China’s Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) — a public-private nationwide infrastructure project to spur mass adoption of blockchain technology — is partnering with a New York-based blockchain company to advance interoperability as BSN actively expands its global presence to lure more developers to use the blockchain network.
Fast facts
- Cypherium, a smart contract technology provider focusing on central bank digital currency (CBDC), has joined with BSN to make the infrastructure more accessible to developers, the company said today in a statement.
- BSN will integrate into its network technology provided by Cypherium that comes with scalability, security and decentralization features, in a bid to enhance efficiency for central banks to develop and manage CBDCs.
- BSN has already integrated over 20 permissioned and permissionless frameworks, including Hyperledger Fabric, ConsenSys Quorum, Ethereum, Tezos, Solana and Algorand, the company said.
- The new partnership reflects BSN’s ambition to expand overseas. It has recently announced that it is setting up BSN portals in Hong Kong, South Korea, Turkey and Uzbekistan.
- “The BSN was designed to enable interoperability across different blockchain frameworks and dramatically reduce the cost of developing and running blockchain applications,” Yifan He, CEO of Red Date Technology — the company China tapped to manage its BSN — and executive director of the BSN Development Association, said in the statement.
- In July 2020, the BSN separated into two ecosystems, BSN China and BSN International. BSN International, headquartered in Hong Kong, has integrated major public chains, which tend to focus on cryptocurrency and decentralized systems, while BSN China, which owns the majority of BSN’s city nodes across the mainland, is a separate permission-based system that cannot access public chains deployed on BSN International.
- Meanwhile, China is pioneering the world’s first major central bank digital currency. The electronic Chinese yuan (e-CNY), alternately called the digital renminbi or e-RMB, is issued by China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China. It is the first digital currency to be issued by a major economy, has been under development for several years, and is slowly being rolled out to Chinese consumers in trial runs that began last year. Many expect China’s CBDC to be formally launched in time for the Beijing Winter Olympics in February.