Cypherium has partnered with Amazon Web Services. What does that mean, exactly?
Every hot new ICO you see on Coindesk, every project that never produced technology beyond its whitepaper, and every new protocol that ran out of money and collapsed in the recent crypto winter have something in common: they all claim to partner with Amazon.
But of course, any experienced member of the crypto community will raise an eyebrow at this.
What does it mean to partner with one of the largest tech companies in the world? How can all of these new startups, still in their nascence, already have linked up with AWS?
On the hand, the answer is simple: they have no meaningful relationship with Amazon. This, unfortunately, is the vast majority of crypto projects claiming to partner with Amazon. Without calling any out by name, there are thousands of new companies that promote the AWS brand with Amazon’s blessing. However, doing so amounts to little more than a commercial for Amazon Web Services, as the vast majority of these companies are using Amazon Web Services to develop their own technology. They are buying resources that AWS offers, such as cloud computing, storage, etc., and so it is in this sense that they are developing their technology in conjunction with Amazon.
This should be encouraged, as it promotes the tools that Amazon makes available to developers, and it can display a level of seriousness and responsibility on the part of the new project — as long as it does not mislead any unwitting on-lookers.
What, then, does Cypherium’s new announcement entail?
In short, Cypherium has now become one of the technologies that new companies can pay to utilize on Amazon Web Services, via the AWS Marketplace. This is the first step in demonstrating to the world what an enterprise-grade blockchain solution can do for modern businesses. The use cases that Cypherium’s private and consortium chain enables include (but are not limited to) payment systems, ledger keeping, inter-company resolution. This technology poses a particular value to the financial services industry because of its unique combination of a Java virtual machine, high transaction throughputs and speeds of thousands of transactions per second, as well as instant transaction finality.
You might be asking, how is this different from an app going into an app store? Why does acceptance into the AWS marketplace signify success?
Of the thousands of protocols out there on exchanges, the many projects that claim to bring new solutions to the trilemma posed by Bitcoin and Ethereum, only around 40 (not all of them unique blockchains) have been validated by the AWS team to go on the marketplace. They include
AWS, VeChain, Blockstack, Kadena, R3, ICON, among others. Cypherium is a functional and innovative technology that has practical solutions to problems across a number of industries, and for that reason alone, it distinguishes itself. Partly, this is due to the fact that some projects have not finished their software; also a smaller fraction does not include private or consortium options in their blockchain network. Yet, Cypherium’s placement in the AWS marketplace confirms the technology’s sound solutions. The team at Amazon vets each blockchain solution in order to verify that the network offers AWS customers a needed and valued resource.
Ultimately, it is true that AWS Marketplace is not the be-all end-all. There are deeper partnerships to be had, even within Amazon itself. The community should not overlook this achievement, though. With each step toward scaling and implementation, the crypto community should rejoice, and Cypherium undoubtedly helps us get there.
