Bank of China, one of the country's four largest commercial state banks, filed a patent application for a process that it believes is better able to scale blockchain systems .

According to a document published February 23 by the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO), the application was submitted on September 28 and invented by Zhao Shuxiang.

The application details that, instead of letting a new block store transactions from its previous one, a data compression system could be used to group multiple block transactions into what the patent calls a "block of data".

For example, as described in the patent application, once the system receives a request to compress transactions from block 1 to 1000, a new data block is formed and temporarily hosted on a different storage system. The system will then run the compressed data via a hash function with a hash value.

In addition, the compression system will give labels to identify the blocks on the block chain, the newly formed data blocks and the compression event. The corresponding relationship between the three labels is also recorded on the blockchain.

Using this method, the patent claims a reduction in the amount of data stored in new blocks when transactions are mounted in a blockchain, while ensuring that the data of all previous transactions will always be inviolable and traceable .

While the patent is currently under review and still needs to be granted, it fits in as part of a broader effort by the country's commercial commercial bank to advance its activities using distributed register technology.

As reported by CoinDesk last year, Bank of China has already partnered with the Chinese Internet giant Tencent to test the blockchain in financial applications.

See the complete patent application below:

Bank of China patent application by CoinDesk on Scribd

Abacus in perspective image via Shutterstock

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