Quant Network’s Overledger and SIA have successfully tested cross-blockchain interoperability between multiple Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) protocols. Quant Network is a provider of blockchain technology. SIA offers payment services and infrastructures (and is a subsidiary of CDP Equity).
“The achievement of a fully interoperable blockchain network, through our collaboration with Quant Network, is another key element in our path of bringing innovation and state-of-the-art technologies for supporting banks, financial institutions, corporates and public administration bodies to extend their capabilities in integrating different DLT business applications,” said Daniele Savarè, Innovation & Business Solutions Director SIA.
The breakthrough
Described as a ‘breakthrough’ by SIA, the achievement came with integration of Quant Network’s Overledger technology into the SIAchain private blockchain infrastructure. This leveraged 580 European network nodes within SIAnet (a 200,000km fibre optic network with high-speed and low-latency).
The integration makes it possible to bridge permissioned blockchain instances between SIAchain and other external networks – ones which could not be previously connected. The effect is to have cross-platform applications and services delivering (for example):
- notarisation
- payments
- KYC.
The development of the solution began in mid-2019. The program of testing involved:
- SIAchain
- R3 Corda
- private Ethereum platforms.
Quant Network and SIA will now work together on a go-to-market approach. They hope to develop and implement additional use, and applications, which explore blockchain interoperability challenges.
“The partnership between Quant Network and SIA has been extremely positive and productive from the very start,” said Gilbert Verdian, CEO, Quant Network, “and both companies are confident that this development will play an integral part in building the financial infrastructure of the future globally.”
SIA
SIA designs, creates and manages technology infrastructures and services for financial institutions, central banks, enterprises and the public. Among its offerings are solutions for:
- card and merchant handling
- digital payments
- capital markets
- networks.
The SIA Group provides its services in >50 countries. An example of activities is its digitalised (sic) management of sureties based on blockchain technology. Sureties requested by law are mandatory for certain types of economic transactions like calls for tenders in the public sector, supply contracts between companies and payment of advances for the purchase of properties under construction between private individuals. Sureties are often linked to problems involving:
- falsification of documents
- frauds by unauthorised subjects
- the processing of paperwork
- the length of the issuance process.
SIA’s use of DLT makes it possible to:
- dematerialise the issuance process by banks, financial intermediaries and insurance companies
- certify the sureties unequivocally and irrevocably.
SIAchain is the private infrastructure created by SIA to develop, in a secure and protected manner, blockchain applications based on DLT. It is a partnership between SIA and R3 aimed at speeding up the global development and adoption of blockchain applications.
Quant Network and Overledger
Quant Network developed its own blockchain operating system – Overledger. It not only interconnects blockchains, but also legacy networks to blockchain.
The problem Overledger seeks to solve is that ‘traditional’ DLT lacks seamless inter-communicability internally among ledgers and externally with existing networks. This limitation forces distributed applications to be single-ledger-dependent. From a technology perspective, the fact that distributed or decentralised applications are single-ledger-dependent makes them difficult
to select for a specific business purpose. The Overledger OS proposes to remove this single-ledger dependency, by introducing an approach which enables the design, deployment and execution of multi-ledger decentralised applications.
While other approaches exist (for example, Interledger), most such solutions only allow communication between two blockchains at the same time. Overledger, as demonstrated with SIA, is different because it can conduct operations across multiple blockchains
- Overledger can read information – like transactions, scripts or contracts – and map them in
- an ‘over layer’, but only if the information is compliant with the selected business logic.
In this way, Overledger connects all blockchains and can add an arbitrary hash of a message to a host. By introducing a multi-layer approach via Overledger, Quant Network says it moves information in the layers above, thereby creating a common interface among ledgers.
Enterprise Times: what does this mean
Quant Network and SIA believe their partnership is an important milestone for the finance sector. Their approach will allow banks and financial institutions – through the SIAchain infrastructure – to:
- adopt cross-platform and interoperable blockchain solutions
- embrace new business models
- improve operational efficiencies
- deliver innovation to banking customers.
These are big claims, and there is a dearth of detail about what has been achieved and how. In addition, the partners will have to contend with offerings from the like of Kadena, LedgerConnect or Polkadot.