First Half 2020 Hyperledger TF-SIG Report
Special Interest Group Trade Finance
The community is growing in terms of members and is still attracting new ones, although yet it hasn’t managed to develop new activities. Meetings take place at regular cadence every two week at 8;30 UK time which looks to be the best time slot for the APAC region. At the very start of the new time slot, meetings attendant was satisfactory and absolutely growing compared to the previous one. Recently, attendance has been lowering a little, especially during the last meeting that took place on 7th July. We therefore decided to adopt new strategies for spreading the news of our meeting through the social media we have available. Topics we touched in the past meetings are of absolute interest spanning from how to go beyond the problems caused by the current Covid-19 pandemic to the latest solutions made available for filling in the the Trade Finance gap affecting SMBs, with particular focus on agribusiness. The cadence of the meeting will be maintained regular over the next months and quarters. The intention is the develop projects and white papers to be published in the wiki page or externally point out to our page.
Our goal is to stick to the bi-weekly general meeting and SIG’s “core team” will strive in order to enhance engagement and bring in new active members to the community. The “charter”, which is composed by myself, Atul Patel and Ross Wilkinson who meet regularly in order to agree on the subjects to deal with during the meetings to come and to agree on the speakers to be involved each time.
A large, detailed section within the wiki page has been opened and updated regularly in order to enhance education to Trade Finance for all three participants to the SIG, these being of different backgrounds. This will help them understanding the peculiarities of the discipline, which has so many implications with other disciplines such as logistics and supply chain management.
Over the past quarter, the TF-SIG hosted has seen a variety of community presentations dealing with core topics such as:
- How DLTs can help tackling the problems created by the Covid-19;
- What comes before the blockchains: the use of AI in compliance for documentary credits;
- Digital (portable) identity and digitization of the int’l trade related documents;
- What is happening in China, with focus on platforms for Trade Finance;
- New initiatives by the ICC in the APAC region;
- Interoperability and digital Islands in Trade Finance;
For the months to come, we envisage to bring in the the contribution from academics and researchers from China and India in order to understand the status of the projects that are being developed in the region with focus on Trade Finance. This will hopefully lead to the formation of working groups and sub-groups to deal with specific topics.
Issues
Although the group is meeting constantly, there is a series of issues we are solving:
- How to reach a wider audience both in the APAC and in other core areas;
- Identifying topics to work on and develop relevant material;
- Identify new forms of community engagement such academics and research;
- How to involve speaker from core areas, such as China, due to linguistic barriers;
The TF SIG features quite a diverse membership, featuring members with a technical, juridical and business background. This allows the debate to focus on different aspects and give a full perspective on the dynamics of this “industry” and the possible solutions to each topic.