China’s major technology giants are amongst a group of organizations that have joined a national committee focused on creating standards for blockchain technology, reports CNBC.
The move is part of a major push by the world’s second-largest economy, China, to become leaders in the burgeoning space of blockchain technology. This comes after Chinese President Xi Jinping urged the country to “seize the opportunities presented by the technology” last year.
China’s blockchain push is among the first from a national government of a major economy.
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Companies involved include E-commerce giant JD.com, telecom equipment manufacturer and powerhouse Huawei, search firm Baidu, and Tencent – the owner of Chinese WhatsApp counterpart WeChat. Joining this committee is Ant Financial, an affiliate of Alibaba, which runs the Alipay mobile payment app.
The group has been named the “National Blockchain and Distributed Accounting Technology Standardization Technical Committee.”
The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which released the names involved in the committee, did not exactly specify what the coalition would actually be doing. CNBC, however, suggests that due to the name, the committee will be tasked to innovate new technical standards around blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT).
What is Blockchain and DLT?
Blockchain is a technology that began during the nascence of cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
It has the role of creating an immutable, tamper-proof and ever-changing public ledger of activity. Blockchain technology ensures that this ledger is also decentralized, meaning that no-one owns it.
Blockchain guarantees that information around who is buying or selling crypto remains safe, private and untraceable – but also completely visible to anyone that needs it as a reference.
See Bitcoin’s Blockchain.
CNBC writes that the definition of Blockchain is evolving, and is now being applied to new areas like finance. These cases are often referred to by terms such as DLT and are usually different from the original Bitcoin Blockchain.
The promise of a system in which transactions can happen across a single record is an attractive proposition to many a financial institution.
China setting technical standards for this sort of system could help it come up with a unified approach to the development of blockchain technology, which in turn could help it scale faster.
Edited by Luis Monzon
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