China’s Ministry of Science and Technology has approved the construction of the National Blockchain Technology Innovation Center in Beijing. The city is already home to the Beijing Microchip Blockchain and Edge Computing Research Institute (Blockchain Research Institute), which is leading the Innovation Center initiative. The same institute has led the efforts for China’s massive home-built blockchain, Chainmaker, also known as Chang’an Chain.
The new Innovation Center will focus on cutting edge technologies, including the theory of blockchain and software and hardware development. The Blockchain Research Institute will collaborate with universities, other research organizations and enterprises. There will be a significant overlap between the organizations involved in the Innovation Center and those in the Chang’an Chain ecosystem.
We reported last week that the Blockchain Research Institute had made significant progress in building China’s massive enterprise blockchain network Chang’an Chain which claims to process 240 million transactions per second across clusters that boast 1,000 servers. In 2021 it was announced that 96-core chips would power the network. It has also developed a distributed file storage system.
Additionally, the city of Beijing is using Chainmaker in its big data initiative.
In early 2021 it was announced that the Blockchain Research Institute would collaborate with China’s central bank Digital Currency Research Institute to convert the pilot digital yuan to programmable money.
