Last Month In Blockchain: January 2019
Last month brought an exciting start to the new year. As we continue forward with new partnerships forming and more competitive ventures initiated, the focal point of mass adoption is still underway. Currently, it is unclear what kind of path is ahead of us. Many business professionals still lack the fundamental understanding of blockchain. A survey conducted by Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC) reports that 63 percent of senior business executives have a poor understanding of blockchain technology. Although we have plenty of time before blockchain emerges as an understood concept and technology, we can only hope that more powerhouse entities will continue accelerating to an era filled with more a transparent, secure, honest, and value-based approach for powering processes.
Here is the latest blockchain buzz on “Last Month in Blockchain: January 2019”
1. Digital Securities Platform Joins IBM Blockchain Accelerator Program
Securitize, a compliance platform for digital securities, has joined IBM’s Blockchain Accelerator program. Such efforts, as noted by Securitize’s CEO, Carlos Domingo, will include the development of a debt issuance platform using blockchain. Domingo hopes Securitize can modernize the $82 trillion dollar corporate debt market , “which is currently riddled with inefficiencies and high fees”. The accelerator will last three months and concludes with a presentation that demonstrates Securitize’s platform on Hyperledger. By integrating with Hypberledger, Securitize’s will be able to design products and issue debt on blockchain.
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2. Power Ledger Partnership to Democratize Energy Use Using Blockchain
Power Ledger, a Western Australian blockchain startup has reportedly partnered up with Japanese renewable energy firm, Sharing Energy, to monetize and track solar energy production for customers. How does blockchain fit in? Power ledger’s blockchain will track the consumption of clean energy produced by solar panels using it’s distributed ledger. The newly wed synergy will pilot the installation of rooftop solar panels for 100 buildings and hopes to extend to a massive 55,000 by the end of 2020. Such initiatives can potentially help Japan utilize the sun’s clean energy over that of fossil fuels. With many clean energy firms such as Kansai Electric Power Company, BCPG, and Helpanswers following suit, we are beginning to see more blockchain technology being used to track and help redistribute energy to where its most needed.
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3. MIT, Stanford and others to build blockchain payments network to rival VisaNet
A synergy between seven major universities seek to develop a digital currency network that solves blockchain’s scalability and performance issues. They aim to achieve transaction “confirmation latencies on the order of 15 seconds for on-chain transactions, and 2 to 4 seconds for off-chain transactions,” DTR said in an academic paper published last month. This could potentially alleviate the public’s lack of confined trust in the technology erodes. With funding by a Swiss-based non-profit organization (The Distributed Technology Research Foundation), the cryptocurrency application, Unit-e, is expected to launch in the second half of this year. If we are to see success, we can expect one the most monumental achievement within the blockchain sphere while surpassing mainstream financial networks like Visa’s VisaNet in transaction capability.
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4. JP Morgan Portfolio Company Partners With Blockchain Startup Run By Former Deloitte Boss
The former CEO of Deloitte, turned Citizens Reserve, Eric Piscini has confirmed a partnership with Smartrac (a JP Morgan portfolio company dealing in the product digitization space). Citizens Reserve will use its blockchain-powered SUKU supply chain platform to integrate with Smartrac, one of the world’s leading Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) and Internet of Things (IoT) technology companies. Citizens Reserve looks to help implement blockchain into Smartrac’s technology to supply chains and provide a new aspect of security and tracking. This could potential lead to significantly cutting down on tampering due to its immutable ledger. The company hopes to garner result with testing the meat industry by the end of March, with a full meat industry launch shortly after.
5. Major Dutch bank bets on NY blockchain firm with 5-year deal
ING has signed a five-year deal with blockchain services firm, Corda R3, to roll out distributed ledger tech into a range of business areas. ING plans to obtain an unlimited number of licenses for its commercial blockchain platforms, Corda Enterprise platform and CorDapps. Currently it is unclear how ING specifically plans to use R3, but is intended on developing usable solutions in the near future.
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