Earlier this month, the finance ministry, led by the former economic affairs minister Subhash Chandra Garg, constituted a steering meeting on financial technology. The results are now out in public domain currently. Though the committee’s recommendation of a blanket ban on cryptocurrency in India was highly criticized, it’s blockchain point should accumulate an overwhelmingly positive response from the industry.
The interministerial committee led by Subhash Chandra Garg is full of appreciation when it comes to blockchain technology and its applications. According to reports by the steering committee, “DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) is being explored to facilitate tamper-proof, decentralized records of flow of commodities and assets across a supply chain by using trusted validation mechanisms. The application of DLT has the potential to enhance efficiency and resilience and reduce transaction costs in a number of financial and non-financial sector applications. Blockchain is a type of DLT which enables a community of users to record transactions in a distributed (without a central repository) and a decentralized (without a central authority) manner.”
However, there have hardly been any recommendations when it comes to bringing clarity on the policy level by the major stakeholders such as MeitY, MSME, UIDAI, RBI, Invest India, Banks, iSPIRT, and members from (DLAI) Digital Lenders Association of India. The applications where the committee felt that blockchain might have an impact are cross-border remittances, settlements of securities and trade finance.
Rejolut: Week’s best startup
Mumbai-based Blockchain Development startup, Rejolut’s byproduct H-contract has gone live along with Hedera Hashgraph Blockchain’s mainnet on 16th September. Mainnet is essentially the blockchain that delivers the functionality of transferring digital currency from a sender to a recipient. Reportedly, Rejolut is the only startup of India to have open access to Hedera Hashgraph’s mainnet. The firm has already been working with top brands across the globe such as Hashing System, Hbar price, Earth ID, and so on.
The firm’s members include Tata Communications, IBM, Nomura Holdings and Deutsche Telekom AG and Hedera Hashgraph. As s distributed public ledger platform, the company has raised $100 million by far. The blockchain tech aims to be quicker and run on a larger scale. The valuation of the firm currently is at around $6 billion.
Mindtree initiates blockchain-powered merchant onboarding solution
Bengaluru based IT company Mindtree has announced the launch of its blockchain-based merchant onboarding solution for payment service providers and acquirer banks. The firm’s solution has been developed on a Hyperledger fabric channel, a private distributed ledger framework, for proper communication between the members of all the merchants that ensure a secure and private sharing of the document approval and its information among all the dependent stakeholders. Blockchain has offered the capabilities to facilitate transactions to be authorized and authenticated, securely and transparently. Such skills ensure that the data is transmitted within a secure network and stimulates information sharing across all the parties.
IBM’s Call for Code 2019: Top 5 declared
David Clark Cause, the founding partner at IBM, announced the top 5 finalists for the Call for Code Global Challenge 2019. These five finalists are AsTeR (Europe), Healios (North America), Prometeo (Europe), Rove (North America) and Sparrow Platform (Asia Pacific).
Call for Code 2019 focusses on using cut edge technologies like blockchain, AI, ML, big data to help lessen the effects of natural disasters and support the communities prepare and respond to the needs of the survivors better. Naural disasters have been growing on a large scale and have been affecting every region of the world. The initiative unites several developers to create applications powered by open source technology that could tackle these global problems.
According to IBM, this year, over 180K independent and enterprise developers, data scientists, activists, and students from 165 nations took part in the challenge. They created more than 5,000 applications designed to enhance the access to vital information that could assist their first responders and health practitioners in helping survivors of natural disasters.
