Any organisation in one of the European Blockchain Partnership countries (EU 27 + Norway and Liechtenstein) can host an EBSI node, as long as certain conditions are met. There are minimum technical requirements and SLAs to be met, all outlined in the EBSI Node Operator General Conditions. The candidate Node Operator also needs to request the endorsement of the EBP member in their country.

The EBSI Pilot Network is a restricted and controlled environment created for testing and evaluation of components and/or EBSI Use Cases. To host a Pilot Node, follow these steps: Accept the EBSI Node Operator in the EBSI Node Operator in Pilot Network Compliance Statement and its Annex A, the NOOB and the SLA; and Comply with the security standards and policies as specified in the Node Operators Operational Book (NOOB) and the Service Level Agreement (SLA) applicable requirements to the EBSI Pilot Network.

EBSI nodes are being operated by the EBP members that partner with local service providers. In order to get involved, please contact your EBP representative. The complete hardware and connectivity requirements for hosting a node are available in the 2nd section of the Node Operators Operational Book (NOOB). When you have the hardware and connectivity requirements ready at your side, please create a new node request in the EBSI service desk. The EBSI support team will then walk you through the entire Node installation/verification process.

No backups are needed due to the distributed nature of the data and the fact the node can be rebuilt and operational in a short amount of time.

The node once installed will take care of EBSI updates automatically, there may be exceptions where EBSI send over commands to execute - these will be communicated to your technical contact. In regards to general OS and security updates, these can be carried out by your technical team as per your infrastructure policy.

From the technical perspective, the Node Operator maintains its infrastructure. From the governance perspective, the Node Operator is also expected to follow a set of operational processes and all legal requirements and monitor and manage their own node. EBSI Technical Office will also monitor the node in terms of the SLA that has been published and alert the Node Operator in case an SLA threshold is reached.

Node Operators are advised to reach out to their EBP member representative to understand viable local equivalents that may be endorsed by the EBP member representative. There may be a possibility for Node Operators to operate in production if they commit to complete the ISO27001 certification within a certain time frame. This option is to be confirmed.

For the security certification, the general guideline is that it would need to be provided for the legal entity that hosts the node. Depending on your situation / set up of your node, if there is a need to consider something out of the norm, this can be checked with the EBP.

Yes, for the new Pilot Environment. No for the Pre-Production and Production environments. The endorsement of the Node Operator's EBP representative of an ISO 27001 (or equivalent) certification is mandatory. Concerning the Pilot environment, no ISO 27001 security certification or equivalent is needed.

There is a technical limitation proven by tests performed by hyperledger.org and considering the load that has been tested in the EBSI network the result is as follows: With more than 29 validator nodes, the network becomes unstable and performance drops significantly.

The European Blockchain Service Infrastructure (EBSI) is a collaborative initiative aimed at providing a high-standard blockchain infrastructure. This infrastructure facilitates public and private sector applications to leverage blockchain technology across Europe.

In blockchain terminology, a node is a computer that partakes in the network. Each node retains a copy of the blockchain and adheres to the consensus protocol to agree on the blockchain's state. Nodes play various roles, from validating and relaying transactions to generating new blocks.

EBSI is envisioned to be a premier infrastructure in Europe for secure and efficient cross-border digital services. It underscores the European Union's dedication to technological innovation, cooperation, and the merits of blockchain technology for both the public and private sectors.

EBSI existing communities are currently restricted to service providers working for the EBP member countries.

Although EBSI is currently restricted to public administration and EBP-endorsed partners, a new wave of Early Adopters is here. You can also contact your national EBP representative for more information on how to get involved in your national initiatives.

The European Blockchain Partnership (EBP) is a group created from a joint effort from the Member Countries; elected representatives are appointed by their countries' ministries or agencies, to be involved in blockchain initiatives. EBP’s vision is to leverage blockchain to create cross-border services for public administrations, businesses, citizens and their ecosystems to verify information and make services trustworthy.

The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) is a network of distributed blockchain nodes across Europe. It is the first EU-wide blockchain infrastructure, driven by the public sector, in full respect of European values and regulations. The EBSI nodes composing the network support multiple protocols (pluggable protocols) and a full set of APIs. The main protocol supported at the moment is Hyperledger Besu (with IBFT 2.0 consensus).

EBSI is a permissioned network. As such, writing on-chain is restricted to authorised actors as defined under the scope of EBSI's Use Cases. There is no permissionless deployment on-chain on EBSI. All current possible implementations are documented in the Specifications available here. More general information about EBSI is available here. If you wish to investigate a potential Use Case under EBSI, that is in line with EBSI's values and promotes the public good, feel free to write to EU-EBSI@ec.europa.eu explaining what you have in mind and this will be reviewed by EBSI's joint governance with European Blockchain Partnership members. Documentation regarding the Smart Contracts is not publicly available for the reasons stated above and security reasons.

Alongside with the APIs, EBSI has developed a test-scripts package which shows examples, calls and flows of how the API can be integrated into your application. You can check out an example here.

At the moment, all smart contracts are designed and build by the EBSI team. Any Ethereum-compliant development stack can be used to develop EVM-compliant smart contracts. Developers can use scaffold.eth (or any other similar framework) to build EVM-compliant smart contracts.

Yes, but the compliance track is still in progress.

EBSI consists of both dApps and classical, non-blockchain services.

The APIs, libraries, specifications and all associated artefacts are located here.