The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) aims to provide cross-border public services. Therefore, at the end of 2020, the European Blockchain Partnership issued a call for tenders to develop a number of use cases that EBSI can offer. This week he announced that IOTA, Chromaway and Billon reached the final cut of the “pre-commercial acquisition” process.

All of the companies in the final round appear to be focused on digital product passports to help encourage recycling. Two of the three companies also proposed IP rights management use cases. This is an indicator of upcoming EBSI applications.

In terms of product passports, IOTA focuses on consumer electronics and batteries, Chromaway focuses on pharmaceuticals, and Billon selected plastic waste and batteries.

One observation is that commercial blockchain applications are already being deployed in these areas by Circulor, Circularise, Everledger, and PharmaLedger. So will these public use cases displace these commercial applications?

EBSI has already implemented four use cases for notarization, self-sovereign identity, education credentials, and trusted data exchange for customs and VAT. He is currently working on a social security passport, an asylum use case, and support for SMEs.

Selected companies must meet various EBSI requirements, including sufficient scalability to support large volumes of transactions. Any solution must be green, safe and cost-effective.

For the first phase in July 2021, seven companies were selected. This included the three finalists plus IOV42, a Stichting Dyne/RIDDLE&CODE consortium, Orange Business Belgium and a Westpole Belgium consortium.