China's BSN To Integrate R3 Corda

Table of Contents

• What Is The BSN?
• R3 Makes Its Entry Into China
• How Does The R3-BSN Partnership Look?

China's Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) will collaborate with R3 to integrate Corda on its network, as per BSN key developer Red Date Technology. 

The collaboration will bring in the free version of Corda and the premium Corda Enterprise blockchain paid version, the latter of which will be available on the BSN in the second half of 2021.

What Is The BSN?

The BSN is an initiative by the Chinese government's State Information Center (SIC), along with Red Date, China Mobile, and China UnionPay. It aims to provide a low-cost blockchain network that makes it accessible to the masses and offers various permissioned blockchain technologies. So far, the BSM has already integrated Hyperledger Fabric, FISCO BCOS, CITA (a Chinese enterprise Ethereum), Baidu's XuperChain, and now, R3's Corda.

R3 Makes Its Entry Into China

R3's entry into China is pretty significant. Before this, R3 already had a major Asian presence with offices in Singapore, a joint venture in Japan, and partners in Thailand, India, etc. However, they didn't make any inroads into the Chinese market, despite China being a huge proponent on permissioned blockchain tech, as pointed out by R3's Head of APAC Amit Ghosh:

"China understands the profound and transformative capabilities of blockchain technology—and has underpinned its position at the forefront of blockchain innovation through BSN. This collaboration paves the way for greater adoption of Corda in the Chinese market—supporting the continued growth of numerous industries including trade finance, supply chain, capital markets, insurance, and financial services." 

How Does The R3-BSN Partnership Look?

Here are some of the possible features of the potential R3-BSN partnership:

• R3 and BSN both share the common goal of being a key player in the central bank digital currencies (CBDC) space. With digital yuan already in the advanced stages of testing, it gives R3 the perfect opportunity with a legit CBDC.
• R3 Corda already has a rich ecosystem full of diverse native apps called "CorDapps." For example, the Singapore-based Contour trade finance network has the likes of Standard Chartered and HSBC as members. Both of these banks have a significant Chinese presence.
• A spokesperson for Red Date confirmed that most users of the Corda framework would come from Chinese banks. Since these banks prefer China's UnionPay cloud over AWS, the Corda notary nodes will be using the UnionPay cloud.
• China has its own cryptographic standards, so the Corda cryptographic libraries will probably need to be replaced.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.