The US Should Take 'Leadership' Role on Blockchain, IBM Report Argues

Developers and companies researching blockchain technology are looking to the U.S. government to help spur adoption, a new report by IBM claims.

Written by Thomas Hardjono, director of the MIT Trust: Data Consortium, the report summarizes the results of a series of roundtable meetings held by the Congressional Blockchain Congress - a group of lawmakers in the U.S. Congress who advocate for the tech - in 2017 and 2018.

The meetings were spearheaded by Representatives David Schweikert and Jared Polis, and aimed to understand potential use cases for blockchain as well as accelerate use cases of the tech, according to the report.

The report explained that "Strong industry consensus exists around the belief that blockchain technology will be the leading edge of 'next Internet' economy."

Each meeting's goals were to better explain use cases, find common interests, speed up the deployment of the technology, establish what might prevent adoption and find components which may be used across businesses or industries.

The report explained that attendees from the meetings came to three "Overarching common themes." Namely, that participants believe there needs to be "Leadership and vision from the government," that there should be "Close collaboration between industry and government" and that there must be "Increased research and test-bed deployments."

"Currently there is a need for greater vision and leadership across government regarding the development of technology for a digital-blockchain economy, and the U.S. role in this future economy," the report stated.

The report did not provide specifics on the attendees or which projects they may have represented.

Representatives from Ripple, Sweetbridge, Joust Bank, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Microsoft's Decentralized Identity Foundation, the Sovrin Foundation, the Linux Foundation and IBM all gave presentations at one or another of the meetings.

Further, there were few repeat attendees at each meeting, the report stated.