Following a flurry of announcements that mostly highlighted how it was working with its partner banks on trials of existing blockchain systems, consortium startup R3CEV took steps to highlight its in-house technology development this week.
In a lengthy post published on both his personal blog and R3 ’s website, chief technology officer Richard Gendal Brown gave new details about the startup’s thinking on the ecosystem, and most notably, why it is seeking a different approach with the blockchain-inspired technology it is building.
Of note was that Brown spoke out against what he said was an idea he admitted he had long championed – that blockchain-based systems could prove to be widely applicable solutions for business problems in the financial services sector.
Brown went so far as to call blockchains "inappropriate" for many banking scenarios, in remarks that were heavily deferential to the ecosystem’s early innovators, including bitcoin and Ethereum .
Such platforms, Brown reasoned, have emerged as novel solutions to "business problems", but he stressed that the financial services industry does not necessarily have the same problems that these technologies were designed to solve.
At a high level, the statements add up to what can be viewed as a mission statement from R3, one that positions the startup as more than a consortium effort between 43 major banks, but as a driver of technology in the space.
The statements also included the announcement of Corda , a new distributed ledger platform for which Brown provided the first details.
Here are the biggest takeaways and most interesting hints about what could come next from the R3 lab: 1. R3 believes more than blockchain is needed to solve bank problems Early on in the post, Brown asserts that “blockchain” has become a term that is disassociated from its technological meaning.In his description of Corda, Brown labels the technology […]
