GSMI · Pillar
Standards bodies driving interoperability, security, and innovation.
Technical standards for blockchain and digital assets, as in any new technology, are fundamental to ensure safety, reliability, and further innovation. They are fundamental for all use cases and sectors in which this technology is being adopted.
They establish common guidelines, definitions, and rules through technical criteria, specifications, methodologies, and practices that ensure adequate functionality. Interoperability, trust, and ease of use let stakeholders work together and scale — collaboration that ultimately leads to widespread acceptance of formalized rules and regulations.
Over 100 global bodies and their roles, so users can identify relevant standards to adhere to and align with other stakeholders. Organizations can spot gaps, opportunities, and areas for further alignment, compare bodies by purpose and proposed outcome, and self-identify by topic and industry focus.
Each body is marked by proposed outcome — technical standards and specifications, regulatory compliance, or best practices and governance — and categorized by main function as a global or regional standards setter or association, and whether it has a regulatory affiliation. This year we added national standards bodies acting as representative delegations at ISO/TC 307, which focuses on blockchain and distributed ledger technologies.
An overview of the organizations involved in standards setting, an assessment of the process to approve a globally recognized standard, and the journey organizations follow to comply. Standards are also a tool for competitiveness, long-term growth, and ethical maturity — the commentary includes an ethical maturity model tied to standards adherence.
Technical standards are fundamental for governance, especially as decentralized governance structures emerge. Our commentary maps standards to a value chain of governance, where they enable the foundational use cases key to success across sectors: tokenization, identity verification, business continuity, and resource management.
This repository is meant to provide an objective overview of the state of standards developments today for blockchain and digital assets, with no vested interests from any particular organization.
80
Technical
42
Conduct / governance
26
Regulatory
108 bodies tracked in the GSMI 6.0 Technical Standards Landscape; bodies can propose more than one outcome.
Filter by proposed outcome or scope, and open a row for purpose, role, topics, industries, and standards work.