Dispatches From Spain

Notes on the Spanish Blockchain Ecosystem

I spent the last couple of weeks traveling in Spain and it was a thrilling to first-hand experience the energy powering the adoption of decentralized technology in a significant country in the European Union. While Berlin and Zug gather all the headlines, I’d go out on a limb and say that the climate for blockchain app development is pretty mature in Spain and exciting things are lined up for the near future.

The enthusiasm for blockchain technology was visible everywhere and spanned every industry conceivable — tokenized securities, digital banking, exchanges, cannabis, supply chains, credentials, concert tickets, cold wallets, payment gateways, fractional ownership, real estate, parking systems, tracking wine and olives, 3D printing, convergence of AI/IoT with blockchain, and of course establishing new governance models and tokenizing football clubs. Since the region is also a hotbed of political activism, there were plenty of entrepreneurs working on transparency in voting mechanisms and social governance. The country’s proximity to EMEA markets and a history of openness and cosmopolitan setup also makes it an attractive place to do business. Indeed, the conversations were very similar to the ones we are used to in the silicon valley and the appetite for investment seemed to be on an upward swing.

Of particular interest to me was how the industry is banding together with public administration authorities to usher in a change. Alastria is a case in point. The network is a blockchain ecosystem of more than 350 entities, both public and private, tasked with creating blockchain-based tools in line with Spanish and E.U. legal frameworks. Still on a test network, Alastria is an ambitious project to provide an agnostic blockchain platform with a clear focus on inter-operability with other projects such as Parity networks and HyperLedger Fabric. The development opportunities are spread across the stack from infrastructure to application layers.

An important aspect of the Alastria network is an integrated Alastria ID, a standard Digital Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) model to ensure that transactions on the Alastria network are legally valid and that they comply with Spanish and European regulations. Last September, Aragon become the first Spanish autonomous community to provide blockchain-based services at the state level, utilizing the Alastria network and ID. Catalonia has not been far behind and the Generalitat of Catalonia has approved a preliminary bill to establish an e-voting system for residents abroad for major elections and other voting processes in the autonomous community.

In the private sector, SEAT and Telefónica are jointly working on a proof-of-concept for tracking vehicle parts throughout SEAT’s supply chain. As part of its collaboration with Alastria, SEAT is testing the network for applicability to financial record keeping and facilitating trade finance management.

The consortiums that exist today are industry-based and focus on very specific aspects. A multi-industry consortium [such as Alastria] aiming to strengthen its use within a regulatory framework is something that has never been done before. This is why there needs to be a change in the regulatory framework to unlock the potential offered by Blockchain.

- Montse Guàrdia, Alastria

With ProteumX, we are a part of the evolving Spanish blockchain ecosystem and hope to actively shape the conversation as it matures.

Originally published at https://proteum.substack.com.