Chain reveals Open Standard for blockchain

Blockchain infrastructure provider Chain announced Monday the public release of Chain Open Standard 1 (Chain OS 1), an open-source blockchain protocol built over the past 18 months under a partnership between the San-Francisco firm and international financial services companies.

Chain said in a press release that its Open Standard is already driving several blockchain initiatives at prominent financial institutions, which spurred the requirements for the standard through strong partnerships with the blockchain firm as far back as 2014. The Chain OS 1 is now being opened up to the broader financial community for the first time.

According to the press release, collaborating financial institutions include Capital One, Citigroup, Fidelity, First Data, Fiserv, MUFG, Nasdaq, State Street and Visa.

Chain said its standard was purpose-built to allow high-scale financial applications to operate on permissioned blockchain networks while meeting the stringent regulatory, security and privacy rules of the financial services sector.

The company said in the press release the Chain OS 1 is pioneering the following:

• A novel consensus model that attains transactional finality in under one second, even at high transaction volumes;
• A privacy solution that encrypts blockchain data and provides selective read access to pertinent counterparties and regulators;
• A smart contract framework and virtual machine that supports simple rule enforcement as well as Turing complete programs with key-value storage;
• A scalable data model that cuts down on operational load for network participants; and
• A rich metadata layer to meet anti-money laundering and know-your-customer requirements.

“Chain’s approach puts our partners’ requirements at the center of an iterative and collaborative R&D effort,” said Chain CEO Adam Ludwin in the press release. “By partnering deeply on real projects with market leaders across a range of use cases in banking, payments, capital markets and insurance, we have designed a blockchain standard from the ground-up to solve problems in a cohesive way. We are delighted to be opening this multi-year effort to the broader financial community today.”

The company said it will work with other open-source blockchain, cryptography and distributed systems projects to make sure there is interoperability and harmonization across industry efforts.

Image via the press section of Chain’s website