Speaking at the Hyperledger Global Forum 2020 in Phoenix, Arizona on March 3, Walmart’s director of software engineering for blockchain platforms, Archana Sristy, briefly discussed why the company joined Hyperledger. During a panel entitled “Blockchain in Action: The Latest in Production Deployments,” Sristy said: “One of the reasons we are now a member of Hyperledger is to show the open-source community the importance of interoperability. It’s presumptive to think that everyone will be on the same blockchain network and will use the same framework. We have developers at Walmart participating in the open-source community and we look forward to more …

Walmart has become the latest major conglomerate to join open-source blockchain consortium Hyperledger. Walmart is among eight new members to join the platform. The new members were announced on March 3 at the Hyperledger Global Forum 2020 in Phoenix, Arizona. Sanjay Radhakrishnan, the vice president of Walmart Global Tech, expressed excitement in joining the platform, stating: “We've seen strong results through our various deployments of blockchain, and believe staying involved in open source communities will further transform the future of our business." Hyperledger was launched in 2016 and is hosted by the Linux Foundation. The platform aims to “advance cross-industry …

Russia’s richest man, Vladimir Potanin, is making steady headway with his blockchain-based trading platform for industrial assets and commodities. The billionaire’s venture, dubbed Atomyze, launched today, Feb. 25, in test mode. Potanin’s mining and smelting firm Nornickel will be the first to issue tokens on the platform, which is designed to speed up transactions, enable surplus supply trading and cut back on the red tape needed for interactions between customers and businesses. Atomyze is based on IBM’s Hyperledger Fabric blockchain technology, and Nornickel’s partners Trafigura, Traxys, and Umicore have been invited to participate in the platform’s testing phase. In an …

Hyperledger Fabric released version 2.0 of its enterprise distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform, according to a Jan. 30 announcement. Several major features were added to the platform that improve how its different participants communicate with each other. Hyperledger Fabric is the IBM-backed part of the Hyperledger consortium, which features dozens of industry players. Fabric is a private or “permissioned” blockchain network that is used in industries such as finance and supply chains. It allows companies to control access to their networks and keep sensitive data private, while enabling some cross-industry cooperation through dedicated channels and verifiable smart contracts. Version 2.0 …

In the last quarter of 2019, Hyperledger’s Fabric open source blockchain software saw more developer activity than R3’s Corda platform. Blockchain service firm Chainstack recently published a report about developer activity on six major enterprise blockchains, showing that Fabric has overtaken Corda in regard to dev activity on its repository. A chart included in the report shows that Fabric developer activity exceeded Corda’s in Q4 2019. Total GitHub activity per-protocol. Source: Chainstack Fabric’s growth after the switch to GitHub The surge in Fabric developer activity closely followed the project’s transition from the code management tool Gerrit to the more popular …

Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica has reportedly partnered with the local Association of Science and Technology Parks (APTE) to grant access to its blockchain to about 8,000 firms in Spain. According to a report published by telecom news outlet TotalTele on Jan. 9, Telefonica will deploy nodes of its Hyperledger-based blockchain at APTE’s 52 sites. During the three-month-long testing period, firms will be encouraged to develop applications on the network and allowed to experiment with their own tokens. Telefonica partnered with IT giant IBM in November 2018 to apply blockchain technology to managing international mobile phone call traffic. A project backed …

Multinational IT services giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) launched a blockchain app development kit (DevKit). According to an announcement published by TCS on Dec. 16, the new Quartz DevKit is a low-code web-based integrated development environment that aims to allow enterprises to quickly build and deploy applications on any chosen blockchain in a simplified way. Fast blockchain app deployment The DevKit features expandable pre-built templates for platform setup, administration, deployment, platform security authentication, encryption, node, identity and user management. The firm claims that this lets programmers write smart contracts 40% faster than without its DevKit. Global Quartz head at TCS …

British-Swiss commodity trading and mining company Glencore will use an IBM-developed blockchain solution to track cobalt. In a press release issued on Dec. 12, Glencore confirmed it had joined the Responsible Sourcing Blockchain Network (RSBN), a joint partnership between various major corporations leveraging the technology to improve supply chain transparency. Glencore: blockchain aids good practice RSBN is the brainchild of global sourcing audit and advisory RCS Global Group. It uses the IBM Blockchain platform and is powered by Hyperledger Fabric. “RSBN plays a key role in advancing the sustainable partnership between the producers of commodities that will enable the transition …

Italian luxury sports car brand Lamborghini is using Salesforce Blockchain to authenticate heritage Lamborghini cars. Salesforce, a major global customer relationship management firm, announced on Nov. 19 that Lamborghini can now trace, certify and authenticate heritage cars faster and more securely using its blockchain platform. Launched in May 2019, Salesforce’s Hyperledger-based blockchain platform will now be implemented to create a trusted network between multiple participants for certification checks during a Lamborghini’s resale. Each Lamborghini vehicle will now come with an immutable record of service Typically, when a Lamborgini is resold, the vehicle goes through 800 or 1,000 certification inspections that …

German securities marketplace Deutsche Boerse and Swiss state-run telecom Swisscom have settled securities transactions using different blockchain protocols. In a joint proof-of-concept (PoC) involving a number of banks, the participants exchanged money in the form of cash tokens against tokenized shares, Deutsche Börse officially announced on Nov. 19. Based on blockchain technology, the joint PoC intends to show the potential of new technologies in the financial services sector and maintain Germany and Switzerland’s expertise in the digital asset ecosystem. Three major Swiss banks participated in the PoC The PoC involved major Swiss banks, including the fourth-largest Swiss bank Zuercher Kantonalbank, …

Lithuania’s central bank, Bank of Lithuania, has selected technology behemoth IBM and IT services firm Tieto as the finalists contending to develop its blockchain platform. Financial technology news outlet FintechFutures reported on the contest’s developments on Oct. 23. Per the report, both firms will test their platform and the winner will be selected later in 2019 as part of the project dubbed LBChain. The project's manager at the Bank of Lithuania Andrius Adamonis commented: “The final testing session will show which solution is most suitable for market needs. [...] We believe that the greatest advantage of LBChain is its versatility. …

At the beginning of October, a story released by CNN claimed that a student affiliated with the University of Michigan attempted to hack into West Virginia’s blockchain-based voting system called Voatz. As per the report, the FBI is now actively investigating the matter and is looking to authenticate the veracity of these claims. Voatz is a smartphone-based app that was used by the West Virginia government last year to collect ballots from its citizens that were either living overseas at the time or were stationed abroad for military purposes. The aforementioned disclosure was made by West Virginia Secretary of State …