At the invitation from our friends and partners from Vilnius Blockchain Center, on November 28-29 the international Smartlands Platform team will converge on Brussels to participate in the series of Equity Token Standard workshops.

This is a truly unique opportunity to help construct a globally-accepted equity token framework and together with the other attendees work on an interoperable high-level token standard which, as a future-proof instrument, will serve capital markets for generations.

We realize that two days in Brussels will not solve all of the inherent problems that the security token space has. But we will certainly take a collective crack at a few such as ownership rights, jurisdiction, shareholder relation tools, tax treatment, class-action tools, options, vesting, takeover, trading and a whole bunch of other less sexy issues that require immediate and decisive effort on all fronts.

And looking at the list of key attendees, we’re confident that the Embassy of Lithuania-hosted workshop will blaze a few trails. So far confirmed are David Siegel and Sonia Zvedeniuk from Pillar, John Udris and Myles Milston from Globacap, Jack Thornborough from 2030, Aurelia Goerner from MME, Felix Simon from Smart Valor, Peter Walker from Link Asset Services, Rene Lauk from Oblicity, Jan Baeriswyl from BedrockX, and of course, the Smartlands Platform will be represented by our very own Arnoldas Nauseda.

Going back to the “why” of the Equity Token Workshop, assuming that blockchains or tokens will still be in use in 20 years or more, the workshop attendees will focus on ways to dematerialize shares and define the properties of their digital representation in the ever-changing legal environment.

The workshop will consider various modes of striking the right balance between future-proofing and near-term practicality given that the number of technical standards used for creating security tokens is growing exponentially.

Another major goal behind the event is to find ways to give shareholders a legal title to both the ownership of the company and the associated rights of control. The owner of a share should be able to control its movement directly through atomic ownership, rather than having to trust a third party. Finally, we want a common way to restrict transfer so that only eligible parties in each jurisdiction may transfer these shares.

Unfortunately for the Smartlands Platform community, the Equity Token Workshop is a closed specialized event but we will move mountains to give you as much information as possible, perhaps even give you a virtual place in the audience via live feeds on our facebook page (not a promise, but we will definitely try). In the meantime, sign up to our social channels and stay in touch.