Spain's blockchain services infrastructure (ISBE), Alastria and EBSI: how they differ

The three get mixed up because they share vocabulary (public-permissioned network, decentralized identity, Hyperledger Besu) and because the agreement that created ISBE mentions all three. But they don't have the same sponsor, the same operator or the same access model. This guide separates them using official sources. Everything below was checked as of October 16, 2026.

What ISBE is: the blockchain infrastructure backed by the Community of Madrid

ISBE describes itself as "a set of networks" built on blockchain technology and as a public-permissioned infrastructure. It is led by the Community of Madrid, with NextGenerationEU funds from Spain's Recovery Plan (Component 13, RETECH program), and carried out by Alastria under an agreement of February 21, 2025 with Madrid's Ministry of Digitalization, published in the regional gazette (BOCM No. 56) on March 7, 2025.

• Public money. The agreement sets a maximum budget of €8,923,758: €6,738,000 from the Community of Madrid and €2,185,758 from Alastria through its asset portfolio. In July 2026, the Community of Madrid put the public investment at €4.7 million.
• Technology. Hyperledger Besu with QBFT consensus and a 2-second block time, EVM-compatible. It has a Bare Network, the one with the highest compliance level, and a Main EVM network for tokenization and smart contracts, with Chain ID 33073 on Mainnet and 11073 on Testnet.
• Who can read. Anyone can browse the network in its public explorers.
• Who can write. Only legal entities in the European Economic Area that pass KYB verification and hold a did:isbe identifier, always through the ISBE Client. Smart contracts are always deployed through the Factory, the ISBE contract that is the only authorized gateway for deployments.
• What it's used for. Four application families: verifiable credentials, traceability, certification and tokenization. Its official catalog lists 15 use cases.
• Status. It started with two networks after the launch ceremony of December 18, 2025. For 2026, its roadmap expects other Spanish regions to join "progressively."

We cover the practical side (contract, legal representative certificate, KYB and fees) in how to use ISBE: onboarding, requirements and fees. For a short definition, see what ISBE is.

What Alastria is and what its T and B networks are

Alastria is the Asociación Consorcio Red Alastria, registered in Spain's National Register of Associations under number 616096. It launched on October 17, 2017, simultaneously in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia and Málaga. It brings together companies, universities and public bodies. Its website mentions "more than 500 organizations," although its public member list showed 388 entries as of October 16, 2026.

Alastria isn't a network. It's the environment in which its members build networks: according to its website, members work together on the definition, deployment, operation and maintenance of the infrastructure. Today it lists two public-permissioned networks with a proof-of-authority (PoA) consensus model:

• T Network. Based on Quorum.
• B Network. Based on Hyperledger Besu. Alastria points out that it uses the same technology as EBSI and the Latin American LACChain network.

Membership carries an annual fee that depends on company size, and members can add their own nodes; non-members can ask Alastria's support for permissioning, according to the B Network node guide. Among the membership benefits, Alastria lists access to the networks its members run and support for deploying nodes, which require prior permissioning. Public bodies can join through a cooperation agreement.

For transparency: Unknown Gravity is a member of Alastria.

Does Alastria own ISBE? Who sponsors, operates and governs it

Not quite. Alastria operates ISBE, but ISBE isn't just another member-run network like T and B. The sponsor, funding, ownership, contract and governance are all different:

• Sponsor and funding. ISBE is a Community of Madrid initiative funded with European public money. The T and B networks come out of Alastria's member ecosystem.
• Operation. According to its project page, Alastria leads the design, deployment and technical governance of ISBE. The official website, redisbe.com, is owned by Alastria.
• Ownership. The agreement states that the Community of Madrid and Alastria will be co-owners, in equal shares, of what is developed, under an open-source license.
• Contract. ISBE users sign a Framework Membership Agreement in which a "Managing Entity" is the single contractual counterparty.
• Governance. ISBE's policies provide for a Management Body, a Supervisory Body, a Compliance and Regulation Committee and an Operations and Technology Committee. At Alastria, the supreme body is the members' General Assembly.

The 2025 agreement keeps the two worlds apart: it mentions Alastria's networks, the T Network (Quorum) and the B Network (Hyperledger Besu), and presents ISBE as a complementary national network, interoperable and aligned with EBSI. Since February 2026, ISBE also has its own executive director within Alastria, Miguel Ángel Calero.

Identity: ID_Alastria vs. did:isbe

This is the practical difference most often missed when people talk about "the Alastria network."

• ID_Alastria is the consortium's self-sovereign identity (SSI) model. It runs on the T and B networks, an MVP 2.0 version is available to members, and it was the basis for the Spanish standard UNE 71307-1, which Alastria has taken to CEN/CENELEC.
• did:isbe is ISBE's identifier. It follows the W3C standards for decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and verifiable credentials, with the format did:isbe:<modelDeploy>:<identifier>. Organizations identify themselves with a qualified eIDAS certificate linked to their did:isbe, and none can operate without completing KYB. ISBE adds a Trusted Issuer Registry to build accreditation chains.

ISBE's identity documentation doesn't mention ID_Alastria. If your project already uses ID_Alastria on the B Network, working on ISBE means managing did:isbe identities. On ISBE, smart contract roles can also be assigned to a DID instead of a bare address, so permissions are managed per organization rather than per private key. More context in our digital identity entry.

What EBSI is and who governs it today

EBSI (European Blockchain Services Infrastructure) is Europe's shared blockchain infrastructure for cross-border public services. Its path, according to ebsi.eu and the European Commission:

• 2018. The European Commission and 29 countries sign the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP) declaration, committing to build a shared infrastructure for public services.
• Development and pilots. The Commission developed it in cooperation with member states. In May 2024, its pilot network had more than 40 nodes across Europe.
• May 21, 2024. The Commission adopts the decision creating EUROPEUM-EDIC, a European digital infrastructure consortium. At that point it had 9 member states: Belgium (host country), Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia; Poland had asked to join. Spain was not on that list.
• Today. ebsi.eu presents Europeum-EDIC as EBSI's sole operator, independent of the Commission, with 10 member states in its governance. In 2026 it moved to a production network, which as of October 16, 2026 has 20 nodes, plus 20 pre-production and 32 pilot nodes.

Who can take part. Any organization in an EBP country (the 27 EU states, Norway and Liechtenstein) can host a node, validator or regular, if it meets the technical and service-level requirements and gets Europeum-EDIC's endorsement. To write to its registries you need an EBSI identifier and the matching authorization.

What it's used for. Mainly verifiable credentials (academic degrees and professional qualifications), verifiable records and proofs, and a registry of trusted issuers. In finance, the DEUSS project explores how to support digital bond issuance for SMEs. In its developer documentation, updated on September 30, 2026, traceability, digital asset ownership and a smart contracts factory are marked "Coming soon." As of October 16, 2026, ebsi.eu had scheduled its Business Launch for October 22, 2026, in Bucharest.

Is ISBE connected to EBSI? What is planned

There's no evidence that it is. Alignment with EBSI has been part of ISBE's design since its MVP was presented in July 2025, and Alastria describes it that way. But actual interoperability is a roadmap goal, not a published service.

Read carefully here, because the redisbe.com FAQ mixes tenses on the same page:

• In the present tense, it says ISBE integrates with European infrastructures "such as EBSI" and that it enables interoperability with EBSI.
• In the future tense, it says middleware to interoperate with EBSI is being considered and that in 2026 ISBE will expand and add interoperability tools with EBSI.
• The roadmap on its home page places the development of interoperability tools connecting ISBE with EBSI in 2026.

As of October 16, 2026, neither the docs.redisbe.com pages we reviewed (home, onboarding, credentials, wallet and network parameters) nor ebsi.eu describe a working ISBE–EBSI connector. What they do share is the groundwork: W3C decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials with trusted issuer registries, alignment with eIDAS 2 and, in EBSI's case according to Alastria, the same Besu technology. That makes the connection plausible; it doesn't make it real. If your use case needs cross-border verification on EBSI today, you have to integrate with EBSI directly. On the concept itself, see our interoperability entry.

Comparison table: ISBE, Alastria's networks and EBSI

Which one fits your project?

• Issuing a tokenized security or an asset with identified participants in Spain. ISBE's Main EVM network is a candidate, with its ERC3643 template and an ERIR (the entity that keeps the legal register of DLT securities under Spain's Law 6/2023). We cover it in tokenized securities on ISBE: ERC-3643, the ERIR and real cases.
• Credentials that must be verified in another member state. EBSI is the infrastructure built for that today. The connection from ISBE hasn't been published yet.
• Experimenting inside a business ecosystem or using ID_Alastria. The T and B networks, as an Alastria member.
• Records that need the highest compliance level. ISBE reserves its Bare Network for that. Note: ISBE says it is "positioning" itself as a qualified electronic ledger, not that it already is one.

One warning applies to all three: the network doesn't make the asset legal. MiCA and Spain's Law 6/2023 apply to the token, not to the infrastructure, and no network complies with Spain's securities markets law (Law 6/2023) on its own. If the token is a transferable security, you need an ERIR and the MiFID II rules, wherever it's recorded.

If you choose ISBE, our work building on ISBE means designing the smart contracts in Solidity, testing them on a local Besu network and preparing the handover for ISBE's technical review; ISBE staff carry out the deployment.

Frequently asked questions

Does Alastria own ISBE?

Alastria carries it out and operates it, and leads its design, deployment and technical governance. But it is backed by the Community of Madrid with NextGenerationEU funds, and under the agreement of February 21, 2025 both are equal co-owners of what is developed. It isn't a member-run network like T and B.

Is ISBE already connected to EBSI?

There's no evidence of it. ISBE was designed to be aligned with EBSI, but its roadmap places the development of interoperability tools in 2026. Its FAQ speaks in both the present and the future tense. As of October 16, 2026, there is no documented connector.

What happens to Alastria's T and B networks?

They are still Alastria's networks: the T Network uses Quorum and the B Network uses Hyperledger Besu, and alastria.io presents them as its networks. They are separate from ISBE and are run by Alastria's members.

Does ISBE use ID_Alastria?

Its identity documentation doesn't mention it. ISBE uses its own identifier, did:isbe, based on W3C DIDs and verifiable credentials. ID_Alastria runs on the T and B networks.

Who runs EBSI today?

Europeum-EDIC, the consortium created by a European Commission decision of May 21, 2024. It took over EBSI's governance from the European Blockchain Partnership and presents itself as EBSI's sole operator, independent of the Commission.

How much public money has ISBE received?

The Community of Madrid put the public investment at €4.7 million in July 2026. The agreement with Alastria sets a maximum budget of €8,923,758, of which the Community contributes €6,738,000.

Sources

• ISBE: Blockchain Services Infrastructure of Spain (home page and roadmap)
• ISBE frequently asked questions (redisbe.com, in Spanish)
• Distinctive features of the ISBE network (redisbe.com, in Spanish)
• ISBE network parameters (docs.redisbe.com)
• DIDs on ISBE: did:isbe (docs.redisbe.com)
• ISBE launch ceremony of December 18, 2025 (redisbe.com, in Spanish)
• Agreement of February 21, 2025 between the Community of Madrid and Alastria (BOCM No. 56, in Spanish)
• Community of Madrid press release of July 22, 2026 (in Spanish)
• ISBE – Blockchain Services Infrastructure of Spain (project page, alastria.io)
• What we do: T and B networks and ID_Alastria (alastria.io, in Spanish)
• What Alastria is and its governing bodies (alastria.io, in Spanish)
• Alastria's third anniversary: launch on October 17, 2017 (in Spanish)
• Blockchain: Creation of EUROPEUM-EDIC (European Commission, May 22, 2024)
• About EBSI (ebsi.eu)
• Governance: Europeum-EDIC (ebsi.eu)
• EBSI's Node Operators (ebsi.eu)
• EBSI developer documentation (hub.ebsi.eu)

Framework verified as of October 16, 2026. Not sure whether ISBE, an Alastria network or EBSI fits your project? Talk to us.