A group of the major fintech industry players are working on a new version of the blockchain technology as part of the Open Ledger Project.
Open Ledger is a decentralized financial platform letting its users to convert bitcoin to SmartCoins immediately or by limit order. SmartCoins, which tracks the price of main fiat currencies, can then be directly withdrawn to cash through money transfer, Ripple gateway, PayPal or NanoCard.
Developed by the Danish virtual currency exchange, CCDEK, Open Ledger offers a seamless solution that combines P2P payment and international money transfers. It is one of the globe’s first decentralized autonomous exchanges based on the blockchain technology.
Currently, some of the fintech giants are involved in the project aimed at creating a new technology that will be an alternative to the existing blockchain and will ensure higher level of transparency and automation. However, it won’t work in the digital currency sector. Instead, the new technology will help businesses, such as stock exchanges, to improve transactions settlement and data distribution in terms of security and speed.
Named the “Open Ledger Project”, the initiative involves some of the world’s leading companies, including IBM, JP Morgan, Digital Asset Holdings, London Stock Exchange Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Wells Fargo, Intel and Cisco. Overseen by Linux Foundation and led by IBM, the new technology is believed to transform the business services sector.
The idea behind the project is to develop a new version of distributed ledger that would be used by businesses for their customized needs. Companies would be able to create their own distributed ledgers that would not rely on public networks like Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Besides, the team plans to keep high level of businesses privacy and limit the access to the specific ledger. Privacy remains to be one of the main concerns among businesses, who are seeking to apply the technology.
As most customers are worried about keeping their data private, the project will let them to decide on who will authenticate transactions in the network. According to Fortune, Jerry Cuomo, an IBM Fellow who takes part in the project, “wants to help create a distributed ledger to offer businesses privacy, confidentiality and accountability.”
“I don’t have a strong opinion on cryptocurrencies, but I have a strong opinion on the blockchain as a solution for contracts and supply chains, and the internet of things. I think Bitcoin is an interesting application for blockchain but there are thousands of applications and wider use cases beyond that,” Cuomo said.
Digital Asset Holdings, managed by former JP Morgan executive Blythe Masters, plans to contribute to the branding of the project, providing its “Hyperledger” naming. Besides, it will deliver its code and development sources. Meantime, IBM will offer intellectual property, its developer resources, as well as thousands of lines of existing code.