On 5th September, a multistakeholder roundtable was organised to connect key stakeholders in India and Australia’s blockchain ecosystem and provide the stakeholders with an overview of the blockchain project. The roundtable included a preview of the results from our research so far in the first phase and case studies of non-crypto blockchain applications that highlight the importance of technical standards in both countries.

The Centre for Communication Governance (CCG) is collaborating with the Australian National University's Tech Policy Design Centre (TPDC) on a long-term, cross-disciplinary blockchain project. This collaboration is enabled by a bilateral strategic cooperation between India and Australia, namely the Australia India Cyber and Critical Technology Partnership ‘AICCTP’ program and is supported by the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). 

The objectives of the project is to study and assess the Indian and Australian blockchain landscape on following issues:

• Trends and factors shaping the global blockchain marketplace and their impact on blockchain development in India.
• Emerging use cases in the non-cryptocurrency space (focusing on use cases with a societal, economic, and security benefit) as well as standards applicable to them, nationally and internationally
• Effectiveness of existing blockchain standards, nationally and internationally and opportunities for the application of these standards to advance India and Australia’s shared vision of open free secure rules-based Indo-pacific.

The project will identify gaps and challenges, if any. It will provide evidence-based recommendations and build a multistakeholder community to enable meaningful engagement with standards discussions at the national and international levels.