European Commission Chooses Billon as a Provider of EU-wide Blockchain Infrastructure

Billon is one of five providers selected to develop innovative blockchain solutions and test if and how those could shape the evolution of the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI).

(London/Warsaw, January 13, 2022) The European Commission selected Billon as one of five providers of Phase 2 of the EU Blockchain Pre-Commercial Procurement process. Billon will pilot innovations to improve the scalability, energy efficiency, security and privacy of EBSI - the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure for two use cases: (1) intellectual property management and (2) product life cycle management.

These use cases leverage the unique capabilities of the Unified Enterprise DLT capabilities, a platform developed by Billon, as follows:

1. Intellectual Property Management: Advancing Protection with a Complex Rights Management, Accounting & Trading Platform

• Billon’s concept allows intellectual property to be tokenized, stored, protected, accessed and traded on an internationally participative blockchain platform. 
• When completed, owners, contributors and authors of IP can trace the use of their content in digital media across the EU. 
• Integration with digital national currency tokens, a unique feature, will allow for crowdfunding content and for usage control and ownership change in the later stages of the content life cycle. 

2. Product Life Cycle Management: Circular Economy Platform & Digital Product Passport

• The Unified Enterprise DLT system enables tracing and managing the life cycle of physical goods across the EU – from raw materials extraction through goods creation, logistics and storage, usage and recycling/disposal. 
• By creating a digital passport for products, Billon enables users to monitor the life cycle of common products such as plastic to reduce waste (which includes the CO2 emission during production, logistics and use). 
• Initial focus will be on two cases: plastic waste and car batteries

Billon Group Founder and Chief Technology Officer Andrzej Horoszczak comments: “This opportunity aligns with the vision we had from Billon’s founding, to focus the power of blockchain on solutions that transform existing ways that institutions, companies, and individuals do business. We see this as a game-changing contract, allowing us to demonstrate technology that complies with EU regulations, and makes scalable blockchain-based public services a reality.” 

Billon Co-founder Robert Kałuża comments: “Billon shares the EU vision for the future of blockchain. The next generation of blockchain technology must be public and private collaborations so that innovation is immediately deployable. We could not be more pleased to focus efforts on solving problems in intellectual property and product life cycle management.”

EBSI is an effort of 29 countries and the European Commission that cooperate as a European Blockchain Partnership (EBP) to deliver a capability for all EBP countries. Billon was selected for phase 2A of the EU blockchain PCP to leverage its award-winning Unified Enterprise DLT platform to bring innovation into use cases including EU-wide IP rights management and product life cycle management. While designing the solutions, Billon will pay special attention to qualities such as scalability to deal with high volumes of tokens, sustainability in accordance with the EU’s climate action initiatives and the European Green Deal.

Billon’s enterprise DLT platform, developed in part with funding from European grants, unifies the management of three asset classes – fiat digital cash, documents and non-cash assets – into a single, high-performance blockchain protocol. The system’s patent-pending protocol is low-cost and eco-friendly. As a permissioned network, it can manage the complexity of regulatory rules and the performance needs of enterprises. Thus, it solves many of the challenges required for wider adoption of blockchain technologies. 

#####

About Billon

Billon created the Unified Enterprise DLT System, the blockchain-based protocol and system that uniquely combines three asset classes – national currency, data, and documents – into a single, high-performance distributed ledger (DLT), meeting regulatory requirements and solving challenges for the wide adoption of blockchain technologies. With the protocol designed for high throughput and low cost of maintenance, our mission is to become the backbone for all kinds of enterprise applications and unleash the transformational capabilities of blockchain in the regulated world. 

Billon provides client services for handling documents and regulated e-money on blockchain. The system also supports clients developing their own enterprise solutions in areas of Trusted Document Management, Regulated Digital Cash and Asset & Data Tokenization.

Billon Group Ltd. was founded in the UK in 2015, following several years of R&D in Poland. Its unique DLT protocol has been supported by many R&D grants, including the EU Horizon 2020 program. Billon subsidiary companies are licensed to issue electronic money by regulators in the UK and Poland. 

Billon’s growing partner list includes leading companies such as FIS, Raiffeisen Bank International and BIK (the Polish credit reporting agency). Billon has offices in London and Warsaw.

For more information, visit www.billongroup.com. Follow Billon Group on LinkedIn & Twitter & Facebook.

About EBSI

Since 2018, 29 countries (All EU Member States, Norway and Liechtenstein) and the European Commission have joined forces to form the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP). They have committed to working together towards realising the potential of blockchain-based services for the benefit of citizens, society and the economy.

The Partnership is building a European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI). Their vision is to leverage blockchain to the creation of cross-border services for public administrations, citizens and businesses and their ecosystems to verify information and make services trustworthy.

Since 2020, EBSI is deploying a network of distributed blockchain nodes across Europe, supporting applications focused on selected use-cases. EBSI is the first EU-wide blockchain infrastructure, driven by the public sector, in full respect of European values and regulations.

Media contacts:

For Europe: Maciej Józefowicz / maciej.jozefowicz@billongroup.com / tel. 0048 734 443 023

For North America: Nancy Broe / nbroe@fulltiltconsulting.com / tel. +1 678 230 9146

For Asia: Ashwin Safaya / ashwin.safaya@visionkraftasia.com / tel. +65 910 214 36