China’s national blockchain project to support DAML smart contract language

The Blockchain Services Network (BSN), the largest blockchain infrastructure initiative in China, now has a unified smart contract programming language.

Red Date Technology, a major tech company involved in the BSN's development, will add support for DAML — a smart contract language developed by American blockchain startup Digital Asset.

Announcing the news on Sept. 14, the companies’ executives said that DAML will now be the “exclusive standard” for developing decentralized applications, or DApps, on top of the BSN.

The integration will enable the interoperability of DApps regardless of the implemented blockchain network. As such, developers will not have to rewrite their smart contracts each time they deploy a certain application on BSN to a new platform based on another blockchain.

According to the announcement, Red Date Technology and Digital Asset are planning to complete the first DAML pilot on the BSN by November 2020. The pilot will involve the deployment of a DAML application interoperating two blockchains — Hyperledger Fabric and WeBank’s FISCO BCOS.

The application will further be integrated into the core BSN architecture, the firms’ representatives said. Following the pilot, general availability for developers building with DAML on BSN is anticipated in 2021.

Red Date Technology CEO Yifan He said that DAML will now act as the exclusive smart contract language of the BSN:

By selecting DAML as the exclusive smart contract language of the BSN itself, our developers will gain the choice of using one unifying smart contract language seamlessly and interoperably across every blockchain."

Digital Asset co-founder and CEO Yuval Rooz emphasized that connecting global blockchain platforms is a “key to global adoption,” stating:

“There are multiple blockchain platforms available and more coming to market [...] BSN already has incredible traction with more than 130 nodes in production across China. By integrating with DAML, the BSN will have one unified language for applications and a cutting-edge interoperability protocol to further enable this vision.”

Piloted in late 2019, the BSN is a state-backed initiative intended to support medium-sized businesses in building and deploying blockchain applications. As reported by Cointelegraph, the BSN will integrate stablecoin support in 2021 to unlock payment methods for various services on the BSN ecosystem.

Earlier this year, WeBank — a private Chinese neobank founded by Tencent — started exploring the integration of the DAML language for its consortium blockchain FISCO BCOS.