Metagov Seminar: Beckn: an open source protocol for decentralised transactions (with Sujith Nair)

This is seminar will feature a presentation by Sujith Nair on Beckn, an open protocol for decentralized commerce. ​Beckn consists of several specifications for building open e-commerce networks across which sellers and their offers are universally discoverable from any Beckn-enabled app or platform. As a protocol, Beckn is multi-layered, with layer structure and organization resembling that of HTTP. ​The architecture of the Beckn ecosystem has five layers (from top to bottom): ​Application layer ​Network and Transaction layer ​Infrastructure and Security layer ​Certification layer ​Specification and Support layer ​The system has the power to break the silos of proprietary platforms in order to enable interoperability of digital services across platforms. ​From the paper "Beyond platforms — Growing distributed transaction networks for digital commerce": ​Context: We talk of the internet as digital infrastructure; but we leave the building of digital 'rails' and 'roads' to the quasi-monopolistic platform providers that benefit from both vendor and customer log-in. Decentralised architectures provide a number of advantages: They are potentially more inclusive for small players; more resilient against adversarial events, and seem to generate more innovation. However, it is not well understood how to evolve, adapt and govern decentralised infrastructures. ​Objective: This article reports empirical qualitative research on the development and governance of the Beckn Protocol, an open source protocol for decentralised transactions, the successful development of domain-specific adaptations, and implementation and scaling of commercial infrastructures based on it. It explores how the architecture and governance support local innovation for specific business domains, and how the domain-specific innovations feed back into the development of the core concept.