Australian National Blockchain will bring opportunities for disruptive startups, says Data61 senior research scientist
CSIRO’s Data61 data innovation group is collaborating with law firm Herbert Smith Freehills and technology giant IBM to build the Australian National Blockchain (ABN), a large-scale cross-industry platform for smart contracts.
The ABN is intended to serve as a national infrastructure, allowing companies to join the network to share digitised contracts. Work is currently underway on a pilot, with the platform expected to be able to host live transactions by mid to late 2019.
The decentralised nature of blockchain technology means, once the platform is available, there will be one version of a contract accessible to each involved party. Permission-based access is intended to allow data to be exchanged securely, and signatories can confirm the authenticity and status of the contracts.
Organisations will be able to digitally and transparently manage the lifecycle of a contract through the blockchain network, through the negotiation and signing stages, but also throughout the term of the agreement.
Speaking to StartupSmart, Dr Mark Staples, senior research scientist at Data61, said the plan is to create a way of helping organisations work together more efficiently.
“Ultimately it’s a new type of technology infrastructure that is going to provide a basis for a whole lot of innovation opportunities,” he says.
“It’s not primarily about automating the law, it’s about using contracts better as a tool,” he adds, saying it could create “new kinds of ways of working together, automated through the smart legal contracts”.
While the focus is currently on legal contracts, “blockchain smart contracts aren’t always smart and aren’t always contracts”, Staples says.
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