Russian State-Owned Holding Giant Proposes to Apply DLT in All Gov’t Data Systems

Russian state-owned holding conglomerate Rostec proposed a roadmap on applying blockchain in all the governmental data systems, local financial newspaper Kommersant reports on May 24.

An institution under Rostec has reportedly developed a blockchain roadmap worth up to 85 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) that claims to provide an economic impact of up to 1.6 trillion rubles ($25.4 billion) in five years.

The project was presented by Rostec’s structural body, the Novosibirsk Institute of Programming Systems (NIPS), during a blockchain conference held in the Republic of Tatarstan on May 23.

According to Kommersant, the NIPS’ roadmap includes a blockchain implementation in the processes and data systems of industrial enterprises, municipal elections, the monitoring of the budgetary performance and other services.

The report notes that the absence of cryptocurrency and blockchain regulation is a major impediment to the adoption of the proposed roadmap. Yuri Pripachkin, the president of the Russian Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain, considered the lack of regulation a “catastrophic obstacle on the path blockchain adoption.”

The expert argued that necessary legislation should be enforced as soon as in late 2019 in order to have better results, while the roadmap is based on a supposition that the regulation will come into force in 2021.

On the other hand, Russian prime minister and former president Dmitry Medvedev recently declared that crypto regulation is not a priority for the state of Russia since cryptocurrencies “have lost their popularity.”

On May 22, the central bank of Russia claimed that the draft bill on crypto regulation is prepared enough to be adopted in the spring of 2019, in accordance with the order of the country’s president, Vladimir Putin.