Blockchain technology company Coinprism has released Openchain, an open source, distributed permissioned ledger that targets enterprise and financial institutions.

Unlike bitcoin, which is based on a unique distributed ledger, Openchain will enable users to deploy their own version of the chain, allowing them to potentially cut costs and reduce settlement time.

Speaking about Openchain’s launch, Flavien Charlon, founder and CEO of Coinprism, explained:

“Traditionally, settlement of a transaction happens some time after the trade happened. For example, three days for stock trading. With Openchain, it is possible to handle the trade and the settlement as a single operation, reducing both costs and counterparty risks.”

Openchain vs bitcoin

The main difference between Openchain and bitcoin’s blockchain, Charlon said, resides in the type of assets that his product is designed to handle.

According to Charlon – previously a software development engineer at Microsoft – bitcoin “is a very special asset … built for censorship resistance”.

He added:

“The entire design of bitcoin comes from that requirement, with proof-of-work being at the core of that design. We certainly appreciate the incredible innovation around proof-of-work and censorship-resistant assets, but when banks talk about blockchain technology, they are really not interested in censorship resistance.”

Similarly to bitcoin’s blockchain, Charlon claimed Openchain is both fully transparent and auditable.

“Anyone can connect to a validating node, and receive a real-time copy of the transactions being validated,” said the founder, adding: “Openchain is also secured by digital signatures, which make it impossible to counterfeit a transaction.”

One notable difference with bitcoin, Charlon said, is the way in which Openchain deals with transactions to avoid confirmation delays:

“Openchain gets rid of blocks, and chains transactions directly to each other, which means you can get instant transaction confirmation.”

Competition

Distributed ledger technology has become increasingly popular in recent months, with various companies such as Digital Asset Holdings – which acquired Hyperledger – emerging in the space.

ItBit also revealed details about its top-secret Bankchain project, a private consensus-based ledger system which also targets financial organisations.

Speaking about its competitors, Charlon said:

“The first big difference with all those companies is that our product is open source and ready to use today. None of these companies have released anything to date, and most of them (if not all) are making their software proprietary.”

Although he declined to divulge specifics, Charlon said a few companies had already experimented with a private beta of Openchain.

“The feedback we have received so far is very positive. Unfortunately, I can’t share the names of the companies at this time,” he concluded.

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