ISO Clears Australia’s Blockchain Development Proposal

Australia has been cleared to lead the way towards standards that guide implementation of blockchain technology, reports said on Thursday (Sept. 15).

The International Organization for Standardization, also known as ISO, has reportedly given Australia clearance for its proposed blockchain standards development plan.

“International blockchain standards will play a key role in creating greater market certainty and confidence, while supporting regulation of financial transitions, commodity exchanges and asset transfers,” said Standards Australia, the body that proposed the standards, in a statement. Standards Australia will head the committee to guide implementation of blockchain technology and the messaging standards.

The ISO committee is comprised of members from the U.S., U.K., Germany, Canada, Japan and others, reports said, and is looking to generate a streamlined and standard language for “interoperability among systems, privacy, security and terminology.”

“The technical committee will consider key protocol differentiating elements, including permission models (private and public), smart contracts (contracts whose terms are recorded in computer language rather than legal language), application programming interfaces and other elements,” Standards Australia said in its proposal, which was first submitted in April.

According to reports, Standards Australia is looking to use SWIFT’s ISO 20022 messaging standard as a baseline for blockchain standards.