World Economic Forum

In this report, the authors explain the core differences between the internet of information as a network of similar networks and the blockchain as a balkanized internet of value, where real assets are at stake. The report then goes onto what the authors have found to be the most urgent threats to this resource, which they view as governance challenges. By governance, they mean stewardship, which involves collaborating, identifying common interests and creating incentives to act on them. The authors do not mean government, regulation or topdown control. The report explores governance needs at three levels: platform, application and the ecosystem as a whole.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) published a comprehensive, 130-page report which aims to complement existing distributed ledger technology research by providing a clear view into how financial service functions can be reimagined.

The creation of this report involved extensive outreach and dialogue with the financial services community, innovation community, academia and a large number of financial technology startups. The dialogue included numerous interviews and interactive sessions to discuss the insights and opportunities for collaborative action.