The problem addressed by INTERLACE was the development of a blockchain-based transactional platform for the Sardex electronic business-to-business (B2B) mutual credit system by leveraging one of the outputs of the BIOMICS FET Proactive project, the Abstract State Interaction Machines (ASIMs). This is a technical innovation in bringing the blockchain to mutual credit, and also a methodological innovation in the use of the ASIM specification and modelling language for distributed, asynchronous, communicating systems. These two innovations strengthened the financial innovation of the Sardex mutual credit system itself, which was already 8 years old and supporting 3000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at the beginning of the project. The blockchain architecture that INTERLACE developed to the level of a working prototype is important for the future scalability of the Sardex system as it is gradually extended to other Italian regions, European countries, and beyond, both for the platform functionality as well as the governance of the community.
The importance for society derives mainly from the Sardex financial innovation that INTERLACE has strengthened on a technical and methodological level. In fact, the Sardex system is now helping 4000 SME users and a similar number of their employees trade on the island of Sardinia. A similar number of SME users is distributed in 11 other circuits affiliated with Sardex in other Italian regions, and a business-to-consumer (B2C) product has just been launched.
INTERLACE elected to adopt the Hyperledger Fabric permissioned blockchain as one of the most well-established blockchain frameworks for the enterprise. Since Hyperledger also has an interface to Ethereum, over the coming years this will make it possible to develop, if needed or desirable, some of the Sardex services on a public and permissionless blockchain.
As a FET Open Launchpad project, INTERLACE had a very small budget. Therefore, the majority of the resources had to come from own funds/effort of the partners and/or venture capital (VC). However, VC funding did not materialise during the time of the project. Therefore, the level of achievement that could be reached was less than originally envisaged, in spite of the fact that the amount of work – including self-funded effort – was quite high. In spite of this set-back, the INTERLACE project was able to achieve most of its objectives:
1. Implement a blockchain-based transactional platform demonstrator to be tested with a subset of the current circuit member companies. Partially achieved: the transactional platform was achieved, but the testing framework and the field testing were not.
2. Extend the collaborative team of computer scientists that developed the ASIMs. Achieved.
3. Bring Sardex’s architecture to the current state of the art. Achieved.
4. Adopt a scalable and robust blockchain technology. Achieved.
In conclusion, the project was successful in starting Sardex in the direction of blockchain technologies and in strengthening its software engineering methodology. Over the next 2 years this work will be tested and gradually integrated into the new microservice architecture of the Sardex platform.
