China's BSN predicted as long-term global project, still ahead of others

According to the BSN introductory white paper, the project serves as an "Information infrastructure" designed to advance the development of smart cities for the emerging digital economy.

The BSN officially became available for global commercial use in April this year.

Progress doesn't always equate success, especially when it comes to a global infrastructure with goals as lofty as the BSN's. As such, market research company Forrester revealed in its 2021 enterprise blockchain predictions that China's BSN will "Languish" due to the region's current geopolitical climate.

According to Bennett, sanctions, along with many countries' desire to reduce dependency on China, will impact global progress for the BSN. While Bennett's thoughts about the BSN are just a prediction, some recent statistics reveal that unfavorable views of China have now reached historic highs.

Yifan He, CEO of Red Date Technology - the private company behind the daily operation and maintenance of the BSN - told Cointelegraph that the current geopolitical climate has not affected the development of the BSN. "Half of our tech partners are from the U.S, and we are working closely with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud as our global cloud partners," he said.

Specifically speaking, the BSN white paper discusses the potential of blockchain for an initiative like the BSN. The document states that blockchain will enable a resource-sharing mechanism for smart cities, greatly lowering the cost of resources.

According to He, the BSN is moving forward smoothly, noting that the BSN testnet for permissioned blockchains was recently launched.

He further commented that a date has not been set or even predicted as to when the BSN will make a global impact.

It's also important to point out that there are two versions of the BSN: one is called "BSN China" and the other is "BSN International." According to He, BSN is still one network, but the governance is divided between BSN China and BSN International.

Feng pointed out that BSN China only utilizes permissioned, private blockchain networks, while BSN international incorporates permissionless, public blockchains.