China's Blockchain Service Network Prepares for Central Bank Digital Currency
China’s Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), which is a permissioned blockchain network for building decentralized applications and tokens, revealed in a blog post that it plans on releasing a beta central bank digital currency (CBDC) as early as the second half of 2021.
“In 2021, BSN will proliferate and continuously trailblaze a new path for blockchain practitioners in an open and inclusive way,” according to the post. “This year, BSN will keep investing heavily on R&D, enabling new features and functions on BSN products, and launch several critical projects and partnerships to accelerate the mass adoption of blockchain technology worldwide. The following four aspects delineate the roadmap for BSN in 2021.”
The Blockchain Service Network aims to become a blockchain hosting platform for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and individuals. While the BSN will reduce costs for blockchain development, deployment, operation and maintenance, it also aims to ensure interoperability and enable supervision. China’s BSN relies on FISCO BCOS open-source protocol, a collaborative project developed by Beyondsoft, Digital China, Forms Syntron, Huawei, Shenzhen Securities Communications, Tencent, WeBank, YIBI Technology, Yuexiu Financial Holdings and more.
According to the blog post, the Chinese-state-sanctioned BSN is currently designing a universal digital payment network (UDPN) over the next half-decade. CBDCs from different nations are expected to be supported by the network. The UDPN network will be available through API connection as well for “any information system such as banking, insurance, ERP, and mobile applications … to enable a standardized digital currency transfer method and payment procedure.”
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Edited by Maurice Nagle
