Consensus Conference Blockchain Standards Discussion Group: Industry regulators should take action!

Rage Review : On the last day of CoinDesk's 2016 Consensus Conference, enterprise standards for blockchain applications were discussed in depth. Participants said it is important to avoid developing industry standards that will burden developers and startups. Any long-term blockchain standard solution should start from the industry itself. The topic discussed by participants was to avoid "reinventing the wheel" or developing new blockchain technology standards based on the standards adopted by other existing technologies.

Translation: Nicole

The final day of CoinDesk’s Consensus 2016 conference featured an in-depth discussion of enterprise standards for blockchain applications, with a packed house at Wednesday’s event discussing the topic.

Speakers included author William Mougayar, Simon Taylor, head of distributed ledgers at Barclays Blockchain, and Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, in what started out as an open question-and-answer session that ultimately evolved into a conversation around the nature of the standard.

Early on, Buterin pointed out the difference between business executives and managers setting standards — the standards that developers might need to actually use blockchain applications.

Vitalik Buterin

He told those in attendance:

"Standards are something that people, especially business people, love to talk about. What's been overlooked is the need for developers to develop standards. I sometimes think, 'Well, where do we start? Do you know what standards people need?'"

The Q&A session that followed began to focus on interoperability, competition, the process of developing different standards for different industries, and the elements that any kind of standard requires.

A common topic discussed by participants was to avoid "reinventing the wheel" or developing new blockchain technology standards based on the standards adopted by other existing technologies.

Participants said it was important to avoid industry standards that would burden developers and startups, an issue discussed both during the question-and-answer session and during the breakout panel presentations.

One participant said:

“We need to give blockchain technology time to develop and developers time to create their products.”

Other areas of interest include the development of standards for open and closed blockchain network relationships, programming languages, privacy and applications to specific projects such as smart oracles.

Ultimately, the panel concluded that more discussion is needed, though for many participants, any long-term blockchain standards solution should start with the industry itself.