The resource aims to help businesses create more resilient supply chains and trusted data by responsibly deploying blockchain technology.

By Stuart Davis, Fiona Maclean, Andrew Moyle, Jenny Cieplak, Mitch Rabinowitz and Masha Smith

The World Economic Forum has launched a new, first-of-its-kind resource — Redesigning Trust: Blockchain Deployment Toolkit (Toolkit) — to help organizations responsibly develop and deploy blockchain technology based on their business needs. The resource aims to address the need for more resilience, trust, and efficiency in global supply chains.

The Toolkit reflects the ongoing efforts of numerous experts at the intersection of law and technology to document blockchain deployment best practices. It contains 14 modules addressing key topics, considerations, and challenges implicated in blockchain deployments. Latham lawyers both drafted and contributed to sections on Consortium Governance, Data Protection, Personal Data Handling, and Legal and Regulatory Compliance.

According to Latham partner Stuart Davis (who is quoted in the Toolkit), “There is no settled ‘law of blockchain’ so we are interpreting existing legal and regulatory concepts in light of this new technology. As the scope and breadth of use cases increases, the legal certainty will also increase but this will take time. It is crucial for any project to embed legal and regulatory compliance into the design at the outset.”

The World Economic Forum previously published related whitepapers as part of the series Inclusive Deployment of Blockchain for Supply Chains. Latham lawyers contributed to several of these whitepapers, including Part 2 – Trustworthy Verification of Digital Identities and Part 4 – Protecting Your Data. The Toolkit and multiple whitepapers also cited Latham’s Book of Jargon® – Cryptocurrency & Blockchain Technology.