In a push towards overhauling global trade systems, the IOTA Foundation and five prominent international organizations have launched the TWIN Foundation, an initiative aimed at making global trade more sustainable, transparent, and inclusive through decentralized infrastructure.
Formed in partnership with the World Economic Forum, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, TradeMark Africa, the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation, and the Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade, the TWIN Foundation will govern the Trade Worldwide Information Network (TWIN), an open-source infrastructure built on IOTA’s (IOTA) distributed ledger technology.
The announcement was made on May 8 at the AfCFTA Digital Trade Forum in Lusaka, Zambia.
This marks a contrast to the recent rise in protectionist trade policies, such as U.S. tariffs and economic warfare under U.S. President Donald Trump. TWIN aims to connect global supply chains, rather than fragment them.
“We are betting on a future where IOTA is the decentralized, neutral, open, and immutable digital infrastructure that connects countries and people around the world,” Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder and Chairman of the IOTA Foundation, told ethdaily.net in an interview.
TWIN addresses long-standing inefficiencies in international trade, offering governments smarter border management and the private sector access to new efficiencies and digital services. The platform enables real-time, verifiable data exchange across borders and sectors, leveraging tools like decentralized identifiers, digital product passports, and self-sovereign identity frameworks.
Real-world deployments
TWIN is already powering real-world deployments worldwide. Examples include: 1) the United Kingdom’s Cabinet Office pilot for poultry imports from the European Union, 2) a blockchain-enabled monitoring hub known as the Virtual Watch Tower, and 3) fresh produce tracking between Kenya and the Netherlands via the RESULD project. These implementations showcase how digital transparency can reduce disruptions, ensure product quality, and align with ESG standards.
TWIN is not just a technology stack but a governance-first infrastructure. The Foundation will be responsible for setting standards, ecosystem growth, and long-term sustainability. At its core is an open source, neutral, and financially self-sufficient entity.
“Our agenda is very simple: We want to make it easier and cheaper for countries to trade with each other,” IOTA co-founder Dominik Schiener also said. “We are not part of any political agenda, but we are driving forward an economic solution.”
As the project moves into public rollout, IOTA and its partners see TWIN not just as an upgrade to outdated systems—but as a blueprint for the future of international trade. Upcoming expansions and a technical deep dive into the infrastructure are expected later this month.
“Just this week, we have upgraded IOTA to the Rebased protocol,” Schiener added. “Exactly because of this network upgrade, we and our partners are confident that IOTA will be the solution on which trade will be digitized and soon billions of assets tokenized.”
Below is the entire Q&A with Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder of IOTA and Chairman of the IOTA Foundation.
ethdaily.net: The initiative is being promoted as a counterbalance to recent nationalist trade policies. Why has the IOTA Foundation aligned itself with such a politically hot-topic mission? Can you ensure your involvement remains about providing neutral blockchain infrastructure rather than pushing a specific global policy agenda?
Dominik Schiener: The entire reason why Blockchain was created was to remove borders and barriers to create a frictionless system without intermediaries. We are betting on a future where IOTA is the decentralized, neutral, open, and immutable digital infrastructure that connects countries and people around the world.
Our agenda is very simple: We want to make it easier and cheaper for countries to trade with each other. We are not part of any political agenda, but we are driving forward an economic solution. Every country wants to trade more, as it leads to prosperity and global access.
There is a trillion-dollar funding gap in trade finance, and billions of dollars are wasted every year in fraud and inefficiency in a system that is still largely paper-based. TWIN is built to solve these problems.
CN: TWIN is built on IOTA’s distributed ledger, yet it includes heavyweight institutions like the WEF and government-linked organizations. What mechanisms are in place to prevent any one entity from exerting outsized control over the network or the data flowing through it?
DS: TWIN is built and operated by a Swiss non-profit, the TWIN Foundation. The TWIN Foundation has a governance board with several globally renowned organizations (including the IOTA Foundation), which make decisions on how the infrastructure evolves and grows. The mandate of the TWIN Foundation is strictly focused on the open-source development of the solution and its global expansion for the betterment of the global economy. The objective of the Foundation is not to make money from the infrastructure itself, but to ensure its continued expansion by connecting more and more countries. Kenya was just the start, and we aim to bring at least dozens of countries on board over the coming years.
CN: Some in the crypto community might view IOTA’s partnership with the WEF and the Tony Blair Institute as aligning with a “globalist” establishment. Does working with these prominent institutions compromise IOTA’s independence or the open ethos of blockchain tech?
DS: IOTA is and always remains independent and impartial. It is a decentralized network and not controlled by anyone. Our objective since the founding of IOTA has been to work with governments, NGOs, and enterprises to onboard them to the power of permissionless Blockchain networks. We see it as our mission to bring the real world to Web3, and these partnerships with WEF and the Tony Blair Institute are part of realizing this goal.
This, in our view, is the way in which we achieve mainstream adoption and bring new users, use cases and assets onchain.
CN: TWIN plans to tokenize trade documents as NFTs and secure them with digital identity verification. Who will govern this new digital identity system, and how can you guarantee that these features enhance data sovereignty rather than create new points of centralized control or surveillance? For instance, what prevents a powerful coalition member from unilaterally accessing or exploiting sensitive trade data under the guise of “inclusive” commerce or security needs?
DS: The system itself is fully open-source and standardized, and operates as a smart contract infrastructure on IOTA. Meaning that anyone can utilize and participate in TWIN without asking for permission. This means that there is no need for anyone to “govern” the system itself, but rather just make it seamless to use through integrations into port and customs clearing systems to make these tokenized trade documents accessible and accepted.
All data on TWIN is fully encrypted and owned by the traders themselves. Meaning we are fully GDPR-compliant and self-sovereign. Only if the trader provides consent can data be shared with third parties (e.g., port authorities, customs declarations, or banks for trade finance).
We leverage the full power of open, permissionless Blockchains, self-sovereign identities and verifiable credentials to build an open, decentralized and secure environment for traders to securely share data across borders.
CN: IOTA’s technology has faced questions about decentralization in the past (for example, its earlier reliance on a Coordinator node for network security). Now that critical trade infrastructure may rely on your ledger, how are you addressing any lingering centralization or security concerns in the IOTA network itself? If the system still requires any form of special oversight or could be halted in an emergency, doesn’t that undermine trust in this supposedly decentralized trade platform?
DS: Just this week, we have upgraded IOTA to the Rebased protocol. This makes IOTA a fully decentralized and production-ready network supporting the MoveVM for programmability on the L1 secured by a decentralized validator set of 150+ validators. Exactly because of this network upgrade, we and our partners are confident that IOTA will be the solution on which trade will be digitized and soon billions of assets tokenized.