R3 uses Ethereum and Microsoft Azure to connect 11 banks to distributed ledger

According to the International Business Times (IBTimes), blockchain consortium R3 CEV has launched its first distributed ledger experiment, which uses Ethereum and Microsoft Azure’s Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) and involves its 11 member banks.

The private peer-to-peer distributed ledger, managed by R3, connects Barclays, BMO Financial Group, Credit Suisse, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HSBC, Natixis, Royal Bank of Scotland, TD Bank, UBS, UniCredit and Wells Fargo.

Participants will be able to explore the potential of the technology and conduct real-time financial transactions through this global private network. According to R3’s statement, the banks will simulate transactions through tokenized assets on a distributed ledger without the involvement of a centralized third party.

Furthermore, this collaborative experiment is only the first in a series of projects using a number of candidate distributed ledger technologies to demonstrate the applicability of distributed ledgers to financial markets. R3 will announce a number of other projects in 2016.

'Exciting progress'

David Rutter, CEO of R3, said:

“Moving from fantasy and hypothesis to application and execution, this is the next important step in using this technology to transform the way financial market institutions interact, report and trade with each other. This development is very exciting for R3 and our member banks, but also for the entire global financial services industry.”

The R3 distributed ledger consortium has signed up 42 partner banks since its launch, and is now opening its doors to non-bank institutions, clearing houses and exchanges.

George Hallam, Director of External Relations at the Ethereum Foundation, said:

“The Foundation recognizes the versatility and capabilities of the Ethereum platform and its underlying technology. We are encouraged and excited by the significant advancements R3 is making to the application portfolio of the Ethereum platform.”

“R3 is bridging the gap between blockchain technology and the real world, and this news shows that the gap between the two is getting smaller and real progress is being made.”

“While this is noteworthy, we believe there are still many implementation hurdles to overcome, this work further validates the practicality of smart contract consensus technology.”

Brad Novak, chief technology officer at Barclays investment bank, said:

“We have made progress in assessing the value of shared ledgers and smart contracts, and we look forward to collaborating on technical experiments using R3’s lab environment.

Ethereum is a well-known open source technology in this space, and we look forward to collaborative experiments using other technologies.”

Richard Herbert, CIO of HSBC Global Banking and Markets, said:

“The new R3 Global Access Lab Environment is enabling R3 and its member banks to collaborate on experiments with shared ledger and smart contract technologies. With its first project already live, the lab platform will enable faster experimentation and provide technical flexibility.”

Alex Batlin, senior innovation manager at UBS, added:

“Delivering scalable and operational peer-to-peer blockchain experiments is an important next step in this transformational plan. By connecting 11 bank labs to a simulated real-world network, we were able to build the platform we needed to test our theories and get them running effectively in a secure environment.”

Original article: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/r3-connects-11-banks-distributed-ledger-using-ethereum-microsoft-azure-1539044
By Ian Allison
Translator: Satuoxi
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/r3-connects-11-banks ‎)