Ant Financial launches a blockchain platform to help small businesses and developers

Chinese banking giant Ant Financial launches a blockchain platform to help small businesses and developers expand their services.

Called Ant Financial’s OpenChain, the new platform provides small businesses and developers readily available modules and smart contracts that they can use to build trust when collaborating with multiple parties. It includes ready-made distributed applications or dApps for supply chain finance, digital invoices, decentralized games, copyright protection, electronic bills, charitable donations and more.

“Applications of blockchain technology have ballooned over the past few years,” says Jin Ge, general manager of blockchain platforms at Ant Financial. “Through the launch of the OpenChain platform, we aim to help one million SMEs and developers innovate and explore more use cases in the next three years.”

In an email sent to Ledger Insights, Ant Financial Blockchain was based on Ethereum. “OpenChain utilizes consortium blockchain technology developed by Ant Financial itself, which is different from Ethereum,” the letter read.

Ge is proud to say that the bank runs the largest productivity blockchain platform in China. It can manage one billion user accounts and one billion daily transactions.

In terms of speed, the Professional Edition of OpenChain supports up to 10 transactions per second (TPS) while the Enterprise Edition can manage up to 100 TPS. However, the Ant Financial Blockchain itself can handle up to 10,000 TPS.

WhiteMatrix, a provider of individual developer services and enterprise blockchain app services, has been using the platform since its initial alpha testing in 2019.

“The platform offers efficient blockchain development services, facilitates cost-effective smart contracts, and lowers the entry barrier for developers. Not only are OpenChain’s transaction speeds several times faster than public blockchain platforms like Ethereum, but the cost per transaction is only one tenth of others.” said Wu Xiao, the founder and CEO of WhiteMatrix.

The OpenChain pricing starts at $14 per month.

Meanwhile, the first look of China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) wallet has been unveiled. Based on the photo, it offers four payment options – scanning barcode, sending money, collecting payment, and touching phones for peer-to-peer (P2P) payments.

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