Issue 6: Who’s going to Ethereum Island?
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Company Spotlight: Chromaway
Founded: 2014
Description: Chromaway is a startup based in Sweden developing a smart contract platform for digitizing assets and workflows. In March they completed the second stage of a pilot project in Sweden to model a house purchase using blockchain and smart contract technology.
Team: Alex Mizrahi (Co-founder & CTO) // Henrik Hjelte (Co-fonder & CTO) // Or Perelman (Co-founder & COO)
Partnerships & Projects
Consensys and Nation of Mauritius might create ‘Ethereum Island’ | Mauritius is a small island nation in the Indian Ocean “know for its beaches, lagoons, and reefs.” It was also the home of the now extinct Dodo bird. Naturally, it may also soon be known as the hub for blockchain innovators looking to expand into Africa and Asia: “Ethereum startup ConsenSys is actively exploring a partnership with the African nation of Mauritius that could create a so-called “Ethereum Island,” a hub for blockchain technology innovators that would seek to branch out into Africa, Asia and beyond.”
Swift completed a POC with SmartContract’s ChainLink v1.0 | One of the challenges before smart contracts can become smart/useful is figuring out how to reliably bring in information from outside a blockchain (a smart contract network, like Ethereum) into a blockchain. SmartContract is working on this. “Because critical data about contractual performance (e.g., price, location, weather, etc.) and the forms of payment preferred by recipients are currently outside smart contract networks, there needs to be a secure point of connection between smart contracts and these external resources.” SmartContract is building on top of and monetizing one such oracle, Town Crier, developed by a team of computer scientists at Cornell.
More banks join SWIFT’s POC for cross-border payments | SWIFT launched the project earlier in the year with six participating banks and now has 22 (full list in the link). They’re testing whether banks can use a permissioned blockchain (built on Hyperledger Fabric) to manage nostro account liquidity in real time with the idea being to minimize the amount of capital locked up in those accounts. The results will be released in October and presented at Sibos in Toronto in the same month.
IrisGuard integrates blockchain tech into their EyePay payments platform | IrisGuard is a biometrics technology company, specifically focused on leveraging the human eye for identity solutions. One of the yet-to-be-proven applications we talked about last issue regarding biometrics + blockchain is for refugees who lack government issued identities. We don’t want to know what happens if a hacker steals your retinal scan data…
Veem (a DCG portfolio company) integrates with Intuit quickbooks | “Intuit QuickBooks customers can now send international payments via blockchain payment provider Veem as an alternative to traditional wire transfers…Veem claims users [accountants] of the service will now be able to obtain such services at a reduced cost, as opposed to paying $40–$50 through alternative payments providers…The spread between buying and selling a currency via Veem ranges from 1.5% to 1.9%, based on the transaction size.”
German automaker, Daimler, and German Bank, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) issued a €100 million 1 year corporate loan on a blockchain | The issuance was part of a blockchain pilot conducted by German banks who acted as lenders in the trial issuance. The entire process (origination, repayments, etc) was managed “via blockchain technology.” Or to be more specific: “Digital processes will replace labor-intensive manual steps that are so far necessary…”
IBM working with European banks for SME trade finance platform | The Digital Trade Chain Consortium (DB, HSBC, KBC, Natixis, Rabobank, SocGen, Unicredit) picked IBM to build a trade finance platform (“The Digital Trade Chain network”) on Hyperledger Fabric for facilitating domestic and cross-border trade for SMEs in Europe. IBM will host the solution in the IBM Cloud. The banks are hoping to create new revenue streams and relationships with SMEs by making it easier for them to conduct and track trade transactions at a lower cost.
Belgium-based Port of Antwerp conducting pilot project with startup T-Mining | Logistics operations seem like a good use case for blockchain technology. There are many participants who don’t necessarily trust each other and there isn’t an efficient middleman already coordinating operations. Based in Antwerp, T-Mining is a logistics/maritime transport focused blockchain startup founded in 2016 — check out their presentation on the use case for blockchain in transport and logistics here.
Regulation & Policy
The People’s Bank of China opened a new digital currency research institute | They’re interested in developing their own state-backed digital currency. A few other governments have expressed interest in this sort of thing — enabling instant money transfers and cross border payments with their own tokenized dollars.
The CFTC granted Swap Execution Facility (SEF) registration to LedgerX | LedgerX is an institutional settling and clearing platform. The company is still awaiting approval from the CFTC to establish a bitcoin options clearing house and exchange.
Delaware made it explicitly legal to trade stocks on a blockchain | “The state of Delaware has passed amendments to state law that make explicit the right to trade stocks on a blockchain, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.”
Further Reading
What will happen to Bitcoin? // Can Ethereum scale? // DCG PortCo POSaBit raises $1.5M // Mark Cuban to participate in ICO // Former Bain manager launches $50M Bitcoin and Ethereum fund // Thomson Reuters seeks blockchain startups for new incubator program
About Us
DCG Connect is developing a new ecosystem model to drive global understanding and meaningful application of blockchain technology. Please feel free to share our newsletter, and subscribe by clicking here! For any comments or questions, please email network@dcg.co
