Intel, IBM and banks develop alternative to the blockchain
Tech companies, including IBM, Cisco and Intel, and financial institutions are working on the Open Ledger Project. This open source project, which is overseen by The Linux Foundation, aims to develop an alternative to the blockchain. The goal is not to come up with a bitcoin alternative.
IBM appears to be the driving force behind the Open Ledger Project, which Wired and Fortune are writing about. The tech company has been working on its own blockchain technology for some time and IBM is going to release the code that has now been developed for the project. Digital Asset Holdings, which makes software for designing blockchain-like technology, is also closely involved: the company provides code, development time and the name ‘Hyperledge’, under which the alternative to the blockchain is to be known.
In addition, Intel, Fujitsu, VMware, Cisco, Mitsubishi, the London Stock Exchange Group and the banks JP Morgan and Wells Fargo are also involved, although it is not known what role they play. The Linux Foundation oversees the Open Ledger Project.
The goal of the partnership is not to develop an alternative cryptocurrency such as bitcoin. The companies plan to use the technology for other business applications, such as financial transactions, processing stock and bond trading via virtual exchanges, and other contract settlement.
Systems like the blockchain can monitor and track huge amounts of transactions. This is done decentrally through a network of nodes, which increases the robustness, processing power and reliability as a shared single source of truth. Bitcoin mining is what drives blockchain nodes to provide computing power for transaction processing. It is not yet clear what the motivation for the Open Ledger Project will be.
One of the features that the Open Ledger Project should make possible for companies is to be able to set restrictions on who can generate transactions and to apply authentication. The technology must be made available under an open source license, so that organizations can experiment with it themselves. In recent years, many organizations have started to come up with alternative applications for the blockchain, such as with the Ethereum project.