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Enhancing financial services with permissionless blockchains
Prof. Fabian Schär has authored a report on Enhancing financial services with permissionless blockchains for the Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union (European Commission)
This report examines the potential of public permissionless blockchains to enhance traditional financial services. It highlights the key advantages of utilizing an open base layer, including transparency, inclusivity, and increased competition, while addressing critical challenges such as scalability, privacy, transaction sequencing, finality, and governance. The report provides an extensive overview of proposed solutions to these challenges, drawing on insights from academic research and open-source development. Additionally, it presents a series of questions designed to get an initial understanding of a blockchain’s operational robustness. The analysis concludes that public permissionless blockchains represent a promising alternative to permissioned platforms, with the potential to reduce dependencies and mitigate monopolistic market structures on a platform level. It emphasizes that compliance does not necessarily require a platform-wide gatekeeper or other forms of base layer regulation, but can instead be implemented higher up on the technology stack. This allows for more flexible approaches, based on asset- and application-types. The paper underscores the importance of continued interdisciplinary research, openness, and dialogue among stakeholders to navigate trade-offs and fully realize the potential of this technology.