Russia’s largest bank joins Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

Russia’s largest bank by assets, Sberbank, joins the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance after R3 rejection

20 October 2017 1282

A group of companies, technology startups, corporations and governments working to leverage open-source Ethereum technology for enterprise blockchain solutions, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), announces the addition of Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, to a list of over 150 members from public and private sectors alike.

This is not the first Sberbank's attempt to enter the blockchain world. Thus, in 2015, Sberbank revealed the desire to join the international banking blockchain consortium led by New York startup R3 (however, R3 refused Sberbank’s membership to the consortium). Then, in September 2016, Sberbank joined the Linux Foundation-led open-source Hyperledger Project.

Now, according to the announcement, Sberbank becomes the first Russian bank to join the EEA and reveals its intent to further Ethereum blockchain solutions Russia.

Our entrance to the Alliance will help broaden cooperation between leading global companies in terms of developing the Ethereum platform. The Alliance is actively developing and I hope that the bank’s expertise will be of use to all of its members. In addition, the bank will be able to influence the enhancement of the platform and its growth in the corporate sector. I hope that our union will further strengthen our relationship with the Ethereum Foundation and serve as a significant step towards developing blockchain technology in Russia.

Igor Bulantsev
Sberbank senior vice president

It's also noteworhty that Sberbank chief executive Herman Gref, a noted blockchain advocate and a Bitcoiner, has speculated that the blockchain technology will lead to commercial applications in 2019.

Python Ethereum Blockchain

Ethereum Scaling Solution Raiden to Launch Last Testnet

As noted by the developers, after implementing the new solution, the Ethereum network will be able to provide more than a million transactions per second

20 July 2018 133

On Thursday, July 19, at the Dappcon developer conference in Berlin, the last test network of Raiden for the Ethereum blockchain was launched, CoinDesk reports.

The release includes a minimal implementation of the scaling solution, which will allow the transfer of Ethereum tokens outside of the main blockchain. This is the last test phase before the introduction of technology into the core network of Ethereum.

It's the first step towards going to the mainnet. We really want people to really test this so we have a user interface, we have an API and we've created an open Github for everything they could find, so if we go hopefully bug-free on the mainnet.

Lefteris Karapetsas

Core Developer, Raiden

According to him, the new release represents an early implementation for the core network and contains a new rewritten code of smart contracts and payment channels that can be restored in case of unintended closure.

Also, Karapetsas urged developers to join the test network to help detect possible bugs, adding that a bounty program will be launched to encourage this activity.

The release date for the main network has not yet been assigned, but the developers intend to follow this earlier promise and launch Raiden this summer.

Karapetsas also promised to publish regular updates and code optimizations after the full release, adding that Raiden will complement other Ethereum scaling solutions that are currently being developed.

Raiden is essentially the payment channel network for ethereum, it's supposed to help us scale token transfers. The long term goal would be to have people use Raiden from a mobile device and be able to make off-chain token transfers just from their phone. That would be the long term vision, it would probably work in combination with various scaling solutions, sharding, plasma, a sort of hybrid.

Lefteris Karapetsas

Core Developer, Raiden

Raiden is developing from the 2015 and is written mostly on Python. The project is much like the Lightning Network. As noted by the developers, after implementing the new solution, the Ethereum network will be able to provide more than a million transactions per second.