How events developed around the blockchain platform R3 Corda between the April announcement and the publication of the code in late November

    imageIn early April, it became aware of the development process of the blockchain-consortium R3 CEV distributed registry platform for the financial services industry Corda . A couple of days on Habré came the translation of the announcement of Corda, written by CTO R3 by Richard Brown. We, in the Wirex payment blockchain service, traced further events around the R3 platform solution, which operates on the basis of distributed registry technology.

    How events developed further


    On April 18, British bank Barclays demonstrated a prototype platform based on smart contracts from private blockchain Corda. The presentation of the decision took place as part of the event, timed to coincide with the new release of the acceleration fintech program Barclays. According to the developers' idea, Corda's smart contract technology allows you to create digital document templates and develop legal standards based on them.

    R3 reported on the successful completion of testing blockchain solutions Corda in the field of international settlement operations on 10 August. The pilot launch involved 15 R3 participants: Barclays, UBS, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ING Bank, Danske Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, BBVA, Natixis, Nordea, Scotiabank, UniCredit, BNP Paribas, US Bank and Wells Fargo. The purpose of the tested R3 was formulated as identifying the blockchain opportunities for invoices for letters of credit and receivables.

    October 24 at Reuters information appearedthat Corda developers plan to present their solution in an open source format. According to leading engineer R3 James Carlisle, the consortium seeks to organize access to innovative solutions based on the platform for banks and other parties. But at the same time, R3 is trying to prevent the development of its own platforms by the participants, since such an approach will lead to the formation of technological islands that are not connected with each other. Carlisle said that the Corda concept implies the creation of a single platform with a multitude of products based on it.

    November 30, R3 introduced the code for the blockchain platform Corda. At the same time, it became known that the Corda project was joining the Hyperledger blockchain consortium under the leadership of the Linux Foundation. There is an opinionthat the exit from R3 of Goldman Sachs investment bank is connected with this fact, since the open source format and the deprivation of exclusive rights to the Corda platform forced the large American financial structure to rethink the format of their participation in the consortium.

    It is known that full functional readiness of Corda is expected not earlier than in 2 years. Contrary to the concept of unity of the Corda platform, declared by Carlisle, some participants of the consortium, such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, according to the representative of the Scandinavian SEB bank Christian Garder, have applied for patenting their own blockchain development. This trend may indicate the beginning of a patent confrontation on the field of joint developments of companies participating in R3.

    A little about the basic properties of the R3 Corda


    In the April announcement, Corda was introduced as a distributed registry platform, designed from the ground up for recording, managing, and synchronizing agreement states between regulated financial institutions.

    Features R3 Corda:

    • Corda does not offer any unnecessary global openness in data transfer: only participants whose need (to see this or that information) is determined by agreements can access it.
    • The entire workflow between the companies participating in the system is coordinated without the mediation of the central controller.
    • Consensus in Corda is reached between companies at the level of individual transactions, and not at the system level.
    • The possibility of involving regulatory and supervisory observers is built into the system.
    • The validity of a Corda transaction is verified by their direct participants, and not by a wide range of validators unrelated to them.
    • Corda supports various consensus mechanisms.
    • Corda offers a clear and unambiguous link between the formal human legal language and the code of smart contracts.
    • Corda is created using tools recognized by industry standards.
    • Corda does not have its own “native” cryptocurrency.

    In the text of his publication, Brown also wrote that he and his team managed to come to the conclusion that basic blockchains, like those that underlie Bitcoin and Ethereum or any of their closed variations, in practice provide at least five interconnected, but distinct functions.

    Brown listed 5 functions of blockchains:

    1. Consensus;
    2. Validation;
    3. Uniqueness;
    4. Immutability;
    5. Signature verification

    And the right approach, according to CTO R3, would be to treat them as a menu with the ability to select individual positions and their further refinement and to obtain different combinations, different “taste scales” for different business tasks.



    Despite the concept colorfully described by Brown, media hype and the first test launches, the Corda project is still in its infancy and it is still premature to talk about its effectiveness. Participants in the international financial market will be able to see Corda in no earlier than a couple of years. However, the Corda project is another confirmation of the global development of blockchain technologies in the financial sector. The September IBM report contains forecasts , according to which, already in 2017, 15% of large banks will introduce the blockchain technology.

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