JPMorgan formally quits R3

The first reaction is that this is another nail in R3’s coffin, after the departure of other global players such as Goldman Sachs and Banco Santander.
A deeper analysis suggests that banks choose to join consortia to learn the basics of blockchain and make the first steps. They subsequently prefer to go alone and run their own blockchain projects, avoiding the risk of “giving away” their intellectual property. This is a dangerous path: the evolution of blockchain-based solutions is going too fast, and it will not help having each bank running its own race. Of course competition is needed, but a solid foundation of common rules, standards, and technical guidelines are indispensable.

Technology standards help everyone reach a certain level. Leaders won't be leaders if they stuck to standards and stayed on par with the others in their industry. They will use technology to gain competitive advantage. While standards do serve a certain purpose, it's naive to expect any single open standard to achieve ubiquituous adoption. Through the decades, I've seen multiple open standards emerge in any given space and vie for adoption e.g. TCP/IP v. ISO/OSI, BSD v. AT&T Unix, etc. The only standards that have managed to achieve majority adoption are the proprietary ones e.g. MS DOS, Windows, etc. I see the same story repeating with Blockchain. 

Understandably people take note when a player like JPM makes a decision like this, but if you look at the sheer volume/quality/size of firms that are R3 members it looks like they are still winning this arms race. And the idea of the industry working together to develop technology that they have control over is a major step forward from the situation we are locked into today with the likes of IBM etc.

"JPMorgan parted ways with R3 to pursue a very distinct technology path which is at odds with the one chosen by the global financial services industry, represented by our 80-plus members."

-- I wonder if that statement can be translated to mean: "we like the guarantees provided by the clearing house and aren't so sure that R3 and the blockchain advocates really understand who guarantees a trade in our financial markets."