Protecting Blockchain’s Business Boom

By Greg Kohn, Executive Director, BSSC

BSSC was at Consensus 2025 this month in Toronto, and the event had a notably business-centered vibe. This is not a surprise. It underscores the growing appeal of blockchain among traditional businesses and financial institutions. After all, blockchain solutions enable speed, efficiency and transparency across a wide array of business use cases.

Yet, for all the bullish enthusiasm around blockchain, there remains prevailing worry around its security. For anyone who follows the blockchain and crypto industry, it’s rare that more than even a few days pass without seeing news about an impactful compromise. While security threats can – and do – come from a range of sources, it is well-established that nation-state attacks on blockchain systems are both commonplace and highly sophisticated.

As one blockchain industry leader told me last week: “It’s awesome to see blockchain finally go so mainstream. But it also feels like our whole industry is one big hack away from getting vaporized altogether.”

That combination of fear and excitement is exactly why the Blockchain Security Standards Council (BSSC) was formed last year. BSSC is a direct response to the understanding that unless security is meaningfully enhanced across the blockchain ecosystem, its growth will stall. Imagine, for instance, a traditional financial institution that decides to expand its offerings to include digital assets. Then imagine a significant hack wiping out the value of its customer’s digital holdings. Today, sadly, that is not a far-fetched possibility.

Securing any technology, blockchain included, is not a binary proposition. Security is a complex undertaking, and different approaches are required for different scenarios. In the realm of blockchain, however, BSSC’s members – a collection of industry leaders – agree deeply that there are some mandatory aspects of security that every blockchain solution should encompass:

• Tokens should have a fundamental level of security before they are listed on exchanges or integrated into blockchain systems
• Nodes, which are the core engines for blockchain systems, should have a baseline level of security built into them
• Cryptographic keys, which area fundamental aspect of blockchain security, should be guided by defined standard practices on how teams or organizations should properly manage them
• Every organization in the blockchain ecosystem should have a common, baseline understanding of general security and privacy practices

BSSC published its initial suite of standards earlier this month. While they are just the start of our journey to help elevate confidence and trust in blockchain systems, we believe even these first releases will make a material difference to those organizations that adopt them. We’ve already begun our next phase of work, which will both extend our initial standards and expand our focus into new security domains. Our organization’s membership is open to any company that supports the notion that a more secure blockchain ecosystem is one that’s better for all of us.