3 Sep
0
Visa will test the Blockchain
Visa will test the Blockchain
London payment giant Visa will test the blockchain to improve interbank payments.
In fact, Visa Europe Collab announced today that its innovation lab started to test the distributed ledger with BTL Group.
Together the companies will try to explore how the blockchain and smart contracts can be useful for transactions among banks.
In the press release, co-founder of Visa Europe Collab, Hendrik Kleinsmiede, explained that the two partners wants European banks to join their program to use the technology for live payments.
“We’ll work closely together on the development and implementation of the PoC, ensuring that all participants come away with new knowledge and insight into the role that the blockchain could play in interbank settlements in the future.”
According to an article published on the Financial Times, Visa and BTL will try to finish the project within 100 days.
This is not the first project that sees Visa Europe Collab using the blockchain.
In July, Visa revealed a micropayments trial and a project to extend the reach of traditional payments.
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1 Sep
0
Microsoft Smart Contracts: a working group to improve security
Today the tech giant announced it is working on a project to improve Microsoft smart contracts security.
Called Kinakuta, this working group aims at making it easier for companies to use and develop smart contracts based on the blockchain.
Even if more and more businesses are increasingly expressing interest in blockchain based smart contracts, concerns about this kind of use case grew after the DAO collapse.
Since then, Microsoft decided to improve smart contracts security to avoid further issues in the future.
Marley Gray, Microsoft’s director of business development and strategy, in fact, believes that their project could reduce future risks.
“We feel there’s a huge opportunity here to involve the community. Kinakuta is the community building around Microsoft best practices and elsewhere, to collect best practices and tools and involve developers in creating these best practices.”
Gray explained that there are 35 developers and companies that the company decided to call for the Microsoft Smart Contracts group. These include the Ethereum Foundation, R3CEV and BlockApps.
Vitalik Buterin on Microsoft Smart Contracts
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Creator, commented that he doesn’t believe that this new project could necessarily stop future collapses like DAO.
“There will be further bugs and we will learn further lessons,” he explained in a blog post.
Microsoft Smart Contracts: a whitepaper with Harvard
Previously, Microsoft released a research realized with Harvard that explained how ethereum smart contracts will work.
This whitepaper proposes a method called “formal verification”, or the way to prove the correctness of a smart contract; also it proposes two tools to help verify smart contracts: Solidity and EVM.
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31 Aug
0
Who are the new Hyperledger Blockchain Project members?
Tech giant Samsung is among the new Hyperledger Blockchain Project members announced today.
Hyperledger Blockchain members
Together with Samsung there are 16 other new companies joining the project, including Cloud Security Alliance, Energy Blockchain Laboratory, Global Peersafe Technology Corp., Inuit Foundation – University of Rome “Tor Vergata,” Intuit, Investrata Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, iRootech Technology, MIRACL UK Limited, Netki, Nxt Foundation, Orange Magic Cube, Sany, Tai Cloud Corp., Union Mobile Pay E-Commerce, Wutongtree and Yunphant Blockchain.
Hyperledger Blockchain Project’s Goal
Hypederleger is a collaborative effort started by the Linux Foundation to study the blockchain aiming at supporting worldwide business transactions to improve many aspects of their performance and reliability.
Since its beginning back in early 2016, Hyperledger started accepting proposals for codebases.
One of the first was called “Fabric”, a codebase that united works by Digital Asset Holdings, Blockstream and IBM.
To date, almost 100 organizations joined the Hyperledger Blockchain Project members; and more companies will be added by the end of 2016.
Hyperledger executive director, Brian Behlendorf, commented:
“There’s been a tremendous response to our vision for creating an open community for blockchain technology and we’re proud to be celebrating this member milestone. At a growth rate of nearly two new members joining per week, I look forward to working with this growing community to further our open blockchain development efforts”.
Earlier this month, Airbus joined the project too, together with Hitachi, Microsoft, Red Hat, and more.
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30 Aug
0
Europe Blockchain: € 1m to study the distributed ledger
The European Parliament might start to study the blockchain technology with a task force of € 1m.
A member of the European Parliament, in fact, suggested to create a program focused on studying digital currencies and the distributed ledger.
Europe Blockchain: a legislative objective
This news comes a few months after the legislative arm of the European Union approved a task force proposed previously this year by Jakob von Weizsäcker.
Von Weisäcker now asks for financial support to fund the program.
He explained that the task force should be organized in order to position the European Commission at the forefront of an innovative technology.
“This pilot project aims at creating a Task Force, staffed with regulatory and technical experts, in order to build up technical expertise, regulators capacity and develop use cases, especially for governmental applications, in the field of distributed ledger technology (DLT) as proposed in the Resolution of the European Parliament on virtual currencies.”
The task force project is one of the most important legislative efforts that came from Europe about the blockchain.
“Too early hard regulatory measures would stifle innovation and hamper its potential. Waiting too long might lead to a materialization of systemic risks,” commented Von Weisäcker.
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25 Aug
0
Bank of Tokyo works on a Blockchain project with Hitachi
Bank of Tokyo works on a blockchain project with Hitachi
Bank of Tokyo works on a blockchain project to manage electronic check together with tech giant Hitachi.
According to a press release, this proof of concept system aims at creating a digital platform to issue, transfer and collect e-checks.
Asiatic magazine Nikkei reports that in the next few days there will be further trials, and that the full version could be released in 2018.
Tech giant Hitachi announced:
“Using the system, BTMU issues and settles checks and some of Hitachi Group companies in Singapore receive the electronic check and deposit the funds. Through the PoC testing, Hitachi and BTMU will be able to identify issues from various perspectives such as technology, security, operation and legal perspectives and aim to realize new FinTech services including digitalization of checks.”
This project comes after a previous Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ statement about its investment in the blockchain and about the project to release a new digital currency.
Also, a few months ago Hitachi announced the creation of new studies for fintech applications, as the company is a member of the Hyperledger project, the Linux Foundation program related to the distributed ledger.
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23 Aug
0
South Africa Bank will open to blockchain
According to a new announcement, South Africa Bank will open to blockchain and digital currencies.
During a recent speech at a cybersecurity event organized in Johannesburg, governor Lesetja Kganyago revealed that the South Africa Bank will open to blockchain and other innovations.
Kganyago, who works at the Central Bank since 2014, commented that the South Africa Reserve Bank wants to use technologies that could help the bank to execute their mandate more effectively.
Kganyago explained in his speech:
“As a central bank, we are open to innovations despite the different opinions of regulators on matters such as cryptocurrencies. We are willing to consider the merits and risks of blockchain technology and other distributed ledgers.”
This news came after a position paper released a few years ago about digital currencies and blockchain use cases.
South Africa Bank Whitepaper on Digital Currencies
On this paper, the bank warned local consumers about the risks of using digital currencies such as money laundering and cyber fraud. However, it marked that it “does not oversee, supervise or regulate the VC landscape”.
Also, other institutions in South Africa revealed that they want to study and test the distributed ledger not only for fintech applications.
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22 Aug
0
The FCA wants to approve blockchain startups in England
In fact, a “small but significant number of firms” that use the blockchain and works in the fintech industry could officially receive the FCA authorization.
To do so, the FCA is looking for blockchain projects involved in the Project Innovate program.
The FCA is evaluating more than 150 startups and 40 of them will be approved for further study.
The number of blockchain startups is growing fast, but regulators are always concerned about illegal activity and bitcoin volatility.
The FCA director of strategy and competition, Chris Woolard explained:
“We do think blockchain has got some potentially interesting applications and we are talking to firms thinking about how to apply that to financial services and how it could benefit consumers or indeed make the business of compliance easier.— There may be areas where we might want to encourage it a bit.”
He explains the FCA will announce more details about this project by the end of 2016.
These startups will be the first to receive approval from the English FCA.
Blockchain investments
Companies such as Greenwich Associates, EY, Accenture, and PwC explained that they believe that financial institutions will spend $1 billion USD for the distributed ledger technology during the current year.
Jeremy Millar of Ledger Partners said:
“Reports have claimed up to $100bn could be saved on the post-trade settlement process by using blockchain. Another estimate by Goldman Sachs said there could be $50bn of savings in the US repo market alone. The numbers are huge.”
The technology behind Bitcoin is growing its popularity within the fintech industry. More and more financial institutions and governments are developing and studying its applications.
This way, the English FCA could be the next authority to officially recognize the potential of the ledger.
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19 Aug
0
Airbus joined Hyperledger Blockchain Project
French airplane firm Airbus joined Hyperledger Blockchain Project, or the Linux Foundation program related to the distributed ledger.
Airbus joined Hyperledger Blockchain Project
Last year Airbus sold more than 1,000 aircraft and now the company is joining the same blockchain project that also sees the participation of firms such as IBM, Red Hat, Intel and JPMorgan.
Hyperledger director Brian Behlendorf explained to Coindesk how the Airbus partnership shows that the distributed ledger technology has lots of applications beyond fintech:
“A key factor to the project’s success will be member expertise and guidance, and as such, I look forward to collaborating with the bright team at Airbus to drive this technology forward.”
Blockchain beyond finance
This announcement reflects how the airline industry is increasing its own interest in the blockchain technology.
Previously in May, in fact, the blockchain startup called ShoCard started a partnership with the airline firm SITA with the goal of developing new applications for identity management.
This is not the first time a company wants to use the Blockchain for identity-related issues.
A few months ago, in fact, we spoke about the Microsoft’s project that aims at using the distributed ledger to solve problems related to identity in the digital world.
The Hyperledger Blockchain Project
Launched in the beginning of 2016, the Hyperledger Project has more than 80 members among its partners and it is managed by the Linux Foundation.
Read more about the Hyperledger Blockchain Project here.
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11 Aug
0
Bank of America to use the Blockchain to authenticate bank data
Bank of America and HSBC joined forces with the Singapore government’s IT and telecom agency to develop a project related to the blockchain.
Revealed today on Business Times, Bank of America, HSBC and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore have started to create a blockchain application within the Hyperledger system.
The project’s the goal is replicating the letter of credit transaction process among banks, exporters and importers and they aim at understanding how the distributed ledger could place trust between parties.
In fact, usually parties need to rely on banks to issue and recognize documents for facilitating trade.
Bank of America to use the Blockchain
According to International Business Times, the proof-of-concept project is composed by a seven-step process that will show how a blockchain can be used to authenticate data.
“Many people are talking about the theory of blockchain, but for the first time we can start to see how this technology might be used to solve the real world challenges our customers face,” said Vive Ramachandran, global head of product for HSBC trade finance business.
This is not the only project to be launched, in fact, Bank of America and IDA are already working on similar goals related to the blockchain.
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10 Aug
0
Dubai Government to develop Blockchain applications
Dubai government announced a $275m startup investment fund to invest and develop blockchain projects.
Revealed a few days ago, the Dubai Future Foundation launched the Dubai Future Accelerators project, a 12-week startup program that aims at encouraging innovation, including the blockchain.
Thanks also to a partnership with the Dubai Holding, this program wants to promote the development of business ideas related to transportation, law, education and public utilities.
The project accepts ideas from companies; and the approved applicants will spend three months developing projects that are eligible for further funding.
Spokerpersons explained that applications have to include efforts to improve smart meters, smart cities and business process, by using the blockchain.
This project came after the Dubai Future Foundation decision to promote the distributed ledger development.
The foundation, in fact, is one of the most active agencies to study blockchain technology, also thanks to the Global Blockchain Council (GBC) overseen by its Museum of the Future project.
Earlier, the GBC revelated seven projects created by prominent area businesses and startups.
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