HOW AIRLINES ARE USING BLOCKCHAIN TO UNLOCK FREQUENT FLIER MILES

 ho doesn’t have a small pile of unused airline loyalty points in a frequent flyer account? If you fly occasionally for leisure, chances are you haven’t earned enough points to do anything meaningful with them, like buying an actual flight ticket.

Plus, there are the laborious redemption processes, some with convoluted restrictions.

The answer could be blockchain – the technology behind bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies – which operates as a “distributed ledger”. With blockchain, airlines will be able to interact instantaneously with their partners and enable passengers to do something useful with those points.

What blockchain does that current systems cannot was recently highlighted in a “Blockchain in Aviation” white paper published in August by the International Air Transport Association, which said that blockchain has the capability to “tokenise” frequent flyer miles.

Read the entire article here:

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/airlines-blockchain-singapore-technology-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-a8692636.html?amp

Nasdaq integrates Microsoft Azure to build a blockchain for blockchains

In a press release published yesterday, Microsoft announced it would be bringing its Azure blockchain technology to Nasdaq’s Financial Framework (NFF) system.

Nasdaq’s Financial Framework will integrate with Microsoft’s Azure blockchain to build a platform that does not rely on one particular distributed ledger.

Read the full article here:
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/10/31/microsoft-blockchain-nasdaq/

Gates Foundation Partners With Former Ripple CTO's Blockchain Project

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with blockchain startup Coil as part of its mission to provide payment services for the unbanked.

The news comes via a tweet from Miller Abel, the foundation's deputy director and principal technologist, on Oct. 17. Abel indicated that the organization and Coil will work together to implement the Interledger Protocol and explore ways to support "pro-poor payment systems."

Interledger is an interoperability protocol that allows payments across different crypto networks. The technology was initially co-developed by former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas while he was still with the distributed ledger payments firm. The same tech now being used as the basis of Coil, which Thomas founded earlier this year, as CoinDesk reported.

While further details on the new partnership are thus far sparse, Abel also mentioned Ripple in his tweets yesterday.

The Gates Foundation announced its partnership with Ripple in October last year, when the two released an open-source software called Mojaloop – also focused on payment services to the poor and unbanked.

Read the entire article here:

https://www.coindesk.com/gates-foundation-partners-with-former-ripple-ctos-blockchain-project/

Leading Auction House Christie's to Record Art Sales on a Blockchain

London-based Christie's, one of the oldest and most noted art auction houses in the world, is turning to blockchain tech to securely store sales and provenance data.

The firm, which has a history going back to 1766, announced in a press release Thursday that it is collaborating with blockchain-powered digital art registry Artory to pilot the encrypted recording of auction transactions.

The pilot program will register Christie's upcoming autumn sale of artworks from the Barney A. Ebsworth Collection, a privately-held collection of 20th century Modernist American art, which is estimated to bring in $300 million in total.

Artory's blockchain platform will store data from each sale, including the item's title, description, final price and date. The startup will also provide a digital certificate of the transaction.

Christie's will then issue each buyer a registration card to access the encrypted information about their purchased artwork.

Read the entire article here>
https://www.coindesk.com/leading-auction-house-christies-to-record-art-sales-on-a-blockchain/

Two of Blockchain's Biggest Consortiums Just Joined Forces

Seismic shifts are happening in the world of enterprise blockchain.

Announced Monday, the Hyperledger Project and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) have agreed to collaborate on bringing common standards to the blockchain space and cross-pollinate a wider open-source community.

This joining of forces is notable as EEA and Hyperledger represent two of the three largest and arguably most influential enterprise blockchain communities, the third being the R3 Corda ecosystem.

If the team-up succeeds in creating common standards between the two platforms, it could sway enterprises previously on the fence to build their blockchains on one or the other, since the risk of creating new silos that don't talk to other systems is being addressed.

As EEA executive director Ron Resnick told CoinDesk:

Read the entire article here

https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-enterprise-alliance-hyperledger-blockchain-consortiums-join-forces/amp/

Walmart Tells Produce Suppliers to Use Blockchain by Next September

Walmart plans to sell leafy greens that are tracked using blockchain technology within the next year.

In a press release published Monday, the world's largest retailer both by revenue and by employee count announced that it told its suppliers for leafy green produce to integrate a blockchain-based tracking system built in collaboration with IBM by September 2019.

According to the letter sent to suppliers, any company working with Walmart must work with the IBM Food Trust network to create end-to-end traceability in two phases. The blockchain platform will make it easier for Walmart to source any food items quickly, with the release noting that tracing such items at present is "an almost insurmountable challenge."

Red the full article here:

https://www.coindesk.com/walmart-will-start-tracking-groceries-on-blockchain-in-2019/

RBS Blockchain Team Jumps Ship to Build New Startups Using R3's Corda

A blockchain team from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has left to start a blockchain "venture studio" called Chorum.

Read the full article here:
https://www.coindesk.com/rbs-blockchain-team-jumps-ship-to-build-new-startups-using-r3s-corda/