ABN AMRO and Dutch University Partner on Blockchain Technology
According to an announcement made by Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and Dutch banking giant ABN AMRO have partnered in order to develop new, more complex blockchain applications, with a goal of delivering a new safe and reliable application in only six months – a very short amount of time.
ABN AMRO staff will attend blockchain application courses at Delft University of Technology’s Blockchain Lab in order for them to develop their knowledge, strengthening the bank’s commitment to blockchain development.
The application the partnership wants to release in six months will be based on previous work done at TU Delft, which has been working on blockchain since 2007. The university has been focusing mainly on the development of practical applications that will be able to deal with large amounts of data, and a plethora of users, in a safe and reliable way.
All developed code will be open source, and only dummy data will be used during the initial phase, according to TU Delft’s announcement.
Arjan van Os, head of ABN AMRO’s Innovation Centre, sees the partnership as an excellent opportunity and had the following to say about the situation:
We are delighted to be able to work with an expert partner like TU Delft. This offers us an excellent opportunity to expand our knowledge and gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which blockchain applications can be used. The fact that it is being approached from a scientific perspective makes it especially interesting.
ABN AMRO’s blockchain ventures
ABN AMRO seems to be extremely interested in distributed ledger technology, as earlier this year CCN.com reported the bank was venturing into blockchain-based solutions, along with another Netherlands-based bank Rabobank.
The bank has been exploring how the technology will impact its operations and the financial industry itself. The bank has, in the past, partnered with Indian tech giant Tata Consultancy Services, Digital Asset Holdings and the Linux Hyperledger Project to examine how blockchain technology could be used.
Moreover, the bank even had a dormant bitcoin wallet project in the past, that made headlines after it was posted on their website, even though the project had been shelved, according to one representative on social media.
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