Newsletter January 2024

In 2023, asset tokenization, CBDCs, and collaborative networks took center stage as global institutions used blockchain technology to unlock new revenue streams, drive forward the future of money, and collaborate freely on unified ledgers for greater ecosystem value.

If last year was when the enterprise recognized the full potential of digital assets and multi-party systems—this year is poised to be a chance to accelerate development and push asset tokenization toward global adoption.??

As we look ahead, here are some insights we gained in recent travels and what these learnings say about the transformative power of blockchain and digital assets for businesses, people, and society in the year to come.?

Kaleido & AWS: Asset Tokenization Summit?

At our first Asset Tokenization Summit, we teamed up with Amazon Web Services to bring together innovators from Citi, Fidelity, Mastercard, Swift, DTCC, and more to discuss the future of blockchain and asset tokenization.

Interoperability was central to the discussion. We left the summit sure that the seamless connection of various blockchain systems, and the ability to operate freely across various ecosystems, is the key challenge to solve in the coming year.

Sibos 2023

In September, we were in Toronto for Sibos 2023. There, our CEO Steve Cerveny spoke about how to get asset tokenization projects into production quickly, drawing on live use cases and lessons learned building dedicated platforms.?

Steve outlined the elements of a scalable, future-proof digital asset architecture, navigating interoperability in a multi-chain world, and getting past the plumbing layers of web3 development to focus efforts on delivering business value. We've made the talk available as a webinar on our website and you can watch it here.?

CBDCs and the Future of Money

Elevandi Point Zero Forum

The Elevandi Insights Forum facilitates in-depth discussions among policymakers and industry experts to achieve practical outcomes, with a recent focus on programmable money and tokenization. We were proud to share our thoughts about how digital assets can change the way we live and work.?

A report summarizing insights from Point Zero Forum roundtables has been published online, and you find it here.?

Brazil Drex Project

Brazil, a top 10 economy, is driving towards a production CBDC to expand access to financial services around the country. Building on Hyperledger Besu, we're excited to work alongside the Central Bank of Brazil as they bring the Digital Brazilian Real, Drex, to life in the coming year.

Exploring CBDC: Atlantic Council & Digital Dollar Project

The Atlantic Council, in collaboration with the Digital Dollar Project, organized a unique gathering attended by top figures from global financial institutions, central banks, tech companies, and government bodies.

Our biggest takeaway from the talks was that in highly regulated spaces where privacy is paramount, we need to develop international standards and work toward a more collaborative future.

You can watch Tom Zschach, Chief Innovation Officer, SWIFT and Steve Cerveny, our founder and CEO, discuss this ongoing collaboration in their talk on “Connected Currencies – The Crucial Role of Interoperability and Integration.”

Open Source Leads the Way

Hyperledger FireFly Achieves Graduated Status

In October we were excited to see the Hyperledger Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) approve Hyperledger FireFly as the latest of Hyperledger Foundation’s projects to achieve graduated status.?

The industry’s first open source Web3 Gateway for tokenization, multi-chain interoperability, and building blockchain-based applications, FireFly’s next-gen stack represents a maturing of the asset tokenization tech stack. It enables enterprises to connect reliably across multiple public and private chains and manage the lifecycle of digital assets with native token and indexing support.?

Hyperledger Besu Builds Momentum

For the last 5 years, Kaleido has been the only vendor in the industry to provide enterprise support for Hyperledger Besu via our managed service platform. We have spun up and managed thousands of chains for our customers, and increasingly, we are seeing enterprise interest converge on Besu as a preferred option to platform new projects on.

With that, we are excited to support this community even more, with members of our team now serving as maintainers for Besu. We also recently launched support for a Hyperledger Besu software model, which includes certified images for on-premises deployment. If you're interested in tapping into our Besu expertise for your projects, get in touch!

Gen2 Consortia Prove Real Business Value

If you’ll remember, a couple of years ago there was a question about whether or not blockchain-backed collaborative networks could deliver real business value. The problem was these networks took too much time and money to build.?

We changed that. Today, Gen2 consortia are in production on the Kaleido platform and are transforming how industries streamline operations across finance, insurance, and energy.??

Swift: The CBDC connector solution, which connected 18 central banks to test digital currency models and practices, is expanding to 30 participants and moving beyond interoperability requirements to study additional use cases for digital money. Read more

Riskstream Collaborative: A groundbreaking initiative in the insurance space, Kaleido was awarded the 2023 RiskStream Innovator Award for bringing the dRe Lifecycle Application to production. Learn more

Blockchain for Energy: Following a successful network launch, Blockchain for Energy (B4E) announced its Commodity Transport Web3 Field Automation solution, which uses blockchain to enhance operational efficiency and financial performance for its members. Read more

Synaptic Health Alliance: The shared ledger continues to increase operational efficiency and drive down costs for healthcare providers in the Synaptic Health Alliance, with one member, Michael Kim, SVP/CIO of MultiPlan, saying “alliance participation has resulted in a 500% ROI annually.” Read more

One Tech Stack to Radically Simplify Blockchain for the Enterprise?

Quickly Build and Launch High-Quality Networks

Your easy button for developing next gen blockchain-based applications, our globally trusted blockchain-as-a-service allows you to quickly launch custom, scalable blockchain networks on a secure, enterprise-grade platform at a fraction of the cost. With hundreds of pluggable tools, services, and APIs, businesses unlock the value of web3 faster on Kaleido. Try Kaleido for free today

Create Digital Assets at Scale and Connect Freely to Any Network

The Kaleido Asset Platform is an enterprise on-ramp designed to accelerate digital asset strategies for financial institutions. It simplifies the issuing and management of tokenized assets, and easily integrates with custody and back office systems. Our platform also offers the ability to connect to any network, public or private, and a robust policy engine to automate the enforcement of business rules and procedures. Learn more

Start the New Year with Kaleido

2024 is going to be the year that the vision for blockchain as a tool for work, life, and play comes into focus. Over these last few months, we heard loud and clear that the keys are scalability, flexibility, and privacy, along with the ability to work across systems, networks, and borders.

We believe that blockchain can only maximize its potential if we build systems that connect easily and power them with tools that are simple for business teams and developers to use.

If you're ready to put digital assets, tokenization, and click-button consortia to work for you, let's find time to talk. Use the link below to schedule a call with one of our solution architects.?

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