China’s Blockchain Services Network (BSN) Adopting Chainlink’s Oracle Functionality

On Tuesday (June 23), China’s Blockchain Services Network (BSN), which got its public launch on April 25, announced that it will be integrating with decentralized oracle network Chainlink (LINK).

BSN is part of the national blockchain strategy mentioned by President Xi in a speech he gave late last October.

According to a report by China’s Xinhua News Agency (the official state-run press agency of the People’s Republic of China), here are a few highlights from that speech:

• “… the application of blockchain technology has extended to digital finance, Internet of Things, intelligent manufacturing, supply chain management, digital asset transactions and other fields.”
• “​​​It is necessary to accelerate the development of blockchain technology and industrial innovation, and actively promote the integration of blockchain and economic and social development.”
• “It is necessary to strengthen the research on blockchain standardization…”
• “… it is necessary to seize the opportunity of blockchain technology integration, function expansion, and industrial subdivision, and to play the role of blockchain in promoting data sharing, optimizing business processes, reducing operating costs, improving collaboration efficiency, building a trusted system, etc.”
• ” It is necessary to promote the deep integration of the blockchain and the real economy, and solve the problems of SME loan financing, bank risk control, and department supervision.”
• “It is necessary to use blockchain technology to explore the innovation of the digital economic model, provide a driving force for creating a convenient, efficient, fair competition, stable and transparent business environment, provide services for promoting supply-side structural reforms, and achieve effective integration of supply and demand in various industries, and accelerate the new and old kinetic energy.”
• “It is necessary to promote the combination of the underlying technical services of the blockchain and the construction of new smart cities, explore the promotion and application in the fields of information infrastructure, smart transportation, energy and power, and improve the level of intelligence and precision in city management.”
• “It is necessary to explore and use the blockchain data sharing model, realize the cross-departmental and cross-regional maintenance and utilization of government affairs data, promote business collaboration, deepen the ‘run at most once’ reform, and bring a better government service experience to the people.”
• “… it is necessary to strengthen the guidance and regulation of blockchain technology, strengthen the research and analysis of blockchain security risks, closely follow development trends, and actively explore development laws.”
• “… relevant departments and their responsible leaders should pay attention to the development status and trends of blockchain technology, improve the ability to use and manage blockchain technology, and enable blockchain technology to build a strong country in the network, develop the digital economy, and help economic and social development.”

Here is what Professor Michael Sung, the founder and chairman of CarbonBlue Innovations, said about BSN in an article (titled “China’s National Blockchain Will Change the World”) for Coindesk on April 24:

“Essentially, the BSN will be the backbone infrastructure technology for massive interconnectivity throughout the mainland, from city governments, to companies and individuals alike.

“The network will also form the backbone to the Digital Silk Road to provide interconnectivity to all of China’s trade partners around the globe.

“The BSN will be a new internet protocol to allow a more efficient way to share data, value and digital assets in a completely transparent and trusted way between anyone who wants to be a node on the network.”

He then went on to say:

“While the BSN itself is a permissioned chain forked from Hyperledger Fabric, it will allow interoperability with public chains and other decentralized platforms (which will be fully implemented by July 2020).

“The protocol at launch will already be interoperable with major blockchain platforms and frameworks such as Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum, EOS as well as most relevant mainland-based blockchain protocols for enterprise, including WeBank’s FISCO BCOS (the Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Consortium, with members such as WeBank, Tencent, Huawei and ZTE) and Baidu’s Xuperchain.”

On April 25, it was announced that BSN, which was released in beta form on 15 October 2019, had become ready for global commercial use.

Today’s press release said that this integration with Chainlink will “enable governments and enterprises to incorporate validated real-world data into their BSN applications using Chainlink oracles via the IRITA interchain service hub.”

It also mentioned that this integration will provide BSN users with “additional security, reliability, and interconnectivity to help fuel even greater growth and adoption of blockchain applications in China and around the world.”

As for BSN, the announcement called it “a blockchain infrastructure service layer designed to be a one-stop-shop for companies to access ultra low-cost blockchain cloud computing services,” and mentioned that it is “supported by major Chinese entities and corporations, and its founding consortia partners include China’s State Information Center, China Mobile, China Unionpay, and Red Date Technologies.”

Apparently BSN selected Chainlink as its preferred oracle network “to enable BSN applications and smart contracts to access data from outside the blockchain (e.g. weather, financial asset prices, IoT data, location information, and much more).”

Yifan He, the CEO of Red Date Technology and a co-founder of BSN, had this to say:

“One of the main purposes of BSN is to provide interoperability to all DApps, regardless of whether they are for permissioned chains or public chains.

“On BSN, each Dapp should be able to call any other Dapps in a very convenient and low-cost way.

“This collaboration with Chainlink, IRITA, and SNZ Pool will help us achieve this goal and ensure that BSN users reach new levels of security, reliability, and interconnectivity.”

As for Sergey Nazarov, co-founder and CEO of Chainlink, he stated: 

“We’re excited to help build out BSN’s global infrastructure project by providing secure and reliable oracle services.

“By connecting BSN applications to real-world data, smart contracts can bring new levels of automation and trust to global agreements.”

To say that today’s news represents the biggest ever partnership announcement for Chainlink would be a huge understatement, and the market seems to have just started to take note.

According to data from CryptoCompare, currently (as of 18:20 UTC on June 23), Chainlink’s token (LINK) is trading at $4.798, up 8.9% in the past 24-hour period:

Featured Image by “zhuwei06191973” via Pixabay.com