The R3 team enjoyed a few days this week to ‘geek out’ at the Construct 2017 conference in SF. We were glad to share the insights of our very own Clemens Wan with the wider blockchain world:
In remarks yesterday at CoinDesk’s developer conference, Construct 2017, R3 associate director and former Credit Suisse blockchain architect, Clemens Wan, predicted that 2017 will be defined by DLT pilots, while 2018 will see the technology migrate to production.
The comments come just months after the open-source release of its custom distributed ledger technology (DLT), Corda, became a part of the Linux Foundation-led Hyperledger blockchain project’s collection of enterprise technologies.
Since then, R3 said it has attracted more than 600 users to its slack channel, and more than 19,000 visitors to its website, Corda.net, as it seeks to reach its next milestone, the release of a test version of its DLT system in the first or second quarter.
In this light, Wan framed R3’s technology as one that requires broader buy-in from enterprises and corporates to achieve a strong network effect and top-level applications. Wan said: “Corda is the Xbox Live, it’s the ecosystem, it’s the connectivity. We want to focus on the platform and services.”
As Clemens points out, R3 will be very focused on building an ecosystem of partners in 2017 and beyond, which follows on from a few of our 2016 announcements of partnerships with the likes of Microsoft and Calypso Technologies. Our goal is to bring both the value of our network and our foundational technology to that partner application ecosystem, so that all participants benefit. If anyone has interest to learn more about our partnership approach, please contact partner@r3.com
We are very pleased to announce the addition of Africa’s largest bank to the R3 family: welcome aboard Standard Bank!
“Collaboration will be critical to unlocking value and we want to be actively involved in exploring and testing how technology like blockchain can be adopted by financial institutions. Being a partner member of the R3 network will provide us with an excellent opportunity to accelerate and enhance our adoption of this new technology,” says Peter Schlebusch, Standard Bank’s Chief Executive for Personal & Business Banking.
We are very fortunate to have the chance to work closely with ING across many of our DLT efforts. This articleis a very nice overview of not only the hard work being done, but it also gives some well deserved attention to Mariana Gomes de la Villa and the Blockchain Innovation team:
“For us, 2016 was about experimentation and getting to know the technology: how it works, how we can use it and what the pitfalls and limitations are. This technology wasn’t built for the financial industry so there are constraints and it doesn’t always cover our requirements,” Gomes de la Villa explained.
In trade finance, too, where processes are largely paper-based, labour intensive and open to fraud, a proof-of-concept was completed in August. It demonstrated that shared ledger technology could reduce operational and compliance costs of trade financing by 10 to 15 percent and increase bank revenues by as much as 15 percent.
“Blockchain has the potential to profoundly change the financial services structure”, said Ivar Wiersma, head of Innovation at Wholesale Banking. He compares blockchain to that other ‘foundational technology’ that changed the world: the internet. It all started with the birth of email in the 70s, but it took decades before the internet became the basis for many of today’s business models.
“Blockchain started eight years ago with bitcoin. Now we need new developments like smart contracts and digital identity so blockchain can become the technology standard for the next generation.” Wiersma added: “Collaboration is a given. It’s a network, so working on your own is useless. It’s like being the only one with a mobile phone.”
We look forward to highlighting more of our member stories throughout 2017
…and completely unsolicited advice for the Big Game: guac over salsa, pilsner over IPA, and never bet against Brady and Belichick (unless the Giants are involved). Go Pats!
