Slovenia has launched a national test blockchain infrastructure called Si-Chain. It will enable testing of existing and new blockchain applications for both - public and private sector, as well as active participation in blockchain development at national and European level.
Slovenia, as one of the most active countries in blockchain technology, is the first EU Member State that established blockchain test infrastructure and second in the world to do so after China. SI-Chain was established by the innovative technology provider company Hashnet in cooperation with Telemach, Slovenian telecommunication solutions provider (hereinafter the partnership).
“The ambition is to integrate technology into the business models of companies and public services, with the widest possible range, and high speed-transactions,” said Tadej Slapnik, managing director of Hashnet Slovenia. Si-Chain uses Hashnet technology, which, according to Slapnik, is one of the fastest and energy efficient distributed data block technologies in the world. Their main objective is to bring blockchain technology closer to business, with lower costs and faster transactions. The established blockchain infrastructure will be used for performance testing and verification of the possible uses suggested by the partnership. In 2018, the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology issued a tender call for pilot projects funded from EU funds. 73 million EUR were allocated especially for projects planning use of blockchain technology. The discoveries from these projects will also help Slovenian government in forming regulatory solutions for specific industrial segments using blockchain, such as, the introduction of smart contract definition to Slovenian Corporate law, and with the aspect to regulate digital entity and other regulations for different fields of industry and public sector.
Representative of Slovenia in the European Blockchain Partnership, Mag. Nena Dokuzov explained that Slovenia was given the opportunity to carry out this pilot project of development and establishment of blockchain infrastructure for two reasons. Firstly, she exposed that Slovenia have virtually no venture capital financing. This means that investments are generally sought through institutional funding through EU tender calls. Secondly, she mentioned that Slovenia has a very large number of qualified personnel in the field of high technologies, computer science, informatics and other recent emerging technologies. This are only first steps towards the potential wider use of a blockchain infrastructure in this way. Further development will reveal the possible level of its integration into existing business environment. According to the Slovenian Ministry of Economic Development and Technology, blockchain has a huge impact on economic development, and will help improve the efficiency, productivity and competitiveness of the Slovenian economy.
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