Blockchain and Safeguards: The Potential for Distributed Ledger Technology

The network ability of blockchain technology to manage and self-audit large volumes of data in a shared, secure and transparent manner has potentially far-reaching value for the way safeguards information is collected, processed, and analyzed. The Stimson Center, in partnership with the Stanley Foundation, held a series of workshops in 2018 from Vienna to the Silicon Valley to discuss this potential. The findings and recommendations in this paper consider how the application of distributed ledger technology (DLT) could be employed to provide greater efficiency, data reconciliation, accuracy and trust in the management of international safeguard information. The paper also touches upon the potential for DLT to be applied to export controls