Blockchain for Social Good @ Bruxelles, 21 giugno 2016

The workshop is organised by EPSC (European Political Strategy Center), DG CONNECT (Communications Networks, Content and Technology Directorate-General), DG FISMA (Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union Directorate-General), DG GROW (Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs Directorate-General) and the JRC (Joint Research Centre).

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is not just Blockchains and Blockchains is not just Bitcoin. Experts are saying that the Internet will come to be seen as the background technology that made distributed ledger applications possible. Will DLT really bring a more profound change to our societies over the next ten years than the internet has over the past ten?

The event aims at tacking stock of existing activities in this emerging field, considering their regulatory and standardisation implications, as well as at defining a roadmap of how the European Commission can contribute to these developments, in particular through Horizon 2020 actions.

Provisional Agenda:

9:30 Introduction by the hosts (Committee of the Regions, DG Connect)

9:40 "DLT Beyond financial applications", by Primavera De Filippi, CNRS, Research Fellow at Berkman Center For Internet & Society

An overview of existing as well as potential applications of DLTs

10:45 Coffee break

11:00 Roundtable: Strengths and limitations of distributed ledgers technologies for social applications – concrete examples

Sharing experiences and recommendations for impactful research on distributed ledgers. What has worked and what has not? What are the main roablocks?

Aaron van Wirdum, Bitcoin Magazine
Brett Scott, Alternative Finance Explorer, University of the Arts London
Vinay Gupta, Hexayurt Shelter Project
Jessi Baker, blockchains for tracing provenance
Amor Sexton, Adroit Lawyers, specialist digital currency legal practice (tbc)

12:30 Lunch Break

14:00 Roundtable: Decentralising governance (Chair: Robert Madelin)

What could the EU / EC bring? What is necessary to promote practical use cases and governance? Do we need any standardisation/regulation?

Jakob von Weizsäcker, Member of European Parliament
Philippe Dewost, Caisse Des Dépôts, France
Philip Boucher, Policy analyst, European Parliamentary Research Service
Pindar Wong, Cyberport, HK, Scaling Bitcoin
Markku Markkula, President of European Committee of Regions (tbc)
Francesca Bria, NESTA, Digital Social Innovation project (tbc)

15:30 Coffee Break

16:00 All: Defining a roadmap for EU research on Blockchains for Social Good

What has the EC done insofar? Brief summary of ICT call on "distributed architectures for decentralised data governance" (DG CNECT) and DG FISMA activities

Open discussion and conclusions

17:00 Closing