2016 Year in Review

January 01, 2017

2016 has been a tremendous year for our industry. To say there has been a whirlwind of achievement would be an understatement. As an organization we pride ourselves on what we have accomplished in such a short timeframe. We look towards 2017 with excitement to further deliver on the promise of this technology. Below we look back on the most memorable moments.

Awards

Institutional Investor places David Rutter in 2016 Tech 50

R3’s CEO debuts at No. 18 on Institutional Investor’s annual ranking of the most influential figures in financial technology

FI Future of Fintech

The Financial Times names R3 as one of the top 10 financial technology companies to watch in 2017

R3: A Year in Review

Jan 20: Trade execution: R3 and 12 member banks used distributed ledger technology to execute transactions across the global private network in Microsoft Azure
Mar 3: Fixed income trading. R3 tested five blockchain technologies to stimulate fixed income trading between 40 banks
Mar 13: Charley Cooper is featured in public vs. private blockchain debate via WSJ
May 5: Risk Magazine profiles David Rutter. R3’s CEO discusses his vision for distributed ledger technology in financial markets with Risk magazine
Jun 16: Project Jasper is the first project in DLT supported by a central bank and regulatory group
Jul 13: Smart Contract Templates. R3, Barclays, ISDA, Norton Rose Fullbright and UCL collaborated to address the challenges of developing master templates for smart contracts
Aug 10: Trade financing. R3 and over 15 banks trialed smart contracts for invoice financing and letter of credit (LOC) transactions
Aug 24: Release of the first non-technical Corda white-paper
Sept 4: Reference data management. R3, Axoni and Credit Suisse built a distributed ledger prototype to improve data accuracy and reduce risk in reference data management
Sept 20: R3 partners with Axoni, SIFMA and 7 buy/sell side institutions to prove how DLT can provide immutability of reference data
Sept 26: Intel Sawtooth Lake. R3 and eight banks trialed Intel Sawtooth Lake for trading, matching and settling US treasury bonds
Oct 20: R3’s Blockchain platform Corda developed by banks to be open-source
Oct 21: Cross-border payments. R3, Ripple and 12 member banks trialed Ripple’s XRP digital currency for cross-border payments
Nov 8: Asia blockchain centre of excellence. R3 collaborated with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to launch its first dedicated distributed ledger technology centre of excellence in Asia
Nov 10: KYC registry. R3 and ten banks developed a proof-of-concept for a KYC registry that addresses the challenges associated with satisfying Know Your Customer requirements
Nov 18: Barclays and R3 host the second Smart Contract Templates Summit
Nov 29: R3 partners with Calypso to build the first “CorDapp”
Nov 30: R3 Corda Ledger Is Now Open Source

Charley Cooper featured in the final episode of TechCrunch series, Co-opt vs. Disrupt?

INDUSTRY YEAR IN REVIEW

Apr 2: New York Times full story on Ethere m
Jun 17: DAO is hacked and over $60 million worth of ether is stolen
Aug 3: Bitfinex is hacked and over $60 million worth of Bitcoin is stolen
Oct 28: Zcash launches anonymous blockchain
Distributed Ledger Technology: beyond blockchain

NEW MEMBERS

First China-based company and first insurance company – Ping An
First Northern American Insurer – MetLife
First exchange – BM&FBOVESPA
First tech company – Thomson Reuters
First Automotive – Toyota
Primer Banco Hispano – Credicorp
First African Bank – Absa Bank
First Credit Card – Synchrony
First Payments Services – Qiwi
First Title Insurance – First American

What is Distributed Ledger?

Some 2016 Snaps

One of our NY employees was able to surprise his family abroad for the holidays!