So, I decided to leave penning a retrospect for 36 hours after the end of the SPRIND meeting in Berlin on Wednesday……
I was left with both excitement and some disappointment. – Why?
On the positive side, I was truly impressed by how youthful and dynamic the meeting felt overall. For a government project to instill such a sense of empowerment in startups, SMEs, and some larger organizations was remarkable. It's uncommon to see structures in place that achieve this. This is how innovation should be.
From a technical standpoint, the push towards pilots and practical demonstrators for use-cases was relentless, with significant momentum. Naturally, there are no major technical 'leaps' required for this technology—just more hard work on important topics like crypto, but nothing that presents an insurmountable barrier.
However, the challenge for wallets isn't technical. It's about political and public awareness, along with practical economics, to make digital wallets essential for everyday life, and these issues were scarcely addressed during the day. Admittedly, the discussions and presentations focused primarily on government wallets, meaning credentials would mainly be issued by 'official' agencies and operate under regulatory governance. This environment is less challenging to resolve. But what really needs clarification are issues such as how participants in the value chain can be compensated for their contributions when there are actual paying relying parties and commercial issuers.
How does that function? How do you ensure 'full' confidentiality for RPs and user participants when any company must provide a complete and legal audit trail for accountants and a rollback capability for error correction? Is 'partial confidentiality' feasible? This will require, at the very least, a commercially based governance rather than a regulatory one. Terms and Conditions of any interaction could specify traceability and audit capability. Would Zero-Knowledge Proofs be applicable here, or would they need an 'audit back-door'?
Am I missing something, or is this an open can of worms..?
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