OpenVASP Association
The OpenVASP Association was established to help the crypto industry comply with the FATF Travel Rule*. The Association was formed in 2019 and incorporated as a non-profit in Switzerland.
OpenVASP’s goals are to:
To ensure that VASPs and other entities can fully comply with the FATF’s Travel Rule,
To uphold an open, decentralised, and privacy-focused protocol for securely transmitting transaction information between VASPs and other parties,
To establish governance and compliance standards that enhance industry cooperation and collaboration, ensuring both privacy and decentralisation.
*The Travel Rule requires VASPs to collect and exchange customer data before crypto transactions.
OpenVASP’s Contributions to the Crypto Ecosystem
OpenVASP has contributed to the crypto ecosystem in several ways. However, their two most noteworthy contributions include the merger with the Travel Rule Protocol Working Group (TRPWG), which resulted in a single Travel Rule Protocol (TRP), and the development of the interVASP Messaging Standard Validator; 21 Analytics aided both feats.
What Is OpenVASP’s Connection with TRP?
OpenVASP and the TRPWG joined forces in 2021, proposing the Travel Rule Protocol (TRP) as the two groups' sole protocol for Travel Rule compliance.
What separates TRP from other Travel Rule solutions and protocols is its decentralisation. Since no company owns the efforts, decisions, budget or outcomes, the protocol was built to survive the ever-changing crypto market and allow genuine participation from whoever wants to join. This step aims to bring the groups closer and continue their collaboration, leveraging the OpenVASP’s governance and TRP protocol developments.
The TRP specifications are available on the OpenVASP Association public GitLab organisation.
What Is the IVMS Validator?
The need for the interVASP Messaging Standard 101 (IVMS 101)* arose due to updates in the FATF’s Recommendations; the Travel Rule now included virtual assets in its scope. VASPs needed a solution to comply with this update, which required them to exchange originator and beneficiary information.
However, a problem occurred; due to contrasts in regulations and laws in differing jurisdictions, the requested data was not exchanged uniformly, which decreased interoperability.
Recognising this pitfall, 21 Analytics and OpenVASP developed the interVASP Messaging (IVMS) Validator. Using the IVMS Validator, VASPs can test whether originator and beneficiary data is formatted according to IVMS101 standards. If so, it will be usable by compliant software or protocols. Nearly all protocols use data formatting that is compatible with the IVMS Validator.
The free tool helps protocol designers and implementors to conform to one standard, thus increasing interoperability.
*IVMS 101 is the equivalent of ISO 20022 for virtual asset transfers.