Factom Lands Smart-City Deal With China
With an eye to the future, China’s government is working with Factom, a blockchain based record verification and auditing infrastructure company along with consulting firm iSoftStone to plan blockchain based administration projects for smart cities. The plan will include strategies for storage, auditing and verification services.
Named after the Factom brand, Factoids, a token value, are issues and transferred among users who purchase entry credits and record entries. Factom servers will create entry blocks and directory blocks. The hashing of directory blocks is secured onto the blockchain.
As China continues to develop at a rapid pace their need for innovative approaches to urban planning and development are exponentially increasing. By using blockchain technology such as the kind Factom offers, Chinese cities can benefit from increased administrative efficiencies, and massive cost savings from such process innovations.
The consulting partner in this project, iSoftStone, focuses on smart business and information technology services. They have specialized in smart cities and have helped hundreds of clients in industries ranging from telecommunication, banking, insurance, utilities, transportation, manufacturing and retail.
While in the blockchain technology sector have offered criticism to Factom on being unable to secure land rights on the blockchain in Honduras, CEO Peter Kirby seems hopeful on the future application of blockchain technology in the planning of smart cities based what he learned in the process.
In an interview with CCN.com, Kirby spoke on what he seems as the key functionality that Factom must deliver on as his company continues to develop these types of projects:
“We’ve reworked a lot of the software we built for titles and are using it as the core of our audit and compliance product. It will let any system have a blockchain back-end with permanent audit trails for any data. We believe that this will help developers create a whole new class of accountable and tamper-proof business systems. This could be in insurance, financial services, medical records, or real estate – any system where record keeping is essential.”
As for how this blockchain approach will be applicable to a government’s administration remains to be seen. However, a relative dose of humility and open-mindedness seems to held by Kirby in how he views his company’s upcoming challenges, likely including this latest development in China:
“We’ve learned a ton working directly with customers on interesting projects, and it’s led to some clarity about what the industry needs,” he said. “Clear products that can plug directly into existing enterprise systems.”
According to an article published in the China Business Review , the market for smart cities will reach up to $5 Billion USD by the year 2023. Factom could make major in-roads for other blockchain technology companies in China and greater Asia if their efforts bear fruit in the coming decade.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
