Team

Overview

As we observe the landscape of blockchain business technologies we clearly see that day after day it requires interoperability, cross functional capabilities, and business cooperation from different industries. Blockchain consortia are playing a key role in terms of technology implementation in society for business use cases, from big corporations to SMEs.

Each member’s individual success is based, at its core, on the group’s success; as such, every participant must commit to building a shared platform that provides a strong business case for each member in the short term, whilst also outlining a memorandum of understanding about the value drivers to pursue in the long term.

There are several key questions one should consider before determining which type of consortium, new or existing, best fits for its own exigences, such as  for instance:

1. What are the consortium goals? Do they align with your corporate goals?
2. What is the participation structure and governance model?
3. What is the funding model?
4. Who owns the intellectual property?
5. What are the consortium business, technology, and regulatory risk factors?

In addition many areas have still no secure answer,  the business is very peculiar and cross functional so, no theory in the books is available.

• Consortium formation process: (MOU - pre agreement - final).
• Business goal conjunction and formation model.
• Governance: e.g. “off-chain” and “on-chain” considerations that members need to agree and align on.
• Operating considerations: Legal entity structures Liabilities, IP management, Funding,Use case development, Technical considerations, Risk management, Data management, privacy, and ownership, Dispute resolution.
• Operative and technical standards will be running within the Consortium.

Finally, an increasing number of businesses are joining existing blockchain consortia around the world or, in some cases, developing new consortia to meet their specific needs and requirements. There is still a lot of work to be done before and after organizations decide to join a consortium. Like other critical business decisions, several factors should be considered before making any move. In subsequent articles of our blockchain consortia series, we will more closely examine the finer points of building and executing an effective consortium strategy, and take an in-depth look at specific points around technology and governance.

To conclude, we propose to co-create some documents for the TFSIG on blockchain TF consortiums and the associated governance.

It will cover the present landscape, the understanding and development of these consortiums, their governance and opportunities/challenges of interoperability.

It is well recognised that a key component of the digitising of trade finance and the associated benefits to global trade will be the continuing development of healthy, vibrant blockchain consortiums and networks that can service and adapt to the global market complexity.

Areas of interests

• Trade Finance Consortium Landscape (who’s who directory)
• Trade Finance Consortium Governance (corporate governance formation, ongoing corporate governance, business operations );
• Trade Finance Consortium Standards (business standards, technical standards).

Scope

The activities  would  include:

• Documenting market initiatives, corporate practices, operations.
• Identifying related reference architectures or business cases (for example business or technological consortium.
• Sharing stories of successes, failures, opportunities and challenges. 
• Exploring and addressing cross-industry corporations, options and decisions.  
• Identifying existing or needed common critical  issues in strategy,  formation, governance, operation processes.
• Working towards proposing solutions to the problems identified.
• Collecting and  sharing best practices around blockchain consortia or  facilitating introductions between companies who want to join existing consortia.
• Identifying conferences or other opportunities to connect face to face, as well as submit talks or present as a group at an event.
• Identifying the business community and building an inclusive platform for early adopters to contribute through their experiences. 
• Identifying all different common practices across Hyperledger TFSIG so as to build a standardization across the different parties and efforts. 

Work products

The anticipated initial work products will include (but are not limited to) a set of documents describing Consortium model formation governance & operations. 

All members of the group are entitled to submit a lecture proposal with the intent of showing a useful business case cooperation.

All the participants are invited to share their experiences providing a use case in terms of business origination, formation, governance, operation. At the end of each meeting the lecturer will provide his “key rule” according to his presentation that will be inserted in a collector of best practices that should support all the members in the operations.

Meetings

Project lead

The following individual Mr. Eugenio Reggianini has volunteered to serve as a project lead.

Team

Eugenio Reggianini

Andrea Frosinini

Julian Gordon

Atul Patel

Neha Jain

Kamlesh Nagware