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Charles Brett’s Blockchain Catch-up Week 6

February 15, 2021

This is a Charles Brett’s start-of-the-week Enterprise Times ‘blockchain catch-up’ Week 6. Necessarily it is idiosyncratic and selective.

It is not intended to be comprehensive but does seek to highlight ‘Quick Takes’ on specific developments as well interesting pieces to read, a listing of some (not all) announcements/press releases and pointers to upcoming events.

Quick Takes – Charles Brett’s Blockchain Catch-up Week 6

R3 launches Conclave

Arguably data exists in one of three states: at rest in local storage, in transit between two locations, and in use when it is being processed by applications. When one wants a third party to do something with data, it is necessary to decrypt it to enable use. Third-party services make the most of data by providing the software and hardware to process it. But this comes with associated risk. Data is most vulnerable while in use.

R3′ s Conclave is a platform designed to ’empower’ businesses to develop applications which analyze and process sensitive data from multiple parties — without compromising on confidentiality. In effect, Conclave harnesses the power of confidential computing and Intel SGX. This means firms can contribute data for use in a secure enclave — without revealing the actual data to anyone.

Quick Take: in theory, by delivering trust and processing previously inaccessible data, Conclave-enabled apps pave the way for new generations of trusted data services which are able to:

detect fraud
aggregate market data
reduce costs
build multi-party analytics
etc.

As a concept, Conclave seems interesting (and is a sister offering to the Corda enterprise blockchain platform). That said the choice of name is curious. Papal conclaves are alleged to be wholly private – but the details usually leak out over time. Maybe this does not matter if the risk only applies to ‘data-in-use’, though it raises issues (to Enterprise Times) involving ‘data longevity’.

Exberry and Digital Asset add Baymarkets for an end-to-end digital asset exchange platform

Exberry, Digital Asset and Baymarkets (the developer of the Clara clearing system) have made available an exchange infrastructure with central counterparty clearing functionality. This partnership seeks to enable new digital asset marketplaces to launch on a fully-compliant, end-to-end exchange platform which encompasses:

registry
custody
trading
matching
clearing.

Quick Take: in 2020, Digital Asset and Exberry launched an end-to-end exchange infrastructure-as-a-service for markets, including digital assets. This announcement updates that end-to-end exchange architecture with Clara to execute clearing and calculate margin and collateral requirements for spot and derivatives markets. According to the trio (of participants), the combined solution enables efficient margin management, automatic mark to market payments. The result should be a clearing capability that reduces (potentially significantly) the need for capital for market participants.

7 pieces to read – Charles Brett’s Blockchain Catch-up Week 6

Money reimagined: enterprise blockchain isn’t dead
Blockchain: the big picture
How blockchain could make fashion greener
How blockchain technology is helping companies solve operational issues
The Block’s list of innovative blockchain companies to look out for in 2021
Iowa introduces bill to level playing field for blockchain and smart contracts
Ether seeks to escape Bitcoin’s shadow with CME futures launch.

Selected announcements/press releases – Charles Brett’s Blockchain Catch-up Week 6

BNY Mellon forms new digital assets unit to build multi-asset digital platform (press release)
Fimatix UK partners with Privacy4Cars to address vehicle privacy compliance burden in Europe (press release)
NEM Group announces ledger hardware wallet integrations for Symbol and NIS1 (press release/blog)
BurstIQ deploys proprietary blockchain-enabled technology to securely track COVID-19 vaccination efforts (press release)
New Hedera token service offers native token issuance and configurability without smart contracts (press release)
WadzPay (blockchain e-Wallet) launches newest campaign (press release)
Global business automation blockchain technology and IoT Market Report 2020-2025 with profiles of 42 vendors (press release)
Global Blockchain Technology Market 2021-2026: focus on by use case, business model, solutions, services and applications (report).