Tencent investing $70 Bn Including Blockchain / France Successfully Tests Digital Euro / U.S. National Blockchain Strategy / Enterprise Blockchain & Interoperability


May 27, 2020

This week in the landscape…Tencent is investing 500 billion yuan ($70 billion) into “new infrastructure” based on emerging technologies over the next five years. France has become the first country to trial a Digital Euro, operational on a blockchain successfully. Facebook announced it’s renaming & rebranding its digital wallet from Calibra to Novi. Visa has filed a patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to create digital currency potentially using Ethereum as the blockchain. A House bill outlines path to US National Blockchain Strategy. AccentureFujitsu project hopes to solve blockchain interoperability. China’s congress proposes Blockchain Development Fund. LiquidApps pushes EOSIO interoperability forward with cross-chain and universal solutions. Sales of virtual are selling like digital hotcakes. Binance and Eosfinex join EOS DeFi Protocol, Equilibrium to handle smart contract upgrades. We’re packed full of use cases including athletes, decentralized coupons, ERP integration, and steps to success. Lastly, join me tomorrow on May 28th for the Q2 2020 State of Decentralized Application (DApps) as we go in-depth on the ever-shifting DApps Landscape. Enjoy!

BONUS: I recently released the latest Q2 2020 edition of my DApp “Stack” Landscape Map (included below for download) that provides an overview of the industry highlighting over 400 global companies, ecosystem players, and working groups. If this is the first version you’ve seen of the landscape, consider it your guiding roadmap to further navigate the industry. Get it here in Hi-Res for free!


📖 Tencent Is Pouring $70B Into New Tech Including Blockchain

The creator of popular messaging service WeChat, Tencent is investing 500 billion yuan ($70 billion) into “new infrastructure” based on emerging technologies over the next five years, as reported by Reuters. In an interview with state media Tuesday, Dowson Tong, Tencent’s senior executive vice president, confirmed the company had also earmarked investment for sectors such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. It isn’t clear how much of the $70 billion investment Tencent will ultimately set aside for blockchain, nor has it elaborated on what specifically it will be investing in…read more

🇫🇷 France announces first successful test of a digital euro

France has become the first country to trial a Digital Euro, operational on a blockchain successfully. Banque de France used in-house developed blockchain technology to create digital securities for central bank digital currency (CBDC) representing the euro. The current pilot program is focused on improving the functioning of the financial markets and at wholesale rather than retail uses for a Digital Euro…read more

Related: 📖 Self Sovereign Identity — Wulf Kaal

📖 Facebook renames its service that will let people send Libra digital currency to one another

Facebook announced Tuesday it’s renaming and rebranding its digital wallet from Calibra to Novi. The effort, which debuted last year, is part of the company’s ambitious plan to venture into the digital currency space. Facebook is in the works to launch a cryptocurrency called Libra, with the intention of making it easier for people to send money across the world. While Libra will be run by a nonprofit association supported by a range of companies and organizations, Facebook houses Novi, a digital wallet for storing and exchanging the digital coin.…read more

📖 Visa Applies For Digital Dollar Blockchain Patent

Visa has filed a patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to create digital currency potentially using Ethereum as the blockchain. The application describes a centralized process to maintain the value of the stablecoin as every time a dollar worth of digital fiat currency is generated. The central entity ensures that a corresponding physical dollar bill is removed from circulation, to regulate the value of the digital fiat currency. This could be applied to other central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) such as Pounds, Yen, and Euros, and so the physical money of a central bank anywhere in the world could be digitized…read more

📖 House Bill Outlines Path to US National Blockchain Strategy

U.S. House Rep. Brett Guthrie has introduced a bill ‘HB6938’ calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to survey the prevalence of blockchain technologies across industry, government, and the globe. The move is considered to be followed by the launch of the Blockchain Services Network by China, which is now moving swiftly forward with testing of its central bank digital currency, the Digital Yuan. The focus should be on the recommendation on state-level/business sector blockchain adoption, blockchain development plans, risk mitigation strategies, and legislative frameworks…read more

Mainnet.events

📖 Enterprise Blockchains: Seven Steps to Success

Blockchain technology stack has innate economic model incentives, rewards, and penalties for each and migration of which is a non-trivial exercise, let alone being able to lift-and-shift legacy applications. Although seven steps have been outlined for the success of blockchain, including incentives as an economic platform, more than a stack means no need for re-platforming legacy applications; having a business architecture; beyond design pattern; adoption & change management; governance; and tokenizing the user’s value chain…read more

Related: 📖 Decentralized Coupons: Analysis of a Hedera Hashgraph Use Case — Kent Makishima

Related: 📈 Accenture–Fujitsu Project Hopes to Solve Blockchain Interoperability

🇨🇳 China’s Congress Proposes Blockchain Development Fund

A member of the National People’s Congress (NPC) suggested that China should launch a national blockchain development fund to build a better governance system. The fund aims to support the development and growth of several promising blockchain enterprises, encourage blockchain technology innovation, and other aspects. It can also help China to gain the upper hand globally in the future development of the technology…read more

📖 Baseline Demo Showcases Secure Enterprise Collaboration on Ethereum

The Baseline Protocol has executed a proof-of-concept, showing that multiple stakeholders can securely execute purchase orders without exposing sensitive data on top of the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet. The Baseline approach is considered as a windfall for global enterprises looking to boost security and performance. As data is secured, contracts are governed digitally, and companies can collaborate seamlessly without changing their current systems.…read more

📖 The Steem saga is really a battle over how to decentralize

Steem network users voted for a hard fork that seized about $5 million in funds from users who had earlier this year forked Steem to create a rival blockchain, Hive. The delegated proof of stake is “vulnerable to centralized abuses of stake voting.” Yet the ability to move between blockchains shows that the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole is increasingly decentralized…read more


More For Your Week:

📈 Mastercard joins blockchain digital identity alliance ID2020

📈 Proof Of Liquidity by Joel Monegro — Placeholder

🎧 New Fan Engagement Models for Athletes and Influencers — Andreessen Horowitz

💸 Cryptocurrency data and infrastructure providers have raised $286M in funding since 2014

💸 Andreessen Horowitz Forecasts Fourth Crypto Bull Cycle

📖 WeBank rolls out China’s FISCO BCOS blockchain to Singapore

📖 Why The World Needs Decentralization — Phore Blockchain

📺 Investments and Pivots during Pandemic: Fintech and Blockchain — LATOKEN

📺 REIMAGINE 2020 — Blockchain: The Foundational Layer — MouseBelt Labs

📖 Centralized Crypto Futures Exchange Integrates Chainlink’s Price Oracles

📖 Are our privacy technologies ready for the work-at-home revolution? — bicameral.ventures


DApps (Decentralized Apps) Watch

📖 LiquidApps Pushes EOSIO Interoperability Forward With Cross-Chain and Universal Solutions

LiquidApps is pushing eosio interoperability forward with cross-chain and universal solutions named Cross-Chain vRAM and Universal LiquidAccounts. These two products solve two major issues of the blockchain world like one is the lack of IBC is apparent to any user or enthusiast of blockchain, and another one is the requirement by each chain for users to have a native account is a significant inconvenience and dramatically detracts from a quality blockchain experience…read more

📖 Sales of virtual land are going through the (virtual) roof

Source: https://somniumspace.com/

Sales of virtual land in a working decentralized economy called Somnium Space are selling like digital hotcakes. In the past ten weeks, hundreds of land parcels in the virtual world have sold for a total of $470,000. The dapp currently tops the charts at marketplace OpenSea.

The value of land in Somnium Space has been doubling in recent weeks. Users can buy land and build on it, manage, rent and sell land parcels via the in-game currency, CUBE, and there are other ways to generate an income too..…read more on Decrypt

📖 Dapper Labs Welcomes CryptoKitties Onto Flow Blockchain

Dapper Labs has declared that its popular ethereum-based collectibles game CryptoKitties is going to be launched on Flow blockchain. It has also framed a new proprietary smart contract-oriented programming language designed for smart contracts for Flow called Cadence. The aim is not only CryptoKitties to run, but any other NFT has a chance to access a high throughput environment, have people build applications for them, and have top throughput marketplaces that can scale to billions of users…read more

📖 Binance and Eosfinex Join EOS DeFi Protocol to Handle Smart Contract Upgrades — Equilibrium_EOSDT

📖 From Private Blockchains to Public Ethereum — Anthony Bertolino

📖 DAPP Account: non-custodial blockchain accounts — EOS GO

📖 What Is Proof of Stake? — ConsenSys

📖 Trust Wallet to remove DApp browser to comply with Apple App Store guidelines


🎟️ Upcoming Events

Join me tomorrow on May 28th for the Q2 2020 State of Decentralized Application (DApps) as we go in-depth on the ever-shifting DApps Landscape — including rising themes of DeFi, Digital Identity, Storage, Marketplaces and more; emerging trends like one-click deployments and platforms; plus use cases, business models, trends, areas of opportunity, and more!

Topio Networks

🎙️ State of the Blockchain Industry Q1 2020:

Available now, download your hi-res copy of the Q1 2020 edition of the Blockchain Landscape Map. This is now the fifth edition of the landscape I’ve released and includes 747 companies (900+ total unique companies including broader key Ecosystem players) and more than $22 bn in funding raised across the landscape from 2010–2020 — over $18 bn invested since 2017! — Noticeable cycles emerging and full breakdown available.

A full 60 min video overview of the landscape is now available here and free for all. In the video, I breakdown the 2020 landscape, provide a summary of 2019, emerging trends for 2020, DeFi, Libra, CDBCs, Stablecoins, DApps, and more!

Source: Topio Networks

👉 Download the NEW Blockchain for Infrastructure Landscape Q1 2020 edition for insights on DeFi, DApps, Infrastructure, Digital Currencies, and more!


Don’t want to wait until next week, Subscribe Now 📥 for real-time industry insights around Blockchain, DApps, and more!

Author’s Notes: Article was originally published on Medium