World Economic Forum forms blockchain policy council to address governance gaps

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The World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution has formed six councils to work on new technology policy guidance.

In its press release, the boards aim to address governance gaps in the areas including autonomous driving, precision medicine, drones, internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain and the absence of clearly defined rules.

The council is reportedly composed of more than 200 leaders from both private and public sectors, civil society, and academia. The press release also noted that their meeting held last Monday at the Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network in San Francisco was the members’ first assembly.

According to VentureBeat, among the co-chairs are Microsoft President Brad Smith, Sinovation Ventures CEO and Google China former President Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon, World Wide Web Foundation CEO Adrian Lovett, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

“We believe that that this bottom-up, societally-focused approach can help to build and maintain public trust in the technologies while strengthening the evidence base on which policy decisions are made by governments and companies,” said Richard Samans, Managing Director and Head of Policy and Institutional Impact, WEF.

The council aims to allow cross-country exchange of policy and regulatory experience, address gaps in public policy or corporate governance, shape a common understanding of best and good policy practices, and provide strategic guidance.

Meanwhile, the International Organization of Securities Commission (IOSCO), which regulates over 95% of the world’s securities markets in more than 115 jurisdictions, is seeking feedback on a consultation paper on regulation crypto-asset trading platforms (CTPs). The paper tackles the identified risks and issues of CTPs, which include access to trading platforms, safeguarding investors’ assets, conflicts of interest, operations, market integrity, price discovery, and technology.