ConsenSys partners China BSN
Joe Lubin's ConsenSys is taking a big step into China (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Technology

ConsenSys snags key partnership with China’s national blockchain project

The deal between the Ethereum development firm and the government-controlled Blockchain-based Service Network puts Quorum front and center with Chinese DApp developers

By  / January 25, 2021 /

Five months after ConsenSys acquired the Quorum blockchain from creator JPMorgan bank, the Brooklyn-based Ethereum development firm has announced a major coup: a partnership with China’s national blockchain project.

By teaming up with the Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), ConsenSys puts it enterprise blockchain front and center with developers throughout China. The BSN is a global infrastructure project, providing DApp developers a source of easy and inexpensive data storage and bandwidth for products on select decentralized blockchains—including Ethereum, EOS, and Tezos—as well as enterprise platforms that now include Quorum. 

“[W]ith the BSN we are taking a significant step forward in bringing ConsenSys Quorum to many enterprises in China that could benefit from transparent collaborative business networks,” said ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin. “ConsenSys Quorum is unique in that it spans the whole range of needs for enterprises in terms of privacy and permissioned features, yet is still compatible with the Ethereum mainnet.”

Backed by one of China’s top economic planning agencies, BSN is a core part of China’s efforts to fulfill President Xi Jinping’s October 2020 call for China to “take the leading position in the emerging field of blockchain.”

That has led to a huge boom in Chinese blockchain projects. The Quorum-BSN partnership means ConsenSys Codefi applications such as Orchestrate, Workflow, and Assets will be available on the BSN marketplace to DApp developers.

“After the launch, BSN will include Quorum in BSN’s training programs in 2021 to substantially accelerate the enterprise adoption of blockchain technology and Ethereum-based solutions in China,” said Yifan He, CEO of BSN overseer Red Date Technology and the executive director of BSN Development Association.

GoQuorum will be made interoperable with other permissioned and open blockchain protocols hosted on the BSN, which is “the blockchain cornerstone for the ‘new infrastructure’ in China,” Yifan said in the announcement.  

While JPMorgan spun off Quorum to ConsenSys once it had created the enterprise blockchain platform, it continues to use it as the base of its Interbank Information Network (IIN).

That is designed to allow member banks to confirm digital transactions far faster and cheaper than the current system, which runs transaction confirmations through the slow and expensive SWIFT system. The IIN is powered by the bank’s JPM Coin, a stablecoin built on Quorum.

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Leo Jakobson, Modern Consensus editor-in-chief, is a New York-based journalist who has traveled the world writing about incentive travel. He has also covered consumer and employee engagement, small business, the East Coast side of the Internet boom and bust, and New York City crime, nightlife, and politics. Disclosure: Jakobson has put some 401k money into Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.