MOSCOW: The Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation is expecting that regulations directed towards legalizing the use of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies in the country would come into effect in 2019. TASS reported that the comments have been made in the draft program “Digital Economy of the Russian Federation”, developed by the Ministry of Communications. “The adoption of legal acts providing for the use of technology decentralized registers and certificates of rights (the”BlockChain”, etc) in 2019″, stated in the document (as translated by Free News). According to TASS, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev had earlier instructed the Ministry of Telecom and the Ministry of Communications to assess the possibility of using blockchain technology in public administration during the preparation of “Digital Economy”.
Russia has been digging deeper into the blockchain space. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation, along with the largest Russian financial market participants including Sberbank, VTB, Alfa Bank, Gazprombank, Otkritie FC, and the National System of Payment Cards (NSPK) founded the ‘Fintech Association’, which will focus on research and implementation of promising technology in the fields of distributed ledgers, open interfaces, remote identification, among others. Furthermore, the Central Bank of Russia, with the market participants developed a technical prototype called ‘Masterchain’ for financial messaging, based on the distributed ledger technology (DLT). QIWI, along with other major financial institutions were involved in developing the platform.
