Undeterred by the departure of some its top banking members, blockchain consortium R3 continues to press ahead with new initiatives, partnering with Calypso Technology to develop a multi-party trade confirmation system running on the Corda distributed ledger-based smart contract platform
Calypso will be the first application partner to adopt the R3 platform, utilising the technology to enable counterparties to see all trade tickets on the distributed ledger so they can be sure they are matching against the correct trade.
Pascal Xatart, CEO at Calypso says the new approach will be tested with multiple financial institutions and represents a new alignment between traditional vendors of capital markets technology and emerging developments in the blockchain space.
“We are thrilled to be working with R3 and honored to be their first application partner," says Xatart. "The alignment between the two firms is exceptional - our deep expertise in capital markets combined with their industry-leading distributed ledger technology will allow us to develop a range of innovative applications quickly and efficiently. Our current matching solution is only the beginning.”
The new provides some welcome relief for R3, following a week dominated by news of cracks in the consortium as some of its biggest founding members parted ways.
While the R3 inhouse blog has publicly stated that it doesn't want to "erase the news" (despite Finextra's own experience of previous form in this department) a recently published document on Paste Bin suggesting that JPMorgan, Macquaries and US Bancorp may be preparing to follow Goldman Sachs, Santander, Morgan Stanley and National Australia Bank down the exit chute has mysteriously disappeared. Idle chatter no doubt.
R3 is still canvassing members for participation in a blockbuster $150 million funding round. Reports suggest that the coalition has so far raised just over one-third of the total, at $56.5 million.