Distributed Ledger Technology Group
Sunday 22 January, 2023
Blockchain Interoperability and its relevance
Sunday 22 January, 2023
Data on Demand Blockchain for Connectivity commercial settlements
Overview
The Distributed Ledger Technology Group (DLT) group develops and maintains common framework and standards; promotes dialogue, collaboration and thought leadership through its events; and drives DLT education in the telecom industry. Telco blockchain activities will include use-cases in areas such as payments, identity, wholesale settlement, supply chain, fraud and security and blockchain as a service. The group is ledger and technology platform agnostic and intends to work with varying technologies suitable for a given use case.
This group is an Industry Specification Issuing Group, operating under AA.35 governance and reporting to the Industry Specification Approving Group.
What is DLT?
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) refers to the technological infrastructure and protocols that allows simultaneous access, validation, and record updating in an immutable manner across a network that’s spread across multiple entities or locations. Example of DLT is Ethereum, Hyperledger, Corda, etc. DLT is a secure, robust, and immutable decentralised digital ledger of transactions enabling asset value/information storage and exchange, via business rules based autonomous transaction processing. These business rules are instantiated in the form of smart contracts and equivalent logic.
Blockchain has been used generically in the industry to capture the functions of DLT and for the DLT group activities the term may be used interchangeably with DLT. There are private/public/hybrid forms of DLTs. The latter, hybrid, is a combination of public and private which is often implemented in on-chain/off-chain constructs. Though private is most common in the enterprise and telco industry, hybrid is expected to increase in implementation.
What the DLT Group does?
- Identify focus areas and use cases within each area for focused discussions/conceptualisation.
- Establish a dedicated workstream, to provide a vehicle for moving from concept to POCs/MVPs to reference industry implementations for each use case identified.
- Foster the adoption of DLT 3.0 Architecture as a global industry standard for blockchain implementations.
- Identify common business and technical challenges along with standardisation and create solutions, guidelines or GSMA specifications to handle these.
- Identify eco-system partners and stakeholder groups and build long-term engagement channel.
- Externalise the common DLT group story through events, webinars, and other capacity building exercises.
- Inform the standards for operational GSMA DLT network and utilise shared infrastructural elements for testing, trials, and commercial launches.
GSMA DLT Group activities are determined by the below: Work items are developed through consensus with all GSMA DLT members. Items commonly detail and promote opportunities for ecosystem organisations and bring industry collaboration for improved customer experiences. Where options are identified, DLT group details business opportunities and provides specifications along with guidance for operators on commercial rollout and adoption of DLT based technologies and services.
DLT group produces whitepapers, common specifications, reference industry implementations, open-source code, and common group collateral material.
How is Success Measured?
| KPI | Strategy |
| POCs-MVP to Business | Measure transition from PoCs and/or MVPs to actual business for each use case |
| Standardisation | Assess industry gaps in Blockchain-DLT, position GSMA as a key player for gap closure |
| Adoption Blockchain 3.0 Reference Architecture | Measure industry adoption of GSMA Blockchain 3.0 Reference Architecture that results in sustainable business |
| Policy Partner | Position GSMA-DLT as regulator-policy partner globally as part of ecosystem extension |
| Capacity Building | Develop and execute webinars highlighting opportunities, lessons learned and business |
| How Will We Organise? | DLT group activities are organised into three sub-groups:· Technical · Business (Use Cases) · Governance & Policy |
* Member Gateway, SLACK, and GitHub Channels will be available to scale our communications within these workstreams.
How to Get Involved?
GSMA members can join monthly teleconferences and task force calls, simply ask for a copy of our virtual meeting schedule. GSMA members who would like to join the DLT Group or would like to request more information on any of the GSMA DLT Group activities, please contact us. Non GSMA members interested in joining the DLT Group should firstly Membership.
Communications including liaison statements (from external bodies) should be sent to [email protected].