EU Considers Iota Foundation As Official European Blockchain Platform

The European Commission has selected Iota Foundation as one of the seven entities that will participate in the first stages of the development of an official distributed ledger technology platform for the European Union. 

What Happened: The EU's European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) is supposed to facilitate EU-centric transactions increasing their efficiency and improve the local supply chain while also reducing the carbon footprint, according to a Wednesday announcement. 

The Iota Foundation — the nonprofit organization that supports the growth of Iota's IOTA/USD ledger — will help with cross-border relations between governments, businesses and citizens. The platform will allow for the "digital management of educational credentials, the establishment of trusted digital audit trails and document traceability, SME financing, data sharing among authorities, and digital identification.”

The nodes of the EBSI network will be managed by the European Commission and by individual members of the European Blockchain Partnership within member nations. The Iota Foundation was previously one of the 30 blockchain organizations selected to submit an official application for the project in November 2020.

Following the more recent selection, the project will now follow through a two-year pilot project fueled by a 6.2-million-euro grant split among the seven selected applicants.

After the first year, only two projects will compete in the final selection round. This last phase will see tests of the platform's features such as digital product passports and IPR management cases.

The selected firm will receive 1.6 million euros and be chosen to deliver the EU's blockchain infrastructure.