Microsoft and the world's top banks work together to explore innovative applications of blockchain technology

Rage Comment : Global technology giant Microsoft cooperates with the R3 consortium of more than 40 large global banks to leverage their respective blockchain technology advantages and explore ways to upgrade corporate operating procedures using the underlying research and development methods of Bitcoin. As Paypal Chairman and CEO Dan Schulman said, the key to blockchain is to apply it to other digital currencies with less value fluctuations. I believe that this unprecedented technical cooperation will bring us more efficient and stable application cases.

Translation: Annie Xu

Microsoft is working with R3, a consortium of major global banks, to develop new blockchain technology, using the underlying research and development methods of Bitcoin to change the way trade is tracked and customer financial services are provided.

Blockchain is a public ledger that records transaction information. The R3 consortium includes more than 40 banks, including the well-known BNP Paribas, Wells Fargo, Intenational Netherlands Groups (ING), JPMorgan, and Citi.

Microsoft’s executive vice president of business development, Peggy Johnson, said in a blog post that Microsoft is working with the R3 consortium to “develop, test, and deploy blockchain technology to modernize legacy applications, simplify complex processes, and potentially save billions of dollars in back-end operational costs.”

The goals of this cooperation include increasing the speed of trading of assets such as bonds and stocks, and directly transferring ownership can eliminate the involvement of clearing houses; these exploration directions are very attractive to banks because this cooperation direction will help cut costs and reduce the risk of fraud.

This collaboration will benefit Microsoft partners and their cloud platforms. The R3 consortium will use Microsoft Azure platform and 45 "blockchain as a service" technologies of Microsoft partners. In addition, Microsoft proposed to provide professional technical support and services to R3 blockchain labs.

Dan Schulman

Microsoft announced the partnership at its Envision business technology conference in New Orleans, where PayPal Chairman and CEO Dan Schulman spoke with Peggy Johnson and said bitcoin is “not necessarily something we’re betting on,” even though PayPal supports bitcoin from Coinbase wallets.

However, Schulman said the blockchain technology underlying bitcoin is interesting. In theory, blockchains enable frictionless, feeless transactions. The key is applying blockchains to currencies that are less volatile than bitcoin.