Tokyo's Digital Garage is putting money and engineering talent behind blockchain development. The company announced plans for a blockchain platform aimed at the Japanese market, built through a partne
Tokyo's Digital Garage is putting money and engineering talent behind blockchain development. The company announced plans for a blockchain platform aimed at the Japanese market, built through a partnership with Blockstream, the Canadian startup where Digital Garage invested last year. Blockstream's Elements Project provides the Sidechain technology that forms the foundation.
The vision spans three main applications. A real-time exchange system could move credit card loyalty points, prepaid values, and digital currency between holders. A regional money system would give consumers benefits while providing regional producers with quantitative marketing tools to revitalize their economies. Machine Automated Contracts would handle smart contract execution for financial products without manual intervention.
The effort rests on a basic premise: secure, low-cost movement of digital assets across platforms. To that end, DG Lab engineers will contribute directly to Bitcoin and blockchain open source projects. "By contributing engineering resources directly to upstream open source projects like Bitcoin and the Elements Project, DG Lab establishes its leadership in blockchain technology for the Japanese market," Kaoru Hayashi, CEO of Digital Garage, said. "Beyond DG Lab's purpose of building financial tech applications for the domestic market, our team demonstrates uncommon expertise with its contributions to the base layers that power the future of global finance. DG Lab is proud to build this future together with partners such as Blockstream."
DG Lab itself began in July 2016 as a joint venture with Kakaku.com and Credit Saison. The research unit operates across five areas: blockchain, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality, security and biotechnology. Blockstream engineers will host Digital Garage's blockchain team in San Francisco for months of joint development on the Elements platform.
"Digital Garage has undertaken significant work to analyze Bitcoin and next generation blockchain technology," Adam Back, Blockstream's CEO, said. "I am impressed with both their technical and business understanding of what these new areas of technology mean for their business and for the Japanese market. With their new DG Lab, Digital Garage is well positioned in Japan to lead a wave of new innovation for payments and financial systems."
Companies in the DG Lab network will deploy products developed during the collaboration through their own operations and partnerships. Digital Garage ranks among Japan's most active blockchain investors and developers. The Japan Exchange Group oversees a blockchain consortium of financial institutions, while SBI Holdings, Mizuho Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group have all committed resources to blockchain exploration.
