Santander Backs Ethereum with Gold Sponsorship of Devcon2
Santander, one of the biggest global banks with almost 200,000 employees and yearly revenue of more than $12 billion announced today the gold sponsorship of Devcon2, one of the biggest event of the year in the blockchain space to be held in just over three weeks.
The sponsorship follows Santander’s participation in the Universal Settlement Coin project, an Ethereum based private blockchain that turns fiat into digital cash with the aim of reducing costs and increasing speed.
They join Microsoft, a premier sponsor, in supporting one of the biggest blockchain event of the year which, according to George Hallam, External Relations at the Ethereum Foundation, is nearly sold out with only a few more tickets left.
The gathering of almost everyone in Ethereum’s ecosystem and beyond will feature a showcasing of the Raiden Network, Ethereum’s Lightning Network, by Heiko Hees which is expected to be one of the most impressive demonstrations in the International Blockchain Week.
Among others, Vlad Zamfir will give an update on sharding which aims for unlimited scalability. Zooko Wilcox will present on adding privacy to Ethereum with Zcash, while Fabian Vogelsteller will present on the new Web3.0 to be followed the next day by Aaron Davis of MetaMask which is to release a stable beta version.
Roman Mandeleil of ether.camp, which is to host the biggest hackathon in the blockchain space, will present on their ongoing work, including EthereumJ while Rouven Heck and Dr. Christian Lundkvist will present on Uport, a promising new project that aims to make private key management easy for end users.
Dr. Tim Nugent, Research Scientist at Thomson Reuters, will present on Ethereum blockchain initiatives at Thomson Reuters which is to hold a HackETHon in two weeks. Speaking to CCN.com, Nugent stated that the primary reason Thomson Reuters selected Ethereum’s blockchain is because it is smart contract ready:
[A]ll the other protocols are a little behind it at the moment. We believe smart contracts will be particularly relevant to the financial sector, and that’s where the majority of our business is. However, we remain chain agnostic at the moment. We are, for example, members of the Hyperledger consortium, and we continue to explore new protocols as they become available.”
We do not have any non-public hints regarding the contents of Nugent’s presentation, but speaking to CCN.com earlier in the month Nugent stated they had a prototype running on Ethereum’s blockchain:
“[O]ur oracle service is connected up to TR’s Elektron feeds platform – this provides real-time capital markets data, and is used by our flagship Eikon desktop trading/analytics desktop.
We’ve connected it up to a smart contract running on a private Ethereum network and are currently testing it. We expect to have it available running on a private network at the HackETHon. No plans to run it on any of the public chains at the moment.”
These are just some of the many projects that will be presented at Devcon2, with no space to mention Gnosis, MakerDAO, Nick Johnson’s Ethereum (Domain) Name System, Colony, Digix and others.
Moreover, the event is to be followed by the Demo Day, the biggest competition of live blockchain projects to be covered by CCN.com more in-depth shortly with the Demo Day itself followed by the Global Blockchain Summit where world business leaders and developers will present side by side on blockchain tech.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
