Andrey Lugovoy, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, supports the idea of creating an association of blockchain companies that would become Russian analogue of the R3 consortium.

Such a consortium would make it possible to “mobilise the technological, financial and organisational resources” necessary for a breakthrough in the field of financial technologies, explained Lugovoy to the City News Agency “Moskva”.

The project is promising both technologically and from the legislative point of view. An Interdepartmental Working Group within the Duma is now assessing possible risks connected with cryptocurrencies and is about to present a model of blockchain legislative regulation. And it seems that scattered individual startups developing their own blockchains will have no place within this model. “No doubt, the model will only be able to work if the main developers and startups of this idea [sic! – CoinFox] unite within the framework of a single consortium,” said the parliamentarian.

It is worth noting, though, that the R3 consortium is not an association of crypto-technology industry representatives created to meet legislative regulations. It’s rather a “playground”, a safe environment where financial organisations can test the opportunities and estimate risks connected with blockchain. In this sense, the legislative regulation of the consortium suggested by Lugovoy is a novelty, and it correlates with the general cautious approach by Russian regulators to the implementation of the technology.

Creating a Russian analogue of the R3 consortium is considered necessary as well by Alexei Arkhipov, director of the Cryptotechnologies Department of Russian payment service QIWI, as he said on Tuesday at the Moscow forum “Blockchain and Open Platforms – 2016”. Such an association will not only allow the participants to explore the distributed ledger technologies but will also make it possible to test them. The company itself has already introduced its own blockchain in test mode, noted the financier.

Deputy President of the Bank of Russia Olga Skorobogatova also spoke in favour of a Russian blockchain consortium at the same forum. According to her, you can’t achieve anything in the field of distributed ledger technologies being on your own. “Distributed technologies imply coherence, participants should understand each other and how this or that system works,” she said.

Generally, Russian regulators welcome the implementation of the blockchain technology in the country, unlike cryptocurrencies, which are associated with high risks both for citizens and for the financial system. However, Andrey Lugovoy earlier claimed that of the two possible scenarios for cryptocurrencies, i.e. complete ban or regulation, the second one seems more likely, and Russians will perhaps retain the right to use bitcoin.

Andrew Levich