Huobi Weekly Blockchain News-Review (Vol. 97) (27th Jan — 2nd Feb 2020)

3.1 Industrial Application

Major car manufacturer Mercedes Benz and blockchain startup Circulor are jointly rolling out a pilot aimed at the tracing carbon emissions in the cobalt supply chain.According to a Jan. 30 press release, the project by Mercedes and Circulor comes as part of the Startup Autobahn initiative, aimed at identifying next-generation automobiles. The companies will deploy blockchain to trace the emissions of climate-relevant gases and the amount of recycled materials along the complex supply chains of battery cell manufacturers. A blockchain-based pilot program will map the production flow of these materials and their associated carbon emissions, as well as record how much-recycled material gets used in the supply chain.

Ditto Music will launch Bluebox, a blockchain recording technology that could be a boon to musicians and distributors alike. Bluebox will allow artists to address legal concerns, such as copyright registration, publishing, and mechanical splits. The app records music around legally-binding smart contracts, which are written into code and instantly copyrights the content. Ditto Music CEO Lee Parsons said: “There are billions of dollars of unclaimed royalties out there. The blockchain can help millions of artists claim what is rightfully theirs.” Parsons argues that this creates more transparency and more detailed reporting, both of which should reap higher collection rates from digital services.

The goal of “blockchain +smart agriculture” is to build a safe and secure food material platform, so that the suppliers who produce good things can sell at a good price, and the consumers who are willing to pay for food safety can buy reliable food materials. From the production, circulation, storage and terminal of crops, blockchain can complete the “safe transmission” of this series of chains. Shandong hexiangsheng Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd. implemented the “blockchain + intelligent agriculture” application technology, and kept the unalterable records of agricultural products from the production end to the circulation end by using the blockchain. So that farmers have detailed growth data, processors have specific production data, distributors have accurate inventory data, regulators have rigorous safety data, retailers have detailed distribution data, and consumers have practical food chain code data. The blockchain enables Shandong Hesheng Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd. to provide a more comprehensive guarantee for food safety.

3.2 International Policies

The National Bank of Cambodia’s new digital currency is called Bakong. It’s effectively a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that was launched on a trial basis throughout Cambodia in July. Chea Serey, director-general of the National Bank of Cambodia said: “Bakong will play a central role in bringing all players in the payment space in Cambodia under the same platform, making it easy for end-users to pay each other regardless of the institutions they bank with. Eventually, we hope to allow cross border payment through the Bakong system too.” Unlike most blockchain-driven cryptocurrencies, Bakong is a closed system that’s backed by banking authorities. A software wallet is linked to each user’s bank account for them to more easily interact with hard currency. The system supports real-time transactions while the National Bank of Cambodia stores centralized records about where the money goes.

Swiss regulators have given the go-ahead for what is purportedly the country’s first fully compliant initial public offering (IPO) on a blockchain.Swiss blockchain firm Overture will launch a compliant IPO and offer ordinary class-A shares natively on the Ethereum blockchain, using smart contracts provided by Zug-based EURO DAXX (the European Digital Assets Exchange), a Jan. 29 press release reveals. Deploying blockchain technology in this manner can boost efficiency in capital markets, they claim, in terms of cost time and other efficiencies secured by disintermediating interactions between actors — i.e. short-circuiting involvement by banks, broker-dealers, central depository systems, notaries, and other financial intermediaries.

A draft of India’s national strategy on blockchain and distributed ledger technology suggests a central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital Indian rupee, and a national blockchain.The National Institute for Smart Governance (NISG), a non-profit public body incorporated by the government of India, has published a draft document on the country’s national blockchain strategy. In the document, the NISG has proposed the Central Bank Digital Rupee (CBDR), a digital currency issued on a national permission blockchain. The news comes a few days after the central bank of India said that virtual currencies are not banned in the country, elaborating that instead, regulated entities are banned from offering crypto assets in the country.

3.3 Technological Breakthrough

Hyperledger Fabric released version 2.0 of its enterprise distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform, according to a Jan. 30 announcement. Several major features were added to the platform that improve how its different participants communicate with each other. Version 2.0 made some notable improvements to decentralization by adding a new management system for chaincodes, Fabric’s term for smart contracts. Multiple organizations can now agree on key parameters of a chaincode, which can then be used on the shared ledger. In addition, chaincodes can be tweaked by single organizations before being committed to the ledger, which ensures that everyone agrees on what data can be shared with each other.Data sharing has also been streamlined to work on a need-to-know basis. Organizations can now choose to share data privately with specific members of their immediate network, which removes the need to define complex channel combinations to do the same.Finally, several performance improvements were introduced, involving parallelization of tasks and more efficient program flows. Hyperledger claims that this allows the network to support thousands of transactions per second.

2 investments activities took place in the blockchain industry this week, Optimism got seed round investment from Paradigm，IDEO, Bit Trade got bought by Kraken.