Big four accounting giant Deloitte announced that it has successfully completed a blockchain project that was entitled and designed to demonstrate tangible and actionable options for blockchain transaction data and infrastructure assurance.

The blockchain project is intended to enhance the utility and trust of permissioned blockchain system with the help of professional audit and assurance standards in order to examine blockchain applications as well as protocols, the release stated.

"As this technology evolves, it's only a matter of time until our clients tell us they are moving portions of their business onto blockchain infrastructure. Moreover, as a leader in delivering audits of the highest quality, we need to get ahead of the curve on quantifying and defining how an auditor could provide a level of assurance on a permissioned blockchain application, contributing to the trust and confidence in the network,” Will Bible, partner, Deloitte & Touche LLP, stated. “For this project,  we tapped into the breadth and depth of experience within our multidisciplinary business model to collaborate across our audit, technology, and blockchain groups to pull together the experience needed to apply the lens of assurance on blockchain-based applications.”

According to Iliana Oris Valiente, co-founder and strategy leader of the Rubix by Deloitte team, for the project, they have selected an internally developed loyalty points blockchain application built by Rubix Deloitte. This was developed on a permissioned Ethereum network as a test case.

In order to understand the potentials, options, and challenges for this project; the team applied already existing guidance from the attestation standards to permissioned blockchain application. The Deloitte team also built certain procedures specific to the nuances of blockchain product. These could help blockchain principals, auditors, preparers and users of financial statements.

"Given the early stages of blockchain maturity, we recognize that many clients are in the development phases rather than in production. As this technology matures, participants of these blockchain solutions are going to need to understand the potential risks and be able to provide the proper assurance that the processing environment and data is managed in a well-controlled manner,” Tim Davis, principal, Deloitte & Touche LLP, stated.