Incubation means different things to each of us. For those of us in the technology space, when we hear the term “incubation” we think of a start-up organization being incubated with venture capital support or within a higher education institution.
On March 13, 2018 Open Identity Exchange will begin the process of incubating the Distributed Ledger Foundation (DLF). This builds on the increased interest in blockchain by members of the Open Identity Exchange. OIX members providing this seed funding and others supporting the DLF are confident that the OIX infrastructure and project process will enable a successful incubation funded through OIX Directed Funding.
The Distributed Ledger Foundation (DLF) is a new industry consortium made up of companies from private industry as well as non-profit organizations. This new industry consortium aims to promote reliable, predictable and secure distributed ledger systems and shape tomorrow’s governance. It will be an open resource for the distributed ledger community, building governance best practices and informing governments, commercial organizations and others on issues critical to the success of widely distributed networks. For more information, visit www.distributedledgerfoundation.org.
Today, most OIX members have significant investments in blockchain. Almost all OIX Board member companies have active, enterprise-class pilots/POCs testing distributed ledger technologies that cross jurisdictions with self-regulatory business models. They are representative of the growing global interest in how distributed ledger technologies work and how they might work together in the public and private sectors. This new OIX initiative aligns with member interests.
So what is DLF incubation at OIX? It means we’ll support the creation of a legal entity and governance structure based on our experience. As part of the project process, we’ll report out on the progress of DLF incubation via OIX White Papers and OIX Workshops. DLF work with OIX and other partners on a relay race of a global set of Workshops as feedback and recruitment platforms. OIX and DLF will establish a membership structure that encourages membership in both organizations. DLF will collaborate with other foundation in the blockchain space while consulting with experts in London, Amsterdam, Singapore and Sydney. In this way the DLF plans to engage and inform regulators, legislators and policy makers as well as the community at large.
A good example of DLF maximizing the OIX platform is the 2018 OIX Series of Blockchain, Identity, Governance and Trust Workshops that joins OIX’s joint legal research on trust frameworks with members’ need to better understand the alignment of financial incentives with good governance, open standards for smart contracts and best practices for voting systems map onto the many opportunities that distributed ledger technologies enable. The Workshops will be an open international collaboration to test the value of the proposed DLF to provide research on governance and education for governments, commercial organizations and others.
I will be Acting Chairman of the Distributed Ledger Foundation through the incubation period while a governance structure is established and a Board of Directors with International industry, government and technical expertise is recruited. I will work closely with the DLF Advisory Committee and Kay Chopard Cohen, DLF Executive Director, to accomplish these incubation goals.
Please contact me with any questions or if you are interested in learning about getting involved in the Distributed Ledger Foundation.
Don Thibeau
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