Blockchain developer AMIS (帳聯網路科技) yesterday announced that its new consensus algorithm has been adopted by JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Ethereum-based blockchain to help meet the US giant’s need for high throughput processing using the distributed ledger technology.
AMIS and JPMorgan are founding members of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which develops the Ethereum blockchain.
Unlike public blockchains — such as the one that underpins bitcoin — Ethereum can produce both public and private blockchains, which is more suitable for enterprises such as JPMorgan as it develops Quorum, a private blockchain to process interbank and cross-border transactions.
Dubbed the Istanbul Byzantine fault tolerant consensus protocol (Istanbul BFT), the new tool markedly reduces the complexity and energy consumption of verifying transactions made on the blockchain, compared with conventional blockchains that use “proof of work” methods.
In public blockchains, the proof of work is often competitive and driven by financial gains for the participants in the form of “blockchain mining,” which requires heavy computation work.
Under the new protocol, verification is conducted by a clique of pre-approved nodes with “proof of authority,” AMIS chief executive officer Alex Liu (劉世偉) said.
Although the new protocol does not bring immediate financial gains for AMIS, it is an important open-source contribution to the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, the most active community of blockchain technology developers, Liu said.
“The protocol is a vital part of efforts aimed at building the next evolution of the Internet of Value, similar to the creation of the TCP/IP protocol earlier in the history of computer networks,” Liu said.
It is hoped that blockchain will replace the infrastructure for financial transactions, which is strewn with redundant agencies across disparate incompatible systems, resulting in slower processing speeds and higher fees, Liu said.
JPMorgan is also considering the benefits of adding automated regulatory filings to yield compliance cost savings, company developers said via a Web stream at a news conference in Taipei.
SETBACK: Apple’s India iPhone push has been disrupted after Foxconn recalled hundreds of Chinese engineers, amid Beijing’s attempts to curb tech transfers Apple Inc assembly partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has recalled about 300 Chinese engineers from a factory in India, the latest setback for the iPhone maker’s push to rapidly expand in the country. The extraction of Chinese workers from the factory of Yuzhan Technology (India) Private Ltd, a Hon Hai component unit, in southern Tamil Nadu state, is the second such move in a few months. The company has started flying in Taiwanese engineers to replace staff leaving, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named, as the
The prices of gasoline and diesel at domestic fuel stations are to rise NT$0.1 and NT$0.4 per liter this week respectively, after international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to rise to NT$27.3, NT$28.8 and NT$30.8 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to rise to NT$26.2 per liter at CPC stations and NT$26 at Formosa pumps, they said. The announcements came after international crude oil prices
STABLE DEMAND: Delta supplies US clients in the aerospace, defense and machinery segments, and expects second-half sales to be similar to the first half Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) expects its US automation business to remain steady in the second half, with no signs of weakening client demand. With demand from US clients remaining solid, its performance in the second half is expected to be similar to that of the first half, Andy Liu (劉佳容), general manager of the company’s industrial automation business group, said on the sidelines of the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show in Taipei on Wednesday. The company earlier reported that revenue from its automation business grew 7 percent year-on-year to NT$27.22 billion (US$889.98 million) in the first half, accounting for 11 percent
A German company is putting used electric vehicle batteries to new use by stacking them into fridge-size units that homes and businesses can use to store their excess solar and wind energy. This week, the company Voltfang — which means “catching volts” — opened its first industrial site in Aachen, Germany, near the Belgian and Dutch borders. With about 100 staff, Voltfang says it is the biggest facility of its kind in Europe in the budding sector of refurbishing lithium-ion batteries. Its CEO David Oudsandji hopes it would help Europe’s biggest economy ween itself off fossil fuels and increasingly rely on climate-friendly renewables. While