Upcoming Workshop: Blockchains and the Web

W3C announced today Blockchains and the Web Workshop, 29–30 June 2016, in Cambridge, MA, USA, hosted by the MIT Media Lab.

Many projects and companies are looking at ways to use the Bitcoin blockchain or other public or private distributed ledgers, to record an immutable timestamped public record that can be independently verified by any stakeholder. What does this mean for Web technologies, beyond payments? What emerging capabilities could blockchains enable for the Web, such as distributed identity management? Conversely, should features be added to the Web Platform and to browsers to enable blockchain use cases, such as a JavaScript blockchain API to write to blockchain nodes? What will help Web developers to take advantage of blockchains?

We invite participation from diverse players in the blockchain community: Representatives from communities such as Bitcoin, Hyperledger, and Ethereum; browser developers interested in adding support for blockchain APIs, identity systems, and other functionality; digital currency projects; financial institutions; developers of blockchain systems who want to improve interoperability; privacy/security researchers; and more.

W3C membership is not required to participate. The event is open to all. All participants are required to submit a position paper by 27 May 2016.