IBM's latest blockchain development: Shadowchain, improving the lending process

IBM's efforts in exploring blockchain technology show that the tech giant is serious about blockchain technology. In the past few months, in addition to joining the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger project, IBM has also been committed to creating its own open source blockchain project. Recently, IBM revealed its latest idea for applying blockchain to real-world scenarios, which IBM's vice president of blockchain,杰瑞·科莫, called "Shadowchain."

What is Shadowchain?

What is Shadowchain? Here’s what Cuomo said:

“No, I’m not suggesting we redo our global credit and lending system on a blockchain right now, but we’ve already adopted a layer of shadowchain: My definition of shadowchain is that it doesn’t replace the main business process, but it is used to enrich the business process. Because it has useful functions that the current business process does not have.”

The global credit and loan system mentioned by Cuomo refers to IBM's global credit agency (IBM Global Finance, referred to as IGF). According to Cuomo, the agency lends about $44 billion a year, generates as many as 2.9 million invoices, and currently has 4,000 partners in its business network. The IGF system handles about 25,000 disputes each year (usually some very simple things, such as whether the money borrowed in New Jersey is taxed in New York), which is very time-consuming. These disputes together consume resources worth about $1 million.

Cuomo said the shadowchain will record key events throughout the loan process and help avoid unnecessary delays due to disputes.

“Before blockchain was integrated into the IGF system, it took about 40 days to process this kind of dispute. Now with the help of blockchain, it has been reduced to about 10 days. You can imagine that funds will be freed up and will be put to greater use.”

However, Cuomo said that no IGF trading partners have moved to the blockchain yet, but this is an important step for IBM to move the lending process to the blockchain, adding that credit institutions similar to IGF around the world can do so in the future.

Open source blockchain

In addition to shadowchains, IBM has also been working on other blockchain-related projects. The first one to be mentioned is IBM's open source blockchain project. Eight months ago, IBM launched this project with the aim of building a permissioned blockchain where end users can decide the degree of openness of the blockchain as they wish, and support privacy, auditing and confidentiality, and can also insert consensus algorithms. In addition, IBM is planning another project to build smart contracts on the open source blockchain protocol, which is also part of the Hyperledger project.
Original article: https://news.bitcoin.com/ibm-experimenting-open-blockchain-hyperledger-shadowchains/
By JP Buntinx
Compiled by: printemps
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/ibm-shadowchains ‎)