OBADA Foundation Mission

The OBADA Foundation is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit industry coalition bringing organizations across the IT asset disposition (ITAD) industry, including enterprises and blockchain companies, together to create a standard for a blockchain-enabled, decentralized ledger of IT assets.

OBADA believes that “if an asset is properly tracked from birth to end-of-life the world will be a better place”. To develop the trust needed to properly track assets the approach is to create an open protocol where everyone can and is encouraged to participate.

Goals

The primary goals for the OBADA DAO/Foundation are

1. Building open Blockchain protocols to track physical assets throughout their entire lifecycle.
2. Encouraging the adoption of the protocol via incorporation into industry applications and processes.
3. Implementing asset registries, recycling and sustainability programs with data generated using the protocol.
4. Building an ecosystem of participants who will create sustainable value flows and markets atop the protocol layer.

Purpose

OBADA is creating an open protocol for tracking the life cycle and chain of custody for electronic assets that brings transparency to all stakeholders about origin, location, condition and rights to transfer (Legal title/ownership).

Opportunity

The OBADA standard provides a way for all supply chain participants to be actors and participants (nodes) across the entire IT asset life cycle, providing authentication, security, document attachments, titles and legal records, and enabling an open platform (a protocol-based ecosystem) for anyone to interact and exchange value.

Primary Standard

OBADA believes that “Standard ISO/IEC 19970 Information technology — IT asset management” is the international reference standard for tracking IT assets for our industry and our blockchain approach. Currently there are a very small number of software companies in the world that have built to this standard.

The OBADA approach is to build a full featured ISO compliant “External Repository Manager” (ERM) (the blockchain is the external repo). This will allow OBADA to be a plugin for any ISO compliant software platform so that we can scale quickly.

MEMBER CATEGORIES

Standards development organization: The OBADA Foundation Standard registry: The OBADA DAO Technology: CosmosSDK, CosmWasm, Tendermint (compatible with any EVM-based chain) Asset Types: Electronic devices Service: Authentication Use cases for Data Storage: Sustainability info, Right to Repair info, Pedigree info

Solutions

1. Auditing current state of asset.
2. Authentication of custody and title.
3. Member training and industry standards to create awareness and adoption.

Physical NFTs

OBADA’s blockchain approach uses the concept of Physical NFTs (pNFTs).

By making physical devices NFT-compatible without needing to attach any electronics to them, the OBADA standard enables a decentralized, open platform that allows anyone to interact and exchange value.

Some basic reading in the Physical NFT Methodology.

Industry Collaboration Programs

Many of the OBADA DAO participants are involved in programs for bringing functional “end-of-corporate-life” assets back into circulation through industry partnerships, supporting the circular economy and extending asset lifecycles for member organizations.

Green Initiatives

Fully reusing and remarketing equipment is still the best thing for the environment. But even with extensive remarketing/donation programs assets eventually are no longer useful (functionally obsolete). For assets that have reached their real end-of-life OBADA is working on “mass balance”(aka “recycled content”) tracking for plastics, metals etc. to show the circular economy is functioning.

DLT and Supply Chain

A large part of OBADA’s mission is industry consensus around core decentralized identifier methodology. Decentralized identifiers for objects is what allows supply chain actors to work together with these systems built by different parties.

Technology

The OBADA DAO is using open-source technology via our partnership with the Open Source Recycling Foundation

1. Cosmos-SDK: The blockchains application-specific blockchain built on the Cosmos-SDK for ultimate performance.
2. CosmWasm: RUST-based multi-chain smart contracts running in a WASM-based environment.
3. IBC Protocol: Interchain communication.