What Is TRP?

Short for Travel Rule Protocol, TRP is an open-source standard for exchanging crypto-asset transfer-related data between virtual asset service providers (VASPs) as required by the FATF Travel Rule Recommendation 16. Started in mid-2020 by Standard Chartered (Zodia), ING and BitGo, TRP quickly became the leading decentralised protocol, attracting many VASPs and technical solution providers, such as 21 Analytics, as contributors, supporters, and users.

TRP builds on and leverages other open industry standards from the crypto industry such as IVMS and LNURL and standard IT building blocks such as REST and HTTPS. It is an entirely royalty-free specification without any hidden catches or depending on any centralised third-party services.

The TRP logo perfectly represents its values: Simplicity, Cleanness, and Structure

Being used by a versatile group of companies with specific requirements requested by regulators from different countries, the TRP working group defined the standard to be extendable by design. Its flexible extension mechanism enables adding extra functionality to cover unique business needs.

"By focusing on delivering a simple, pragmatic solution early, TRP has been able to rapidly evolve through a number of iterations and is now a mature protocol with multiple implementations in use today" Andrew Davidson - Chair of the Travel Rule Protocol Working Group.

TRP as Part of the OpenVASP Association

In late 2021 the TRP working group merged with the OpenVASP association. The new TRP version 3 combines the best parts of the former OpenVASP protocol and TRP version 2. It is the official protocol of the OpenVASP association for enabling a truly permissionless, peer-to-peer implementation of the Travel Rule as defined in the principles of the association.

The TRP specifications are available on the OpenVASP association public GitLab organisation. The further development of the standard as well as its extensions happen through GitLab merge requests and issues, the OpenVASP Slack, and the weekly call of the TRP working group.

TRP: Decentralised for Global Adoption

One of the main differences of TRP compared to 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 true participation from whoever wants to join.

Although the protocol is already live and empowering Travel Rule services worldwide, it keeps regular open meetings to define improvements and market needs. Anyone can take part in the development of the Travel Rule Protocol, requesting access through the website.

To learn more about TRP, visit travelruleprotocol.org and our blog posts about various parts of the protocols: