TreBlo: New Ideas for Trust
,Who do you trust? And what information do you trust? There is no easy answer to this, not anymore. Today a friend of a friend might share a link. We would assume the information is correct. But in a world full of mis- and disinformation, how can we know for sure? Is there a way to trust that link? Blockchain technology and the TreBlo venture could offer some assistance here.
TreBlo is a new, EU-funded research project dedicated to tackling the challenge of trust–in a networked world where a lot of actors just aren't trustworthy. Started last month and running until September 2023, the vision of TreBlo is to facilitate research on how blockchain technology can be used for new approaches in distributed trust.
Distributed trust models
So what is distributed trust? Put in simple words, the term refers to a system where you can trust other parties even if you don't know them, because you trust the intermediary: a system based on a chain of information blocks that can't easily be tampered with. If somebody makes an alteration, everybody else will know and the change will be reversed. TreBlo will use this concept for novel technical infrastructure, e.g. a platform that will make it extra hard (or impossible) to distribute questionable content and links. So you can trust that friend of a friend without really knowing the person.
Open calls to fund innovative teams
To achieve its goals, TreBlo will implement a series of open calls inviting both academic and R&D teams to define and implement small scale innovation projects on related use cases. Selected applicants will get funding to work on new ideas. This approach, introduced by the European Commission in the scope of the H2020 framework, is called cascade funding or FSTP (financial support to third parties). It's basically about distributing public funds to start-ups, SMEs and similar organizations to help them kick off or further develop digital innovation ventures. In an ideal scenario, small and versatile teams with a good sense for market developments will pick up funding and then go on to invent the next big thing (or a missing component thereof).
The Treblo consortium
DW innovation has three partners in Treblo:
ATC (Athens Technology Center), a technology and research company with a great deal of experience in verification and content systems.
The F6S Network, a huge technology network with an international database of 3,8 million founders and start-ups and a variety of successfully organized open calls under their belt.
Worldline, a European leader and pioneer in digital payments.
To learn more about Treblo and the upcoming open calls, please get in touch with Mirko Lorenz. An official Treblo website is in the making.
