorities, and a European digital identity. After initial implementation in the EU, the technology will also have the potential to extend beyond the 27 member states.
The IOTA Foundation is well-positioned to enable EBSI’s vision of ledger-based secure transactions for an EU digital single market. IOTA’s technology fits EBSI’s goals of being scalable, open, decentralized, and interoperable. It is permissionless by nature, but can grant permission to some resources and control data distribution to ensure EU data-sharing compliance. It also supports high throughput and a large number of nodes.
In addition, IOTA’s feeless nature makes micropayments possible and opens up the network to a broader potential audience. Anyone can afford to use it, whereas the cost of transactions on other blockchains makes notarizing small information exchanges, such as the cost of stamping a single document, prohibitive. IOTA is also energy-efficient and complements the European Green Deal, the EU’s overarching aim of making Europe carbon-neutral by 2050.
“We are very excited about moving forward in the rigorous EBSI procurement process, and we feel great about our chances to play a central role in bringing distributed ledger technology to European administrations,” said Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder and Chairman of the IOTA Foundation. “EBSI is an excellent fit, both technologically and ideologically. We do not need to adapt an existing blockchain or to start developing a new solution that fits EBSI’s needs. Our core technology already offers a near-perfect match to the strict requirements and precise specifications for a European ledger infrastructure, and it is ready for widespread adoption with only minimal adjustment.”
“EBSI is a project that is fully in tune with the IOTA philosophy and vision, and progressing through the strenuous procurement process has been an exciting and rewarding experience,” said Dr. Navin Ramachandran, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of the IOTA Foundation. “The notion of an open-access, scalable, and versatile distributed ledger technology that will form the backbone of Europe’s digital single market is a natural fit to our own guiding principles.”
“Creating a blockchain network on a continental scale is an ambitious and technically challenging endeavor – just the kind of project IOTA has been built for,” said Dr. Serguei Popov, Co-Founder and Member of the Board of Directors of the IOTA Foundation. “The EU is taking a massive step towards fulfilling its digitization goal, and we look forward to the opportunity to contribute our production-ready technology to this momentous development that will change the way trustworthy information is shared across Europe and beyond.”
To find out more about the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), visit the website of the European Commission: https://ec.europa.eu/cefdigital/wiki/display/CEFDIGITAL/EBSI
About IOTA Foundation
The IOTA Foundation is a global not-for-profit foundation incorporated and headquartered in Germany. The IOTA Foundation's mission is to support the research and development of new distributed ledger technologies (DLT), including the IOTA Tangle. The Foundation encourages the education and adoption of distributed ledger technologies through the creation of ecosystems and the standardization of these new protocols.
The IOTA Tangle moves beyond blockchain by providing the world's first scalable, feeless and fully-decentralized distributed ledger technology. The Tangle uses its own unique technology to solve three fundamental problems with blockchain technology: high fees, scaling and centralization. It is an open-source protocol connecting the human economy with the machine economy by facilitating novel Machine-to-Machine (M2M) interactions, including secure data transfer, feeless micropayments, and secure access control for devices.
