David Berlind, host of the Blockchain Journal Podcast, interviews David Bchiri, President of XRPL Commons, an independent non-profit organization that helps to drive the success of the XRP ecosystem (XRP is the native protocol token of the Ripple distributed ledger). During the interview, conducted at the Consensus 2023 Conference in Austin, Bchiri explains that XRPL Commons is working towards the support and education of four organization types — "pillars" as he calls them — to drive interest and adoption; universities, large organizations, startups, and the community. In the blockchain industry, "community" is a standard one-word reference to the collection of individuals — developers, enthusiasts, adherents, retail investors, fans, etc — who, in aggregate typically represent a huge base of support for a given distributed ledger's ecosystem. XRPL Commons aims to be at the crossroads of these four pillars with dedicated educational programs for each.

As Berlind points out during the interview, blockchain as a technology faces various obstacles when it comes to adoption by enterprises and other large organizations (one of Bchiri's four organizational pillars). Among the challenges is a complete lack of familiarity with blockchain technology among business executives. Most of what those executives see are the unflattering cryptocurrency headlines in the mainstream media. Bchiri agreed, saying that the solution from the XRPL Commons' perspective is to invite those executives to XRPL Commons-organized briefings where they can learn about the true value of blockchain technology and how it can unlock new opportunities in their specific industries.

Bchiri echos some key blockchain messages having to do with the erosion of corporate trust and the role that decentralized public ledgers — systems and records with which malfeasant or incompetent organizational personnel cannot tamper — can play. Whereas centralized systems leave open the opportunity for manipulation of information by one or a handful of people who are in charge of them, Bchiri pointed out that blockchain creates complete auditability and permanence of data that cannot be changed and therefore offers enterprises an opportunity to restore the trust which has been eroding over time.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:

https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/xrpl-commons-president-david-bchiri-education-is-a-prerequisite-enterprise-blockchain/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO3SXEMeDxE