A major Chinese search engine has launched a new blockchain to support dApp development

Chinese search engine Baidu has launched a blockchain operating engine hoping to make decentralised application (dApp) development as easy as creating mobile apps, the company announced Thursday.

Baidu's blockchain engine will offer developers various dApp and smart-contract templates via a multi-chain "pluggable blockchain framework" built for mass data processing.

Baidu is thought to be the world's ninth-largest internet company by revenue, and has stated that open source and commercialization are "the only way to build a blockchain operating system."

The platform is built on the ABC strategy (Artificial intelligence, Big data, and Cloud computing), which seeks to target the high costs of data storage and single-machine storage.

Baidu claims the platform is based primarily on six functions: trusted computing environment, high performance and high throughput, scalable storage, cross-chain trusted interaction, general intelligent contract, and contract security audit.