Many of the world’s largest banks have backed R3’s Corda network, which is following the general trend toward public-facing blockchains.
LAB577, a group of former RBS bankers, announced Tuesday that they are paving the way for eXchange inFinite (XinFin), a blockchain focused on trade finance. The Ethereum-compatible XDC, Corda’s native token, will be used as a settlement coin.
(To prevent confusion with the aforementioned trade finance token, DASL previously launched a prototype token on Corda named XDC, but later decided to change the ticker to avoid confusion – and now DASL is acting as a handmaiden for XDC and its community.)
LAB577 director Richard Crook said, “The first currency across is XDC, but this lays the groundwork to link Corda to ERC-20s and other cryptocurrency networks, What you should see here is a solution to the age-old problem of interoperability.”
R3, which was established in 2015, was the first to promote the advantages of blockchain, the shared database that underpins bitcoin, to banks, who eagerly joined the enterprise software consortium. It became clear quickly that no bank would give competitors access to its private data, even if it was encrypted. Corda was developed with this in mind: a mechanism that helps transacting counterparties to see that they are on the same page without having to tip their hands to someone else.
In recent years, an open-source version of Corda has been released, as well as tentative steps into the public domain, such as a payment engine that is said to be interoperable with Ripple’s XRP cryptocurrency and talk of a “Corda Coin” that emerged at R3’s annual gathering in 2019.
After graduating from the Abu Dhabi regulatory fintech sandbox, the XinFin and XDC communities are located in Singapore.
Atul Khekade, co-founder of XinFin, clarified that while XDC is a public network, it should alleviate regulatory concerns among banks and financial institutions interested in the potential of more accessible blockchains.
To be a validator, validators must lock 10 million XDC tokens [roughly $300,000] and bind their own KYC to the node, according to XinFin co-founder Atul Khekade. “It’s a public network and we don’t really have power over who joins the network,” she says. “However, unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, where anybody can be a validator, there is an extra [know your customer] step.”
Corda is being used to develop a range of trade finance applications, including the TradeIX-backed Marco Polo project. So, will these current trade finance players be singing “Kumbaya” around the campfire with XDC?
Crook explained, “I believe it’s more of a case of a rising tide lifting all vessels.” “It keeps Corda at the forefront of financial services and, in this case, trade finance.”
