Founding Spirit of BASE Alliance

Blockchain technology was born along with Bitcoin, the cryptographic currency, and is not only giving birth to several other digital currencies, but it is also expected to be merged to other fields due to its characteristic of being a distributed ledger. To use Blockchain technology as a foundation, its necessity of improvements by open discussion, research and development, and experimental demonstration is coherent. From these standpoints, we founded BASE Alliance, a globally open industry-university collaborated research association that enables us to openly discuss/research and develop/experimentally demonstrate Blockchain technologies. The BASE initiative stands for “Blockchain Academic Synergized Environment”, which represents the synergy of industry and university for the academic Blockchain studying environment.

Activity Overview of BASE

BASE is responsible for promoting researching and developing, experimentally demonstrating, and developing communities of the Blockchain technologies with the collaboration of faculty members/researchers from universities and Blockchain interested company members. BASE is to carry out the following research activities.

• Research and development on blockchain technology in general.
• Research and development of applications using blockchains.
• Construction and operation of test bets to demonstrate experiments using existing and implemented blockchain technology, as well as its research.
• Fostering an international industry-university collaborative community.

We are planning to set up working groups according to the topics based on these core activities. In addition, if necessary, we will also collaborate and provide mutual feedbacks to various global standardization organizations in order to contribute to global standardization.

Messages from founding members on establishment of the alliance

Joi Ito – Distinguished Researcher, Keio Research Institute at SFC / Director, MIT Media Lab.

The internet transformed telecommunications, computation and, eventually almost every industry in the world using a wholly new architecture built on layers of standards like the Ethernet, TCP/IP and HTTP/HTML that work together and fall under no one’s control. That architecture allowed an unbundling that didn’t exist before the Internet, when telecommunications companies had monolithic control over everything from the wires and hardware to software and content. It gave entrepreneurs and companies the ability to build products and services at each layer, creating an explosion of innovation among and between the protocols that required no “permission” from a teleco or government. Innovators could freely participate in that ecosystem, and they created businesses and tools that no one had ever imagined before.

A similar open architecture is now emerging with the blockchain, which is unlocking the layers of protocols controlled by the financial industry, and entrepreneurs are already building previously unimagined services and businesses among those layers. As with the Internet, the standards that govern the blockchain will best be developed by multiple stakeholders and centered in academic institutions and research labs. My hope is that BASE becomes one of the key players building an architecture for the blockchain that is as free and flexible as the architecture of the internet.

Kanta Matsuura – Professor, Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo

What exactly is securing information security in the first place? Up to this day, information security was generally understood as managing the qualities of Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. Now, however, it is strongly required to keep the trust relationship unique to each application. Technology that does not undergo scrutiny or operation attitudes that are just being pushy is not a true defense. This is why we need BASE-oriented R&D and demonstration experiment system for the security field.

In a particular field where the principle of human or organization behavior that affects trust relationship are studied, especially in that of information security related scientific approaches, we have Information Security Economics. Fifteen years have passed since that global research community was first established. Compared to that of fundamental computer science or cryptography that supports the basis of Blockchain technology, their history is still small. However, the impact of enabling researchers to study in the technology-irrelevant field with their feet on the ground has been magnificent.

When it comes to applying this to virtual currencies, the role of Information Security Economics will be even greater. This is why the expectations for BASE-oriented R&D and demonstration experiment system in the security field are great. In order to sustain a practical use of infrastructures such as Blockchain, we must not consider information security as a tiring war of attrition. It should improve the productivity of legitimate users, along with the advancement of vital society, and also provide happiness. I cannot help hoping that BASE Alliance, collaborated by interested parties that have gathered in my home country, will make this dream into reality.

Jun Murai – Professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University

Social infrastructure that can be used by anyone, anywhere, needs to be discussed and developed openly in the public by interested parties. Additionally, the developed systems need to be sustained, evaluated fairly and composedly, and modified continuously. Now that the Internet has become a social infrastructure, we need a platform mechanism for constructing a trusted distribution system on the Internet. BASE has the framework for multiple applicable data platforms, such as Blockchain, to be R&D’d and to have a demonstration experiment in a globally open industry-university collaborated network.

These frameworks were rapidly promoted during the dawn of Internet. Wide Project, collaborated with academia and organizations have contributed to standardization and R&D, also performing a demonstration experiment for the early internet. First founded in the United States, Interop has been responsible for forming a community of developers and operators, through interoperability tests of the systems developed dispersedly. In order to realize new demands and expectation for the new information distribution infrastructure by collaborating diverse scientists and engineers, we have newly launched BASE as an activity system. I hope that the activities here will contribute to the futures of the Internet society.