Chinese tech giant Tencent forms alliance to promote blockchain development
Chinese tech giant Tencent’s cloud service, Tencent Cloud, has launched an alliance to promote the development of the blockchain industry.
The alliance aims to attract 100 members this year, including tech companies, industry associations, universities and think tanks, local outlet Securities Times reported last week. Members plan to establish blockchain industry standards and research potential blockchain applications.
To that end, the alliance will form three committees — standards, technical and business ecosystem committee. The standards committee will cooperate with government agencies and other relevant parties to develop national blockchain standards.
The technical committee will plan and build blockchain applications, while the business ecosystem committee will drive sales of products developed by alliance members. Tencent estimates that members will increase their business conversion rates by 30%.
The first batch of the alliance includes Beijing Zhulong Information Technology as one of the members. The company has previously worked with Tencent Cloud to build a blockchain product using its blockchain-as-a-service platform TBaaS.
Tencent appears to be betting big on blockchain. Last month, the company said it would invest $70 billion over the next five years in technology infrastructure, including blockchain. Tencent recently also launched a blockchain accelerator, mentoring 30 firms in the space.
China's national blockchain committee includes executives from Tencent, and the company is also one of the top blockchain patent application filers, having filed over 700 applications last year.
