In April 2016, Standards Australia submitted a proposal to the International Organization for Standardization to consider growing requirements to assist blockchain technology. This proposal resulted within the creation of ISO Technical Committee 307, Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies. Permissioned blockchains use an access management layer to manipulate who has access to the network. In distinction to public blockchain networks, validators on private blockchain networks are vetted by the community owner. They don’t depend on anonymous nodes to validate transactions nor do they profit from the network effect.

Primavera De Filippi and Aaron Wright acknowledge this potential and urge the legislation to catch up. That is as a result of disintermediation—a blockchain’s best asset—subverts important regulation. De Filippi and Wright welcome the new possibilities inherent in blockchains. But as blockchain and the Law makes clear, the expertise can’t be harnessed productively without new rules and new approaches to authorized pondering. With all that in mind, many businesses recognize the potential of blockchain and are working hard to make the transition simple. IBM specifically has invested vital resources into the Hyperledger Platform and has launched important documentation and tooling for creating blockchain-based applications.