Tencent Taps DAML Smart Contract Language for Chinese State Blockchain Network

Published at: April 20, 2020

Tencent’s digital bank WeBank is exploring the integration of the DAML smart contract language for its consortium blockchain FISCO BCOS — the chain that will undergird China’s national Blockchain-Based Service Network (BSN).

On April 16, WeBank announced that integration of the Digital Asset Modeling Language (DAML) — open sourced by its creator, software firm Digital Asset, last year — would help it deliver pioneering blockchain solutions across finance, supply chain and other sectors in China and worldwide.

Developed back in 2016, DAML is an expressive language designed for financial institutions to model and execute agreements using distributed ledger technology (DLT). Digital Asset has ostensibly designed the language for optimal use in private execution environments, rather than open ones.

Implementation at scale

As reported, BCOS is an open-source and coinless blockchain platform built by the Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Consortium (FISCO). FISCO founding members include WeBank, Tencent Cloud, Huawei and Shenzhen Securities Communication and its network now reportedly spans over 10,000 individual developers and more than 500 corporate members worldwide.

The permissioned BCOS platform has been specifically designed to meet the regulatory requirements and service demands of the financial services industry and supports privacy-preserving technologies such as Zero-Knowledge Proofs. 

In 2019, it was selected as the technology infrastructure for China’s BSN, which will serve a range of state-controlled public services nationwide in sectors such as telecoms and energy management. 

The BSN is expected to launch this month, six months after it was first rolled out for testing. The project is a joint initiative from the Chinese state policy think tank, the State In­for­ma­tion Cen­ter, and state-run companies.

Tags
Related Posts
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 …
Technology / Sept. 14, 2020
Chinese holding firm Ping An overtakes Tencent in blockchain patents race
Chinese holding conglomerate Ping An Group filed the largest number of blockchain-related patents in 2020, according to a new report. Intellectual property-focused magazine Intellectual Asset Management has released a report on the rankings of the world’s foremost blockchain patentees. Based on data from the Derwent World Patents Index, the rankings show that Ping An filed 1,215 blockchain patent families in 2020, more than Tencent and Ant Group combined. Owning a total of 1,749 blockchain patent families, Ping An sharply increased its number of patent applications in 2020, up from just 291 in 2019. Based in Shenzhen, Ping An operates a …
Technology / March 15, 2021
Central bank digital currencies have the power to upend global finance
An astonishing 80% of central banks are engaging in work around central bank digital currencies, from research to experimentation and pilot programs. A recent Bank for International Settlements, or BIS, chart demonstrates the growing interest in CBDCs by central banks, as reflected in speeches and reports as well as people’s Google search interests over time. One country, in particular, to watch in this respect is China, which is emerging as one of the leaders in the shift to CBDCs. The People’s Bank of China introduced its CBDC in pilot form in the major city of Shenzhen and plans to use …
Technology / Oct. 26, 2020
China Gets Its First Blockchain-Based Public Resource Bidding Platform
China’s Yun­nan province city of Kun­ming has completed the development and internal testing of the country’s first completely blockchain-based public resource bidding platform. Public resource bidding is a method utilized by governments to allocate large resources to private and public sector companies that promise to complete a particular project. Dubbed “Kun­y­il­ian,” the bidding plat­form utilizes Tencent’s blockchain-as-a-service system and intends to solve the challenges faced by the current public resource bidding process. It is expected to help authenticate the credibility of central entities involved in the bidding process and expedite data sharing and security. During the pilot test of the …
Adoption / June 26, 2020
Neo users explain why they've held on to the project despite China's heavy crypto crackdown
It's been a wild ride for Neo (dubbed "Ethereum of China") investors in the past few years, especially as China began to incrementally introduce harsher crypto regulations. But despite the odds, the community appears to be resilient, with a dedicated society of developers worldwide and a bourgeoning decentralized finance, or DeFi, hub that came into prominence via the launch of Neo N3 mainnet last year. As told by Neo investors Lucas and Jiří, who spoke to Cointelegraph, they were not expecting such a "huge drop in price" for Neo. Still, they nevertheless decided to hold their Neo tokens through all …
Decentralization / Feb. 28, 2022