Digital Economy Applications of Distributed Ledger Technologies Workshop

Delegate Information

Thursday 02 June 2016 AMBA Hotel Marble Arch London

Agenda

10:00 Registration. Tea and coffee available.

10:30 RCUK Introduction (Tracy Keys and Jerome Ma)

10:40 Introduction to Distributed Ledger Technology and Functionality (Phil Godsiff)

10:50 Legoblock exercise (Chris Speed)

11:50 Limitations of Distributed Ledger Technology (Cathy Mulligan)

12:00 Lunch

12:45 Provocative Precedents (Leanne Kemp)

13:00 Facilitated Sessions, (Roger Maull and Phil Godsiff)

14.00 Refreshment break

15:15 The UK Government View (Martin Glasspool)

15:30 RCUK Q&A (Tracy Keys and Jerome Ma)

15:45 Event close; event available for further networking. Refreshments available

List of Attendees

Tomaso Aste UCL Sarah Atkinson King's College London John Baird EPSRC Jeremy Barnett Resilience Partners Limited Tom Bartindale Newcastle University Paul Brown HP Enterprise Mike Bryant King's College London Aeron Buchanan Ethcore Ltd Emily Clayton Bank of England James Davenport University of Bath Sam Davies Digital Catapult Silas Davis Eris Industries Borja de Balle Pigem Lancaster University Paul Durrant UK Games Talent and Finance CIC David Firth CESG Martin Glasspool Government Office for Science Philip Godsiff University of Surrey Ross Hancock Deloitte Garrick Hileman University of Cambridge Derwen Hinds CESG Jon Johnson Centre for Longitudinal Studies, UCL Paul Kearney BT Leanne Kemp Everledger Tracy Keys EPSRC Robert Learney Imperial College London Feng Li Cass Business School, City University London Jonathan Libenau London School of Economics Giacomo Livan University College London Panos Louvieris Brunel University London Jerome Ma EPSRC Xiao Ma University of Warwick Toktam Mahmoodi King's College London Roger Maull University of Surrey Alistair Milne Loughborough University Hélène Muddiman ProTechU, Hollywood Elite Music Catherine Mulligan Imperial College London Tope Omitola University of Southampton Julian Padget University of Bath Toby Proctor Innovate UK Nicholas Robinson Royal Holloway, University of London Vedad Sabljic American Express/University of Sussex Steve Schneider University of Surrey Duncan Sheehan University of Leeds Chris Sier FiNexus Andi Smart University of Exeter Ruth Slade EPSRC

Chris Speed University of Edinburgh Claire Tansley EPSRC Philip Treleaven UCL Chander Velu University of Cambridge Rhia Visavadia EPSRC Adam Webb Digital Catapult Tom Wilkinson Home Office Zena Wood University of Greenwich

Delegate Information

Richard Adams Senior Research Fellow, University of Surrey Expertise: Innovation, sustainability, business models, DE research

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? The Blockchain enables, for the first time, secure transfer of digitised assets without the need for trusted 3rd party intermediaries. To date, applications are mostly associated with cybercrime, illicit trade and financial services. We are not indifferent to the range of possible ends Blockchain technology can serve, and this project is focused on the emergence of Blockchain applications developed in the service of socially beneficial outcomes: Blockchain for Good (B4G). The realization of B4G raises questions about types of problem amenable to Blockchain solutions. Of particular interest is use of Distributed Ledger Technologies to address the 17 Sustainable Development Goals articulated by the United Nations: an ongoing project to address SDG 16.9 to “provide legal identity to all, including birth registration, by 2030” provides a springboard for this wider agenda.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Mapping the the different instantiations of the SDG challenges, both between and within individual SDG categories. - 2) Developing a coherent, generalisable analytic framework - 3) Synthesis of individual use cases for cumulative knowledge/theory building - 4) Access to and coordination of research in different scenarios

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Developers and entrepreneurs building DLT solutions to environmental and social challenges. Diverse academic researchers active in the space, from anthropologists to computer scientists.

Tomaso Aste Professor, UCL Expertise: Computer science-complexity science

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? • Personal data sharing • New financial services • Reputation generation and management • Digital identity management

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? • Tendency toward centralization of digital services (how to avoid it) • Economics of personal information • Trust and reputation • Systemic risks in digital economy caused by sentiment volatility

Sarah Atkinson Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures, King’s College London Expertise: Digital Audience Cultures (new modes of audience access and engagement); Transmedia Studies; Industrial Digital Film Production; Live Cinema, Digital Archives, Creative Digital Cultures.

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? • Tracking and maintaining data, metadata, and links to assets created through a collaborative creative production process such as filmmaking, games design, or transmedia experience design, so that they are preserved and accessible (and monetized) for future audiences. • The cross-linking and relationships between digital film archival assets across collections (asset and data management, meta-data creation and linking). • Digital Rights Management and protection, sharing, access, use and reuse of Intellectual Property (IP) within and across the domains of Film, Broadcast and Games, in convergent & transmedial industries.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? • How can distributed ledgers be developed that effectively map to, integrate with and build on existing industry workflow processes, softwares and distribution chains in the creative domains? What new commercial opportunities & business models could emerge enabling access to the assets generated by these processes? • How can diverse and disparate digital archival methodologies and frameworks in existence across the world, be mapped and reconciled through distributed ledgers to enable global archival access, searches and monetization across archival collections? • How can distributed ledgers be developed that are responsive and adaptive to a global digital economy which encompasses a diverse and shifting range of state- and country-specific legislative frameworks?

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Film Production Companies, Broadcast companies, Games Designers and Games Studios, Transmedia Production Companies, Film Archival Institutions, Intellectual Property Law specialists.

Researchers of: Mathematics; Computer Science; Information and Communications Technology; Economics, Management and Business Studies, Socio Legal studies, Intellectual Property Law.

Jeremy Barnett Director, Resilience Partners Limited Expertise: Barrister and ex Visiting Professor of law Informatics

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Algorithmic regulation, automated dispute resolution and other 'regtech' solutions.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Engaging the market.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Working with UCL centre for Blockchain technology and the Financial Computing Centre.

Tom Bartindale Senior Research Associate, Newcastle University Expertise: HCI

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? As part of our ongoing research into participatory media technologies and new forms of content commissioning, we are interested in exploring the role of distributed ledgers for two key areas: maintaining provenance of meta-data associated with community created media, and allowing the production of meta-data to become decentralized to support freedom of contributors to annotate media.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? We see trust as a key issue in the development of distributed ledgers for media creation applications. Trust is key between consumers and contributors, as well as in trusting meta-data produced by third-parties. Part of this issue involves a discussion around how to link content in a distributed ledger to external content in a way that prevents abuse, (e.g. by subsequently changing the related content).

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Our research currently focuses around professional photographers and news organisations as the source of content, with the community providing additional meta-data. We would like to work with a wider range of content producers and communities who can envision uses for such a content provenance and meta-data ecosystem, particularly initiated by community members rather than professionals.

Sharon Baurey Head of Program – Design Products, PI FmS RdM, Royal College of Art Expertise: Design, materials’ engineering, communication, electronics and computer science.

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Based on our work as an ESPRC RdM (Redistributed Manufacturing) network, we would like to see Distributed Ledgers used as an integral part of the product design and production process in the near future. This could encompass material tracking (from initial extraction through to use and then to end of life and end of life and back into a circular economy) and the use of smart contracts and their parsing as a storytelling device (highlights those who are part of bringing a product to a customer and how the value of the goods is distributed across the supply chain).

A propositional use of blockchain technologies to both record and also speculate on the impact of potential decisions has the potential to radically alter the role of designers, exposing where design decisions are made as well as highlighting the overarching factors that shape products: exploitation of incentives, availability of materials, policy, labour markets etc.

The properties of Distributed Ledgers can be exploited to enable more responsive certifications and regulation compliance, enabling a shift towards decentralised and non linear production meshes. A landscape of decentralised production infrastructure and associated Distributed Ledgers could enable reactive production re-routing based on resource availability, end-user preference or supply chain threats.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? • Explore the integration of Distributed Ledgers with design research methods such as product teardown and remote moderated research to arrive at a series of product case studies. • Understand how the use of Distributed Ledgers might affect the design chain (all actors that influence a design outcome) • Identify the ways in which Distributed Ledgers might be deployed across various design for manufacturing models: distributed mfg / decentralised mfg / centralised lean JIT mfg. • Evaluate the potential of Distributed Ledgers within localised production ecosystems and value networks. • Develop a test production network with suppliers, brands and end users, to co-design appropriate regulation compliance and certification through Distributed Ledgers and trial responsive product rerouting.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Researchers: System architects, computer scientists, block chain experts, design management, service design, circular economy and sustainability experts, product designers, social scientists Companies: own brand manufacturers, open making / distributed manufacturing companies, material suppliers, waste management, logistics,

Gerard Briscoe Research Fellow, Glasgow School of Art Expertise: Digital Cultures

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? • Rural food providence, to provide an alternative to the mega-food chains, exploring economies of scope rather than scale. • Digital Creative Commons, Community Cloud Computing models, to explore alternatives to centralised vendor clouds.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? • Applying Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) in the wild in order to re- imagine how supply chains might function within the global economy. • Applying new DLTs to prove the authenticity of food, thus increasing consumer trust in food supply chains. • How could DTL provide community currencies, redeemable against resources in the community, to reward users for offering resources. • How to move the cost of service provision to the user base, effectively creating a micro-payment scheme, which would dramatically lower the barrier of entry for innovative start-ups.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Computer scientists, designers and economists

Paul Brown Cloud Strategist, UK&I, HP Enterprise

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? • Healthcare – Secure patient information sharing • Contracting/ownership – efficient distributed ledger for asset ownership • B2B Services - e.g. escrow – does it work • Hyper-Local currency – what does it take to get a new currency off the ground • Wearables data sharing e.g. Fitbit, Jawbone, etc. – can you share data securely? Could you also be paid for your data (coloured coins)? • IoT – is blockchain an efficient and secure data sharing mechanism for sharing IoT data.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? • The need to focus on outcomes and benefits rather than the application and infrastructure that the blockchain application sits on. • Benefits assessment of wider use case deployment and usage. • Design and development of usable use cases that have relevance in the real world • Timescales for developing and running use cases - picking useful use cases that can be explored and investigated in a short period of time.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? • Sectors - Healthcare, Consumer Goods, Government, IT sector, Retail • Researchers - those interested in developing use cases, thinking about strategic use of Use cases, business and societal benefits of deployment. • Interested in mix of B2B, B2C and C2G Services.

Mike Bryant

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? As the content industries, libraries and archives start to deal with larger amounts of digital content, techniques for managing data in distributed environments become increasingly important. In such environments, ensuring the veracity of data and maintaining trust in its provenance is a key challenge, and one to which the techniques underlying distributed digital ledgers may be applicable.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? • Understanding the long term sustainability and adaptive potential of distributed ledger based information management systems, e.g. the ability to evolve in a future-proof and backwards-compatible manner • Bridging the gap between the technical expertise needed to understand a distributed ledger based information management system, and the domain expertise possessed by users in the digital content industries and archives • Determining the socio-technical constraints under which a practical system would have to function

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? • Archivists, librarians, and data management specialists • Computer scientists

Aeron Buchanan Technical Advisor, Ethcore Lrd. Expertise: Blockchain/DLT Protocol Design

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Ultimately, the application of DLT is likely to be ubiquitous, but in the medium term I am particularly excited by applications in certification, particularly identity. More specifically, those use-cases that require the selective sharing of information, i.e. secret data access management. For example, having an accessible and robust certification of identity would have vastly improved the situation of Syrian refugees coming to Europe where both the EU and the refugees would have benefited. However, the more general certification use case has implications ranging from fraud reduction to health provision.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? There are several technical challenges around using DLT for data access management, mostly focused on advancements in SNARKs and decentralized distributed computing.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? The most interesting groups working on these important problems are those that have the long term vision for the potential of DLT, be it companies who are innovating around use-cases that assume the adoption of this technology in the future or academics who are mindful of the cases and are able to direct their research focus to take account of the practicalities of deployment and integration.

Emily Clayton Digital Currencies Team, Bank of England

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Why might central banks issue a digital currency? Theme 5: Response to fundamental change, One Bank Research Agenda (Feb 2015)

James Davenport Hebron & Medlock Professor of Information Technology, University of Bath Expertise: Mathematics/CS (Cryptography)

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Rights in digital artefacts - many artefacts have complicated rights attached to them, and may participants.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? • Given the artefact (which may well have been copied digitally several times), identify it. There has been substantial work here • Distributed ledgers are based on weighted consensus: how can we ensure this is not 'hijacked' • There are substantial concerns over running time as the use scales (see http://fc16.ifca.ai/bitcoin/papers/CDE+16.pdf ) and this needs addressing.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Organisations in the rights area: PLR, associations in the music rights industry (links already made with Kendra, ProtechU)

Sam Davies Lead Technologies, Digital Catapult Expertise: DLT Development for Creative Industries

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Use for decentralised market places for any digital assets. Initial research is in creative industries looking at games, film, music & art. Develop methods for secure & trusted collaboration & IP ownership and then use smart contracts and permissioning platforms to create automated asset & permissioning market places. This could then be extended to other areas such as energy, IoT or personal data. E.g. https://www.digitalcatapultcentre.org.uk/blockchain-smart-contracts-for-creative- collaborations/

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Scalability, market adoption, automated trading & permissioning, platform development, integration with other/existing systems & platforms.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? SMEs, start-ups, larger scale industry, academia, government

Silas Davis Core Platform Developer, Eris Industries Expertise: Software Engineering

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? We are working on a general purpose platform for smart contracts, but we see applications in financial settlement, legal contract paper and promissory notes, and types of workflow management as proving grounds for our permissioned blockchain technology. - - We are building developer tools, and a run-time architecture to allow smart contract writers to make use of the best distributed application components (blockchains, consensus, distributed storage etc) in a swappable fashion. We want to provide a run-time target that allows your packages to be run and deployed on different combinations of distributed application components without re-writing them.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Modularity and separability of software components for: • Consensus • State maintenance • Execution engines/virtual machines • Object management/queryable caches • Normalisation of APIs/RPCs for blockchain client libraries, package management of smart contract bundles. Areas of forward-looking research interest would be: • Non-determinism in smart contract execution (how to not break consensus whilst having non-deterministic execution) • Non-turing-complete execution models (purely functional, finite state machine, etc) • Scaling the blockchain - mechanical approaches to sharding the address space, can we probabilistically (or otherwise) weaken byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) to produce a network that scales in throughput as it grows? • (linked to the above) Federation of nodes - what would a super-peer/multi- master architecture look like where we maintain a BFT network at the super- peer (federated node) level, but scale using traditional methods within the federation.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Anyone - we are an open source company that wants to contribute to and take from the emerging blockchain and research community at the same time as providing process automation with private blockchains for banks, law firms, and other 'big business' right now.

Borja de Balle Pigem Lecturer, Lancaster University Expertise: Machine Learning

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Distributed data collection and analysis with strong guarantees on privacy preservation and tampering prevention. - - This type of technologies could be used to collect and analyze sensitive data from citizens and use it to inform policy-making decisions, while at the same time guaranteeing that the raw data is never revealed and the analysis cannot tampered with.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Develop distributed ledger systems supporting basic arithmetic operations, and implementing data analysis algorithms as distributed protocols on top of these ledger platforms.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Researchers with expertise in the design and implementation of distributed ledger systems, and researchers interested in answering some important research question requiring access to private data (eg. in health).

Naranker Dulay Reader in Computing Science, Imperial College London

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? 1. Authenticity of physical objects - The ability for individuals to check that physical objects are genuine and not counterfeit would be highly beneficial in domains such as consumer goods, medicines, wines, works of art etc. 2. Chains of Custody - The ability for individuals and investigators to provide strong evidence for conformance or non-conformance to particular rules or standards would significantly improve numerous areas including supply chains, athletes drug testing, building regulations, vehicle testing, etc . Use cases 1 and 2 overlap in many aspects

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? How to test for the 'authenticity' of physical objects, both single items (e.g. a work of art) and mass produced items (e.g. patented drugs, branded goods). What supply chain processes are needed in the manufacturing and distribution of physical items? How to leverage distributed ledger technology for the computing infrastructure? How to test physical items are authentic from mobile phones? How to scale to billions of manufactured items. - - How to reason with chains of custody evidence? What evidence is acceptable to an auditor, regulator, court of law, interested third party? How to avoid revealing proprietary internal processes, trade secrets while providing strong proof?

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Anyone interested in addressing the challenges of applying distributed ledger technologies to complex business and regulatory processes.

Paul Durrant Director, UK Games Talent and Finance CIC Expertise: Video Games Development and Business Development

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Smart contracts for creative teams where transaction variations between the team and others over time / project amendments etc are registered across a distributed ledger and the IP ownership proportions of the team as recognised by the ledger are used to determine royalty flows. - Potential to tap into our testbed project and pilot based around Tranzfuser project.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? APIs for platform integration to allow smart contracted projects to plug into publishing and distribution platforms, integration with HMRC for taxation and policy development etc, legal perspectives, business models, operational workflow development, cost / benefit analysis

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Digital Catapult development team - Platform holders / publishers - Operating system companies looking at blockchain integrations - Law researchers - Taxation policy developers

Jeremy Frey Professor of Physical Chemistry, University of Southampton Expertise: Digital Economy, Chemistry

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? I am interested in the wide potential of DLT in support of the Digital Economy as part of the IT as a Utility Network. Also from my Chemistry perspective, I am particularly interested in the potential use of DLT in support of provenance, probity, priority, and transparency in research. For example based on using digital research notebooks to and the recording and research for patent and regulatory purposes by for example contract research organisations and academic institutions.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Integration of DLT with other aspects of the Digital Economy, public and private disclosure, regulated exchanges, standards.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Pharmaceuticals, IT infrastructure, Contract Research Organisations (CRO), - - Digital Economy Researchers, IoT, ICT, Chemistry

Garrick Hileman Senior Research Associate, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, University of Cambridge Judge Business School Expertise: Economics, Finance, Innovation, Technology

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? I am particularly interested in exploring public sector use cases in the UK and other jurisdictions that have shown a positive interest in the application of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). While most of my DLT-related research to-date has focussed on various 'currency' applications (eg cross-border payments) and I am also keen to explore 'non-currency' DLT applications, such as information management and identity

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? DLT research to date has largely taken place within traditional silos. Examples of inter-disciplinary DLT research are few and far between, and yet the policy and social questions presented by the emergence of DLT cut across policy, sociology, law, economics, to name just a few areas. As a result, one of the major DLT research challenges is the need to foster inter-disciplinary research. A further challenge is presented by the rapid speed at which the DLT landscape is evolving.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? I have previously worked with a number of UK companies on various DLT initiatives, including Visa Europe and Lloyd's of London. The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, where I am based, collaborates with companies such as CME Group, KPMG, and Price Waterhouse. I am keen to collaborate on inter-disciplinary research with researchers outside the social sciences, both within and outside academia.

Tim Johnson Lecturer, Heriot-Watt University Expertise: Applied probability, finance

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? I am interested on the use of the distributed ledger for fiat money ('legal tender'). The Bank of England currently guarantees sterling, ensuring its liquidity; this is not the case for alternative currencies. However before the Bank Charter Act, this guarantee was not explicit and 'country banks' issued their own money. If fiat money was managed by a distributed ledger there would be some significant impacts. Firstly, would it imply banks could not create money (through fractional reserve lending) . Secondly how secure is the distributed ledger, we assume that the cryptography is secure, but this is not true. If a single agent controlled a majority of nodes, they control the ledger, is this a significant risk? Could a distributed ledger cope with the volume of transactions such as in December? - - I have no doubt distributed ledgers will prove a significant technology in transforming private financial networks, I am less confident about whether they can be relied upon for public financial networks.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? I think the majority of mathematicians do not understand (i) how the banking system works and why it is designed in the way it is; (ii) how the distributed ledger works. Consequentially, I do not think they are well positioned to abstract the concrete problem into mathematical models that can deliver insight. I think this is the biggest challenge. My concern is that those mathematicians that do understand (i) and (ii) might be uncritical advocates/opponents of the distributed ledger and so unbiased policy input might not emerge.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Bank of England - Financial regulators (what are the advantages of centralised bank ledgers that might be lost) - Advocates and sceptics of the use of distributed ledgers in banking - Complex/adaptive network modellers

Robert Learney Associate Director, Imperial College Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering Expertise: Blockchain research

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Local government - Transparency - Supply chains

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Scalability - Security

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? IBM, Elliptic, Other Universities

Feng Li Chair of Information Management, Cass Business School, City University London Expertise: Business Management

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? • Using distributed ledger technologies in financial services (particularly banking), which offers a plausible way to overcome a fundamental constraint for the industry to fully embrace the digital economy. Particularly interested in using the technology to upgrade the ageing IT infrastructure in both retail and business banking, which will lead to real transformation of the industry. • Mapping the potential use of the technology across different sectors and domains, and exploring their business and policy implications

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? The main challenge is to persuade key business partners from financial services and other industries to share commercially sensitive information. - Also the usual challenges of collaborating with academics from other disciplines. - However, we have the contacts and experiences to overcome these challenges

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Computing scientists in distributed ledger technology - Business partners from financial services and from other industries interested in the technology. - Technology companies with commercial interest in the technology - Business consultants and policy makers to explore the business and policy implications

Jonathan Libenau London School of Economics

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? I am interested both in financial services applications of distributed ledgers because they pose novel policy considerations, especially with regard to implications for regulatory oversight and for contract law. My use case preference is in the application to democratic processes wherein voting or consultation systems can be structured, maintained and certified in potentially more fair, difficult-to-corrupt forms. I have conceived of an application intended for internal political party consultation and voting as a first step towards demonstrating the appropriateness for other forms of public engagement including mass voting systems.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Studies of the significance of distributed ledgers and other blockchain applications in financial services need currently to be investigated in the manner of legal and policy studies research. As new applications are proposed from within the financial services community, new implications appear that need to be tested against contract law, regulatory principles and other conceptual underpinnings. For the applicability to democratic processes, the first challenge is to enable pilot projects to be developed and tested. This would entail action research approaches that allow for feedback and modifications so that both technical architecture and social responses can be understood.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? I am already working with the Financial Conduct Authority and others within the FinTech community, including SWIFT and Kemp Little (a specialist technology law firm) as well as start-ups and some established niche technology providers. I would like to extend and deepen those links to ensure that substantial research can emerge. For the application to democratic processes I have tried one proposal that would allow my team to develop and test the material but I am interested in making connections that would further that stream of research.

Panos Louvieris Professor of Information Systems, Brunel University London Expertise: Computer Science, Cyber Security, Digital Economy

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? • Distributed Ledger Technologies for Command and Control i.e. smart procurement and co-ordination of assets to support military courses of action. • Accountability for tracking personal data across the data ecosystem. • Secure energy management across interacting IoT sensor/actuator clusters in smart power networks.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? • Overcoming DL latency and associated synchronisation problems. • Legal framework for managing contractual consent of data-use in DLs operating across different jurisdictions (provable transparency). • Determining the accountability mechanisms

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? • Government Office for Science and Military Organisations. • Financial Institutions and Energy Companies. • DL and IoT researchers. • Legal and financial economist researchers.

Panos Louvieris Professor of Information Systems, Brunel University London Expertise: Computer Science, Cyber Security, Digital Economy

Sam Lupton Project Director, GALA Expertise: New product development

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Use in Local Government, particularly City Councils to reduce costs, increase data security and address tax & benefit fraud. Our target Councils are Portsmouth, Southampton and Winchester. We already work with Hampshire County Council and are looking at a pilot scheme with the Digital Catapult in June 2016

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? The development of an optimised and permissioned VPN for the Ledger. We are looking to start an R&D programme with Portsmouth and Westminster Universities on this.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Gaming, Aerospace, Marine and the Food Industry. We are working with Southampton, Portsmouth and soon Winchester Universities.

Sam Lupton Project Director, GALA Expertise: New product development

Debbie Maxwell Lecturer, University of York Expertise: Design, Interaction design, Creative Blockchain, Participatory methods, Public engagement

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? • Increased transparency of supply chains to enable better informed user options and behaviours • Increased accountability of business, individuals and communities of practice and interest and a challenging of roles and responsibilities • Modelling of knowledge and unfolding events (e.g. citizen journalism) to explore network validated chains of narrative and perspectives

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? • Development of reciprocal and meaningful relationships with industry (i.e. better understanding industry and business models) • Negotiating and developing sensitive and workable ethics approaches that allow for transparency yet still support an ethical research approach.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? • Multinational logistic and energy supply companies • Innovative agile technology companies (incl. startups and SMEs) • Community leaders who have a critical story to tell

Peter McBurney Professor of Computer Science and Head, Informatics Department, King’s College London Expertise: Computer Science – Protocol Design

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? There are a great multitude of possible use cases for Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT). They have potential application wherever we wish to record immutably: • Identity information and ownership (eg, NI numbers, land & share registries). • Information on Transactions (eg, exchanges of money and assets, flows of goods) • Promises and commitments (eg, derivatives & futures contracts, trade finance workflows). Key applications I have been looking at are: • Conditional commitments in financial markets • Self-organizing and adhoc networks in the Internet of Things. • Monitoring of nuclear non-proliferation.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? There are research challenges in computer science, economics, organization and management, and even political science (depending on the application). Key challenges for Computer Science and IT are: • Having a conceptual model of the design space for DLTs. At present, all we have are some examples, and we don't yet know the relative advantages and disadvantages of different designs, and hence their fit to different application domains. • Protocol design for consensus protocols (particularly in permissioned ledgers), for permissions, and for DL code revisions • Scalability and latency reduction • Understanding long-run dynamics in permission-less (open) distributed ledgers, in order to prevent or mitigate malicious behaviours. • Formal verification of DL designs and smart contracts (ie, automated programmes that sit atop DLs) • Issues of deployment for production systems (eg, security, integration with legacy systems, compliance requirements, data analytics requirements, etc).

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Any and all. At this very early stage of the life-cycle for these technologies the research and implementation challenges vastly outnumber the people and teams able to address them all. We have established a multi-disciplinary research group at King's College London to explore blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, their applications, and their deployment. We welcome contact with other researchers and companies.

Alistair Milne Professor of Financial Economics, Loughborough University Expertise: Business/Economics

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Use of distributed ledger in supply chain finance to reduce the costs, delays and uncertainties in confirmation of contract execution, invoicing and payment.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? ‘Proof of concept’: demonstrate feasibility at both a technical and business level on a ledger in Ethereum of similar, incorporating contractual obligations and transfer of value. Explore the business case for adoption, with as much quantification as possible, including benefits of process automation and greater certainty of cash flows

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Cryptographers/ computer scientists & business users

Hélène Muddiman Founder CEO of ProTechU, Hollywood Elite Music & Music Expertise: Music, Music technology, advocacy and organizational skills.

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? All forms of distribution! From entertainment (Music/films/books etc) to physical goods. - - Data is a valuable commodity whether it is music or our shopping habits ... it's all 0s and 1s that are being mined often without permission or often in exchange for free access to other people's data that is obtained without permission. - Having a universal protocol of some kind is crucial, I would like to fully explore if distributed ledger may be the answer. - - This present barter system is being used to get people 'in the room' so the host company can then make money advertising to all those people feasting on free content. - This advertising based business model is becoming the only way to monetize data and we believe it prevents data reaching it's true value. By giving control of the data back to it's rightful owners a digital economy can flourish instead of this 'feudal system' that exists now where the 'tech titan's' rule and we all work on inputing our data to their algorithms without being fairly compensated. - As soon as we have peer to peer, controlled and authenticated, trust based distribution a new economy can be built through fair trade.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Resistance from those companies who exploit the present lack of a morally decent distribution system, as they are unwilling to surrender the unfair advantage they retain which allows them to profit unfairly from other people's work. - Resistance from those owners of data and intellectual property who are skeptical or cynical that change is even possible against such formidable 'tech titans' and feel we are at the mercy of the wheels of legislation that turn so slowly in a world where they feel technology can never keep pace with tech innovation. - - Resistance from those who fear change will make them worse off by preventing them from accessing free content, without realizing how free content is affecting the global economy. - - Governments around the world will be resistant to change, and may fear losing power in a global economy, will distributed ledger technologies make it possible to have a global market place where different governments profit from that fair trade? We want to help prove that it can be done

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Organisations around the world who represent those who create intellectual property. - Faculties who are sympathetic to preserving people's data and their intellectual property. - Companies who presently distribute data and intellectual property legitimately. - Individuals who have suffered in the present system. - Also companies who do not presently respect copyright laws and who distribute copyright under the protection of safe harbour laws

Catherine Mulligan Research Fellow, Imperial College London Expertise: Computing, engineering, economics

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Distributed Ledgers to create peer economies - reduction of environmental damage from various supply chains, increased local employment. Economic growth - Distributed Ledgers within supply chains - greater oversight in supply chains in order to see e.g. slavery or child labour more transparently and clearly.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? New governance structures are required. These are not trivial and complex to implement

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? I am already working extensively with a variety of companies - I would like to link with other researchers

Anthony Myers Policy Advisor – Future Technologies, Digital Economy Unit, Department for Culture, Media and Sport Expertise: Government/policy

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? My role in Government is to see DLT applied wherever it could have a benefit (such as reducing error or fraud or costs) or unlock new economic growth (e.g. through secondary uses of data). So it's about use of DL wherever can benefit government/public services, the digital economy or the wider economy/society.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? From my consultation, it's about making DLs secure, robust, scalable and interoperable

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? All

Marcus O’Dair Senior Lecturer in Popular Music, Middlesex University Expertise: Convenor: Blockchain for Creative Industries research cluster

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Three use cases in particular: to bring transparency to the value chain for music royalty payments; to facilitate near-instant, 'frictionless' micropayments to artists; as a distributed ledger of music licensing and copyright information... - - Why? Because royalty payments are currently opaque, for instance due to non-disclosure agreements; because payments are currently very slow (they can take years); and because there currently exists no fully comprehensive music copyright database.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? How can blockchain technology can help solve current challenges in the music industries, especially those relating to recorded music? More imaginatively, what new opportunities could this technology create? What are the barriers to, and even disadvantages of, adoption? Finally, and crucially, to what extent does blockchain technology co-exist with current contractual and copyright systems?

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Companies working with blockchain technology in the context of music or other creative industries - Academics - Policy figures

Gaynor O’Flynn Artist Expertise: Artist/tech

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Artists’ rights and payment in the Digital Age

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Various mostly IP law & power required for ledger transactions

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Various Universities & Industry

Tope Omitola Senior Research Fellow, University of Southampton Expertise: Web Science, Programming Language Semantics, Distributed Computing

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Co-ordination of Autonomous Mobile and Distributed Entities

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Distribution, Reliability, Efficiency, Concurrency, High Performance

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Telecommunications, Banking, Civil Authorities, such as Metropolitan and District Councils, Aviation (e.g. Drones, etc), Automotive (e.g. Driverless vehicles) and Pharmaceuticals.

Julian Padget Senior Lecturer, University of Bath Expertise: Computer Science

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? General characteristics of use cases are multi-agency process enactment and policy compliance monitoring and enforcement. Examples: • Straightforward legal cases, contracts; such as minor traffic offences, conveyancing. Aim: to reduce time spent by skilled individuals (magistrates, solicitors) on mundane functions, cost savings in legal system. • Royalty collection and distribution: this is currently a very complicated, semi- manual process that does not work uniformly well and lacks an adequate audit trail. Aim: to ensure equitable treatment of all parties in a complicated transaction and to limit scope for non-accountability. • (Security) policy development, evaluation and evolution. Aim: to allow empirical evaluation of policy as part of a design process to establish what needs auditing (logging) and what loopholes might exist in a design (or emerge, as a result of deployment environment change). • Any scenario in which there is no overall control and blurred lines of accountability. Aim: to help clarify where to remove and where to preserve imprecision in regulation, either to allow for future developments or for the application of human judgement (and hence retention of human accountability and control).

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? • The nature and scope of the information to represent on and off the DL • How to adapt the DL principle to the requirements (such as data volumes and transaction frequency) of different use cases. • How to design mechanisms that can assure non-specialists of the integrity of DL-based solutions • How to provide sufficient flexibility to support regulation and limit (except where thought essential) regimentation

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? • Companies/Agencies: back-office systems developers (e.g.financial sector), industry regulators, ministries • Research area specialists: law and IT, social policy, psychology

David Plans Lecturer in Innovation, University of Surrey

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? I would like to see distributed ledgers used within primary healthcare and corporate wellness contexts. In a particular case aimed at making the interaction between public health bodies and consumers (of either national healthcare services or private) auditable transactional chains within public blockchain platforms such as Ethereum could host programmable transaction functionality to execute peer-to-peer contracts using the Ether cryptocurrency, to broker the value of any particular healthcare transaction in order to optimise value to both systems such as the NHS, but also for the individual (retrospectively insuring for cancer, for example, when genetic marker analysis prompted by biometric algorithms discover potential in the body

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Smart contracts as computer protocols that might facilitate healthcare advancement at the research and public policy (and later, product offering) will be challenged by many kinds of contractual, ethical and moral issues: clauses could be made partially or fully self-executing, self-enforcing, or both by authorities or businesses seeking to optimise for cost instead of health benefit to individuals. The identification (and therefore potential targeting/hacking) of individual health records, and potential for harm is great: which is why it is imperative that we build prototypes to validate assumptions around ethical, legal, regulatory and security issues.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? I am already working with AXA/PPP, Microsoft, Samsung and the NHS to address the foundational research that would make it possible to build real-time biometrics into preventative healthcare and insurance pathways. However, I would be interested in working with Blockchain groups (such as Ethereum themselves) to ascertain the feasibility of building an Ethereum-driven NHS EHR prototype at national (UK) scale, in cooperation with governments where there is already homogenous data environments such as Denmark.

Toby Proctor Lead Technologist, Innovate UK Expertise: Emerging technology, blockchain

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Any non-financial, operation of government, platform technologies, Health, supply chain.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Scalability, privacy, light wallet, integration into very low power devices (IoT), New business models, new legal entities (DAO), identity

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? UK based companies

Nicholas Robinson PhD Student, Royal Holloway, University of London Expertise: Geopolitics and Cyber Security

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? My research at Royal Holloway is generally grounded in Estonia and the many initiatives recently created by its government and forward-thinking digital society. You could therefore forgive me for being a huge proponent of its digital infrastructure, and the ways in which the everyday Estonians are - perhaps unbeknownst to many of them - part of a blockchain/distributed ledger revolution. Whether its identity management, securing healthcare records, voting online or the functionality of many of its e-services via the X- Road, there are many applications that I would like to see potentially shadowed, developed, and perhaps even replicated in the UK. - - But from more of a personal perspective, I am also extremely interested (and excited) at the prospect of DLT being developed within the music industry - as recently shown by Imogen Heap - helping to tackle huge issues of piracy - and protecting artistic creativity and integrity in the process. - - In the past, I have also been asked to look at the potential for DLT to implemented alongside the Internet of Things. Whilst the research never really got off the ground; I am still keen to speak to others on whether the tracking of unique IoT devices and giving them a 'Ledger of Things' (as Don Tapscott put it) is actually feasible/necessary.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? As with any use case scenarios, we should always remain cautious and sceptical of being able to replicate a particular model or infrastructure - especially with Estonia. The UK undoubtedly has many differing characteristics: population and economic size, public perception over the use of new technology in government, and certain historical/political legacies that perhaps inhibit the adoption of certain technologies. That said, there are many lessons we can learn from the Estonian model, and we should aim to build on the positives that already exist in the UK (eg. the work currently being undertaken at GDS) and aim emulate certain Estonian characteristics where possible.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? From a researcher's perspective, I am very interested in exploring the potential social and political impacts the adoption of blockchain and DLT could have in the UK; so naturally I would be interested in talking to other researchers in this space. I also believe inter-disciplinary research is pivotal in this area, and only by working with those with a variety of backgrounds and interests can be tackle any of the problems that are discussed at this event. - - But I am also interested in meeting with those in the DCMS and GDS to talk more about the research that is required by those with a social sciences background, and learn more about the potential opportunities that will arise in the near future in relation to the governments work with blockchain and DLT.

Vedad Sabljic Senior Business Systems Analyst, American Express/University of Sussex Expertise: Digital Infrastructure and Architecture/Blockchain and Bitcoin tech

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? • Money format change from fiat to digital – as the ICT exponentially diffuses through the mobile tech, it is likely that resulting increase in the volumes of intangibles will need the current transaction mechanisms readjustment. • Voting systems transparency – because the current voting systems vote count features could benefit from an increase in voting transparency throughout various countries. • Proof-of-Work concept – the current judiciary system’s administration costs could be significantly reduced by consensus driven distributed ledgers. • Internet of Things communications channels – the encrypted features of the public ledgers could be both, beneficial and detrimental in the coming age of robotics and automation

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Obtaining relevant datasets for the above mentioned concepts research, might be problematic. Furthermore, generating a required collaborative environment for the scientists of both, social and technical background could be challenging – isolated work on either side of the fence would potentially fail to adequately identify adoption guidance for these types of technologies – resulting in skewed policy making.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? • Engineering companies – to provide detailed knowledge on the infrastructural and architectural requirements for scalable distributed ledger solutions. • Companies providing coding for both, back-end and front-end solutions, in addition to User Experience (UX) experts. • Diversified technology scientists, and social scientists competent in the field of Economics of Innovation/Diffusion of Innovations, Transitions, and Platforms research.

Steve Schneider Professor of Security, University of Surrey Expertise: Computer Science, Cyber Security

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Electronic voting; banking transactions; business and commercial transactions. Use cases in these fields can require the benefits of a public ledger with the need for verifiability: to achieve assurance that the transaction has taken place in real-time, and the ability to audit and challenge faults and attacks from submission of the entry for the ledger through to the point where it is on the ledger. Electronic voting provides one such use case. Use of blockchain technologies in settlement and clearing provides another use case.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Public unpermissioned distributed ledgers such as blockchain have an inherent delay (due to the proof of work) between receipt of an entry and its appearance in the ledger, and a longer delay (of the order of an hour) before its appearance in the ledger can be considered essentially irrevocable. Many use cases, such as voting, require real-time assurance that the transaction will appear in the ledger since it is not always feasible to expect users to wait for the required delay. This opens up potential attacks if an attacker has an incentive to prevent entries (such as votes) from reaching the ledger. The research challenge is how to achieve real-time assurance for users, and how this will impact on business processes. Related challenges are around how users understand this assurance and how it can be designed for better understanding; how business process innovations can benefit from this level of assurance; and the legal status of such assurance..

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Banks; technology and security consultancies; electoral service providers; security researchers; researchers in business schools, digital technology, psychology, law

Duncan Sheehan Professor of Business Law, University of Leeds

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Bitcoin – how are they used in payment, bought, transferred. The question is essentially bitcoin can provide a more efficient/useful payment mechanism than traditional payment mechanisms and if the technology can be broadened to include transfers of other financial instruments, shares, bonds etc.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? While potentially bitcoin (and other digital currencies) could provide additional flexibility to business, there is considerable scope for fraud and difficulties in enforcing any financial regulatory framework because of the anonymity afforded by the technology. The challenge is to see what regulatory framework is needed, how it would work and what is compatible with the technology to protect consumers and businesses, but not “strangling the market at birth,” and what level – national, EU, international – such regulation should take place

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? IT experts/ business researchers looking at how bitcoin are used in practice/ users of bitcoin to pay & bitcoin exchanges

Chris Sier Director, FiNexus Expertise: Financial Services and Distributed Ledger

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Adding semantic content to supply chains and value chains - Local Government reform and efficiency/risk reduction of LG services - Intermediating complex value chains in financial services.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Privacy and security of the ledgers - Social implications of digital identity - complexity of stakeholders.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Engineers specialising in distributed ledgers and blockchains

Andi Smart Professor of Operations and Process Management, University of Exeter Expertise: Operations System Design, Business Models, Customer Experience

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? As the technology of distributed ledgers matures it is imperative that business models are explored to identify the possible combinations of Value Proposition, Value Creation and Value Capture. Distributed ledgers may be used in applications that are: Material-centric; Information-centric; People-centric. Material-Centric use cases include recording ownership of assets and could also be used to monitor use (e.g. car ownership / sharing and associated insurance requirements). Information- centric use cases can record changes to citizen records (e.g. Patient Records), or contracts between legal entities. People-centric use cases can involve tracking the movement of people across geographic borders. It is essential to explore these use case types as they provide opportunities to address some of the most acute challenges facing society: Migration; Ownership; Legal Use; Authenticity and Eligibility.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? The key research challenges reside in the composition of research teams. It is essential that technologists and computer scientists combine with management researchers and domain subject specialists. Technology development alone does not provide customer/societal value. It is imperative that research focuses on: What customers and markets (beneficiaries) will be targeted; what technical/non-technical systems are required to provide this value; what benefits will be realised (societal value, economic gains). It is also important to incorporate domain specialisms. For example, when considering the notion of 'ownership' it is important to incorporate expertise from legal experts.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? As indicated above it is important to combine the expertise of: Computer scientists and technologists to address the infrastructure and algorithms necessary to construct demonstrators; domain specialists (e.g. Legal, Healthcare) provide necessary knowledge to assure that technological and business model innovation integrate with the wider operational systems (e.g. patient records and the broader health system), and also help to identify both the potential impact on the dominant design and the unintended consequences of implementation; Management researchers provide insights into the potential business model patterns that can capitalise on technological innovation and the ecosystems that are both involved and effected.

James Tooze CI Future Makespaces in Redistributed Manufacturing (FmS RdM), Royal College of Art Expertise: Open design, open fabrication and digital manufacturing

Phil Treleaven Professor of Computing, UCL Expertise: Computing, Data Science

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Blockchain Smart Contracts applied to the legal sector and regulation

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? We are interested in applying Blockchain Smart Contract technology to what we call Algorithmic Regulation.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Major Law Firms, FCA and UK Regulators, BoE, HM Treasury

Chander Velu Lecturer, University of Cambridge Expertise: Economics

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? The use of distributed ledger in digitalisation of manufacturing.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? The linking of distributed ledger to other digital technologies such as 3D printing

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? The major manufacturing and banking firms.

Adam Webb Manager – R&D Programmes, Digital Catapult Expertise: Development of collaborations with a focus on sharing closed data

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? The application to personal data. Distributed Ledger Technology could be used as a trusted, decentralised technology to allow users to own and control their own data. DLT could be used as an automated system to allow controlled access to data, without requiring trust in a 3rd party. - The application of DLT to IoT. In particular generating fully autonomous smart devices that talk to each other without the need for for a centralised authority.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Developing a scalable solution for these use cases, as well as understanding and overcoming challenges around the inability to delete data from a blockchain. This could be crucial for data protection laws and “the right to be forgotten”. Integration of different blockchain systems would also be an important question to consider, where benefits may be gained from mixing of data

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Any companies (particularly SME’s) with an interest in DLT, who hold personal data, or operate IoT solutions, as well as researchers with an interest in DLT.

Edgar Whitley Associate Professor (Reader), London School of Economics Expertise: Information Systems/Management

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Identity and other official registers

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Governance questions: How to manage the benefits of distributed ledgers including multiple independent contributors whilst avoiding the 51% question –

Application areas where there are legitimate reasons for revoking the previously asserted claims in the distributed ledger (e.g. claims about an individual who enters witness protection).

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Any - unfortunately existing academic commitments mean I cannot attend in person

Tom Wilkinson Data Scientist, Home Office Expertise: I coordinate the UK government DLT community of interest. I'm a complexity scientist and a data scientist with a PhD modelling decentralised institutions

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Identity - to provide an incorruptible basis for voting systems and interactions with other central institutions in LDCs - Academic/journalistic referencing - to provide incorruptible measurements of influence - Education/career references - giving the potential to assess quality of education, and deliver incentives against grade inflation - Peer-enforcement: to reduce economic frictions where neither peer nor third party enforcement has been cost effective

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? Scalability. - Gaming of data interpretation systems. - Emergent system behaviours at large scale use

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Academia, SMEs

Zena Wood University of Greenwich

What use cases would you like to see Distributed Ledgers explored for and why? Distributed Ledgers can be used to improve the security and privacy of the data that is held for of an individual or an organization. However, being able to successfully authenticate those that wish to update the ledger, especially if not permission controlled, is vital if the security of the data is to be maintained. Given our group’s expertise, we would focus on the use of the technology in land registry and how it could be used in addressing land disputes. However, the problem of authentication exists within various uses cases.

What research challenges would you foresee when exploring these use cases? The trust in the security of Distributed Ledgers will greatly affect their adoption. It must also be made clear what the benefits of using this technology over current methods, particularly within land registry.

What types of companies/researchers are you interested in working with to address the above challenges? Companies such as IBM have expertise in fraud detection, which could be used in authentication problems.