News Roundup — Blockchain Innovations and Developments
What’s happening with blockchain-based innovations and developments? Here are some recent headlines:
Blockchain improves access to Canadian water quality data
A Canada-based water protection charity has started using blockchain technology to improve the sharing of water quality data in Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. The Gordon Foundation’s Atlantic DataStream provides online access to water-quality datasets collected by a variety of users, including monitoring groups, government agencies, researchers and industry organizations. By presenting such data in a distributed ledger on the Ethereum network, the foundation — in partnership with the Atlantic Water Network — aims to help fill in current gaps in data about the region’s water quality and provide evidence for better decision making. Through the use of blockchain, the Atlantic DataStream lets users see who created each dataset and why, and track how such data changes over time. “Just as water is a public resource, water data should be publicly accessible,” World Wildlife Fund Canada’s president and CEO, Valerie Chort, said in a press announcement. “But it’s not. Despite WWF-Canada’s years of work collecting data from more than 171 groups, we still don’t know how our actions are affecting most of our freshwater ecosystems and the wildlife and communities that depend on them.
Token tech aims to make pharma investing safer, easier
Verseon, a Silicon Valley biotech firm, on 18 September unveiled a blockchain-based token technology designed to make it easier for medical and pharmaceutical companies to finance healthcare innovations. Developed by BlockRules, a Verseon subsidiary, the technology “supports the sale, launch, and trading of securities on a public blockchain complete with multijurisdictional regulatory compliance integrated and enforced directly on the blockchain”, Verseon said. “This breakthrough permits fully regulated, secure, and transparent support of securities, including decentralized trading.” BlockRules says its technology is aimed at “bringing regulatory certainty to the blockchain” and to help make investment opportunities safer for global investors. According to Neil Woodford, founding partner of Woodford Investment Management, such innovations help “address some of the traditional choke points in capital flow and should lead to a more efficient market”. Verseon CEO Adityo Prakash said his company was founded with the goal of developing new technologies that could help speed up the discovery and development of new medicines.
Gemalto kicks off digital ID pilot built on R3’s Corda
Working together, Dutch digital security company Gemalto and US blockchain firm R3 on 18 September rolled out the Gemalto Trust ID Network, a pilot technology for digital identity verification and management. Built on R3’s Corda blockchain platform, the Trust ID Network enables users to prove they are who they say they are, so they can access digital financial and government services without having to repeat the usual due-diligence steps for identity verification. Gemalto describes it as an innovative way for service providers to verify identities while also “putting users firmly in control of their data”. The Trust ID Network lets users enter and verify identity data via an ID Wallet mobile app, and consent to have that data shared with service providers of their choosing. “Only ‘attestations’ issued by trusted parties are stored on the blockchain, keeping personal data under sole control of users,” Gemalto said. Gemalto said it plans to launch several pilots of the Trust ID Network later this year. “Trust ID Network solves the profound weaknesses of traditional, ‘siloed’ identity frameworks: the clumsy user experience, rising costs and difficulties in complying with stricter regulations,” Gemalto executive vice president of banking and payment Bertrand Knopf said in a statement.
WEF: Blockchain promises numerous ‘game changers’ and solutions for
eco challenges
Blockchain could provide numerous ways to help solve environmental problems, according to a report released 14 September by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with PwC and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Unveiled at the Global Climate Action Summit in California, the report — ‘Building Block(chain)s for a Better Planet’ — identifies more than 65 “existing and emerging blockchain use-cases” that could help solve environment problems involving climate change, biodiversity and conservation, oceans, water security, air quality, and weather and disaster resilience. The report added that blockchain technology could also enable “game changers” in eight areas: “see-through” supply chains, sustainable resource management, sustainable finance, circular economies, carbon and other environmental markets, sustainability monitoring, automatic disaster preparedness and humanitarian relief, and Earth management. “If history has taught us anything, it is that these transformative changes will not happen automatically,” Dominic Waughray, head of the WEF’s Centre for Global Public Goods, said in a press statement. “They will require deliberate collaboration between diverse stakeholders ranging from technology industries through to environmental policy-makers, and will need to be underpinned by new platforms that can support these stakeholders.”
