The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), an organization focused on “developing open, blockchain specifications” and standards that enhance “interoperability for businesses and consumers,” is working with Microsoft on an initiative that will help companies issue the appropriate type of crypto tokens for their requirements.
Referred to as the “Token Taxonomy Initiative,” the token development project will be built and managed using Ethereum, Hyperledger, Digital Asset’s DAML, and R3’s Corda technologies.
EY, Microsoft, Digital Asset, Banco Santander Join Token Taxonomy Initiative
Some of the prominent members of the Token Taxonomy Initiative include JPMorgan, IBM, Ernst & Young, ConsenSys, Blockchain Research Institute, Microsoft, Web3 Labs, R3, ING, Intel, Komgo, Clearmatics, Digital Asset, and Banco Santander. This, according to announcement made on April 17th, 2019, which also revealed that the token creation initiative will be open and accessible to all users who want to contribute to its ongoing development.
In order to facilitate the creation of project-specific tokens, there will be several workshops conducted and there will also be a Github repository where users can publish their research findings. Additionally, the repository can be used to upload test data which may be related to various blockchain-based token implementation projects.
Standardizing Tokens May Lead To “Great Economic Opportunities”
Commenting on the launch of the Token Taxonomy project, Ron Resnick, the Executive Director at the EEA, remarked:
We are doing this for the greater common good. Standardizing tokens across all networks could hold the key to one of the greatest economic opportunities in modern history.
Marley Gray, the Principal Architect at Microsoft, who has been credited with originally proposing the Token Taxonomy Initiative, noted that his colleagues had conducted a research study – which involved asking various investigative questions. Responding to these questions, Microsoft’s internal business partners mentioned that they were interested in learning more about and improving the existing software licensing process.
Microsoft’s business associates have now reportedly recommended using tokenized and smart contract-enabled software licenses – instead of the traditional licensing process which requires users to register complex holographic IDs for each software license.
In statements shared with Coindesk, Gray explained:
The idea is to use a workshop with business people to describe a token completely that services their business requirements. That token itself is composed of reusable components so another group can use those same components to define a slightly different token without redefining all the things that initial group did – so it creates this framework.
“Drag And Drop” To Create Customized Tokens
Gray added that businesses would be able to “grab a non-fungible token and drag it over and then start from a pallet of behaviors” and “drag those behaviors.” This, in a manner which would be similar to how “drag and drop” works on GUI-based operating systems such as Windows and Linux.
According to Gray, this is a user-friendly and intuitive way of defining tokens as users can use easy-to-follow steps and a visual interface to create and issue cryptographic assets
Gray further noted:
An individual [token] behavior could point to a snippet of code for a particular platform, i.e. DAML for some particular behavior would link me to a particular piece of DAML code, or the same for Solidity, or Chaincode.
