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INATBA explores use of DLT in large EU trading consortia – Ledger Insights
The International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA) recently published a relationship exploring EU consortia and global trends in industrial blockchains. It is an extensive report that examines both public and European consortia EBSI/European and private consortia across multiple industries. Blockchain has been embraced much more in some industries than others. It is strong in mobility, energy, and circularity. The surprising area where DLT seems to have less traction is supply chain AND digital product passports. However, this is at the consortium level. In many cases, individual companies are making great progress.
One observation we would add is that there are many European consortia compared to the US. What brands come to mind when you think of innovation? Are they US or European? Consortia are notoriously difficult and have a poor track record of success. We have seen this particularly over the years with blockchain consortia. Startups often have a better chance of success if they set themselves up as a supplier. Or better yet, if they create a solution that adds interoperability with existing vendor solutions in a specific sector.
That said, some of the biggest names in finance started out as consortia: think Visa, Mastercard, and Swift.
The INATBA document
Not all the consortia present in the INATBA paper are currently using blockchain. Most have expressed interest in the technology or the consortium members include blockchain startups.
For example, Catena-X (part of GAIA-X) is the large automotive supply chain consortium. There were plans to use blockchain in the beginning and the consortium includes several blockchain startups and large companies that are blockchain friendly (e.g. Bosch, BASF, BMW). However, the crypto winter coincided with the selection of the technology and the paper states that the timing discouraged the adoption of the technology.
Manufacturing-X is an early stage consortium and INATBA recommends considering blockchain and self sovereign identity (SSI). CIRPASS is a digital product passport consortium that does not use blockchain internally, although one of its case studies does use DLT.
Although the automotive supply chain consortium does not use blockchain, the technology is quite popular in the mobility sector. An example of a consortium that uses it MoveIDa GAIA-X mobility identity project led by Bosch. It uses a self-sovereign identity and involves two layer 1 blockchains, Fetch.ai and Peaq. Fetch is closely associated with Bosch. An example of a MoveID use case is the ability to discover and manage electric vehicle charging units.
While the paper makes extensive reference to several INATBA members (most notably 2Tokens), the coverage is balanced enough to also include several non-member companies.
Overall, the paper is a useful overview of many of the active industry consortia in Europe. It remains to be seen whether the INATBA community will be able to convert some of the DLT holdouts.