Welcome to Alpine Private Key — our monthly aggregation of what we think are the top enterprise/private chain project updates with a quick tl;dr for you. If you think we missed an important update please let us know and we’ll make sure to add that into next month’s considerations.
LVMH — a blockchain-based luxury goods platform
Multinational luxury goods giant, LVMH, is launching a platform focused on validating the authenticity of high-value goods. Code-named ‘AURA’, the system will run off of Quorum, a permissioned version of the . AURA will trace the origins of luxury items stemming from raw materials right through to the sold product and used-goods market. Pegged to launch in either May or June, the platform will initially host two primary (and well-known) vendors Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, both of which are part of the 60 brands operated under the LVMH family. LVMH is working closely with ConsenSys and Microsoft to help deliver this release. A notable action is LVMH’s announcement to donate all IP to a separate entity of which founding members will be able to claim equal IP rights. This will help LVMH avoid at present.
United Parcel Service (UPS) — Opening up the B2B sales ecosystem
United Parcel Service (UPS) have they’re developing a new B2B sales platform which will feature core integrations. Partnering with e-Commerce player , the ‘Zippy’ platform aims to help onboard traditional B2B merchants into the digital age, helping to facilitate sales by acting as an online catalogue for businesses. technology will specifically be targeted towards services helping to monitor and track shipments as well and processing purchase orders and improving auditability. With the global B2B e-Commerce market projected to hit , B2B participants are expecting the same quality and efficiency of service offered to regular consumers.
SIX Group — R3 beats out competitors
SIX group, Switzerland’s financial infrastructure provider, has system to facilitate the digital asset , settlement and custody platform they’re building. Enterprise Corda beat out numerous competitor solutions, including Hyperledger Fabric, by offering some standout features including and architecture carefully designed for a highly-regulated space, as well as its ability to encapsulate sectors beyond capital markets such as identity and insurance. This announcement builds on recent good for R3 where financial technology provider MonetaGo onto Corda Enterprise.
SWIFT — Blockchain-based e-voting
The financial messaging network, SWIFT, is building a -based e-voting PoC in conjunction with the Singapore Exchange and four banks (Deutsche Bank, DBS, Standard Chartered and HSBC). The effort was spun out of a common goal towards finding a better solution to shareholder voting, a process notorious for its time-consuming and paper-based process, rendering it prone to numerous transaction errors. Aside from robust auditability and transparency, the participants want to steer DLT towards facilitating a more efficient proxy-voting process which is presently complex. The trial will use a permissioned and will involve issuers and a central securities depository (yet to be confirmed). SWIFT is providing the testing environment and is focused on examining whether its existing software interfaces can be reused, tweaked to allow for a smoother process.
Nomura — Committing to Smart-Contract auditing
Y-combinator backed smart contract auditing startup, Quantstamp, announced a significant investment from Japanese financial holding giant Nomura. The US head-quartered company are setting up a subsidiary in as a result. Nomura’s senior managing director of innovations, Chuzaburo Yagi, explained that as the industry matures, there will be an undeniable demand for security assurance around smart contract architecture, a demand Quantstamp has been positioning itself to address over the last two years. To-date, Quantstamp’s automated tool for developers has been used to secure more than $500 million worth of transactions. Their CEO Richard Ma has continually expressed a bullish outlook on smart-contract development in , with expectations for major expansion.
SBI Holdings — Jumping into the mining game
Japanese financial services giant, SBI Holdings, has established the ‘SBI Chip Co.’, a subsidiary dedicated to manufacturing crypto asset chips and supporting systems. The move is part of their strategy on addressing the digital assets market which they have beared interest on since where they started collecting for research purposes. Adam Traidman, who has extensive experience in the semiconductor market, will be leading the new venture. This isn’t SBI’s first foray into , the company has been focussed on building out the ecosystem in to ensure sustainable in the years to come. Most notable developments include , a -based money transfer app powered by .
IBM — Crypto-custody
IBM is going after the crypto-custody market. Shuttle Holdings, a New York investment firm will launch a custody solution (beta) using IBM’s cloud and encryption tools. The company is going after users such as banks, family offices, funds and other entities who are looking to self- digital assets. Important to note here that neither IBM or Shuttle Holdings will hold any digital assets on the client’s behalf, they merely provide the tools to enable users to do so. The service announced during IBM’s THINK 2019 conference, will not offer cold storage options but rather what they refer to an equally secure solution using hardware security model which helps users their digital keys in a secure environment. The reasoning behind this move is the expectancy for entities to want to allow their ease of access to their assets as and when they want to versus the comparatively longer extraction process from cold-storage.
Citibank — Abandons blockchain initiatives
Citibank has announced they are abandoning all experiments in favour of pursuing developments on existing payment messaging network SWIFT, a move that goes against the trend seen in major banks such as JP Morgan and their newly announced JPM Coin. Ken Moore, Head of Innovation at Citibank, explained how they grew more concerned with how would be met whereas SWIFT currently boasts over 10,000 financial institutions which offer instant traction and brand equity. Citibank has been exploring -based solutions for a number of years now but has failed to see much traction, a prime example being Citicoin, their digital currency initiative that barely made it past the proof-of-concept page.
Deutsche Borse Group — Creating a digital assets platform
Deutsche Borse Group, owners of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, is building what’s being referred to as a ‘trusted digital assets platform’. They have partnered with firm Sygnum as well as major telecoms player Swisscom. Together they’re hoping to target a number of solutions focused around issuance, liquidity, custody etc. A notable feature of this deal is that Deutsche Borse and Sygnum will both be shareholders of Daura AG, the company providing the underlying platform offering these solutions for Swiss SMEs. This allows these non-listed firms access to capital markets. Sygnum is also in the process of obtaining a banking and securities dealer license from FINMA which will enable the ecosystem to execute on solutions such as lending and capital issuance.
Published at Mon, 01 Apr 2019 20:01:26 +0000
