• The IOTA is the only public blockchain network selected by the European Commission for the European Union Blockchain Pre-commercial Procurement (PCP).
  • The final phase of PCP is currently underway and it shall run for a year after which the European Commission will decide whom to pick.

On Monday, November 21, blockchain platform IOTA announced that it has made it through to the final phase of the European Union Blockchain Pre-commercial Procurement (PCP).

The PCP is the EU’s cross-border service blockchain initiative that is testing and developing different innovative solutions for the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI). IOTA is only one of the three contractors to make it this far in the EU’s program.

As a result, IOTA will be sharing and offering compliant cross-border blockchain solutions with the bloc. Other contractors selected along with IOTA include Billion and ChromaWay. Additionally, IOTA Foundation co-founder Dominik Schiener has also confirmed the development. He said:

Yes, it is true. IOTA has been selected as one of 3 finalists for the EU Blockchain PCP to build new solutions for the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure.

IOTA is the only public permissionless network that was selected by the @EU_Commission as a finalist for the @EU_EBSI PCP. This is a great opportunity to legitimize Crypto, and to help rebuild the trust and confidence that the fraudsters and grifters have destroyed.

Schiener also asserted that they are on the path of driving real-world crypto adoption. The community also lauded the efforts of the IOTA Foundation and the team working on the program.

European Blockchain Pre-Commercial Procurement

The report from the European Commission said that the final phase of the PCP is underway. Currently, it has been scheduled to run for a year. In order to find out who the European Commission picks, enthusiasts will have to wait till Q4 2023.

The final development and field testing will happen in this final phase or Phase 2B. The official announcement reads:

In order to deploy cross-border blockchain services across Europe as soon as possible, ongoing EBSI work performed by the EBP is currently focusing mainly on developing use cases that can be implemented relatively easily by using existing blockchain technology.

It is clear that there are gaps in existing blockchain solutions to enable the delivery of more demanding cross-border blockchain services (e.g. regarding full compliance with the EU legal framework, security, interoperability, robustness, sustainability). The future evolution of the EBSI thus requires new, improved blockchain solutions.

The blockchain PCP will focus on the development and testing of a novel distributed ledger that builds on the EU legal framework. Besides, it must also follow the GDPR Regulation, the eIDAS regulation, and the NIS Directive.

Related: ‘IOTA 2.0 is a living beast’ – Big updates for consensus, tokenomics and congestion control

The European Commission was looking for a blockchain platform that meets the core requirements of “throughput, interoperability with other systems, security, robustness, high sustainability / reduced environmental footprint, energy efficiency and continuity of the service”. The IOTA network perfectly meets all of these demands.