With at least 10 blockchain projects deployed in 2017, State Street Bank has become an avid supporter of blockchain

State Street, a leading U.S. financial services company, is ready to move its internal operating systems and some external business transactions to blockchain.

In October 2016, the Winklevoss brothers invited State Street to join their Bitcoin ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) support team. It is not surprising that the Winklevoss brothers thought of State Street. This large company has been involved in the financial field since the 18th century, and they also invented the concept of ETF in 1993. From the current situation, it seems that they plan to carry out some more innovative activities in 2017.

Akbar Sheriff, Head of Client Management for EMEA at State Street Bank, elaborated on their 21st century innovation philosophy. A few years ago, they established an “Emerging Technology Center” to identify future developments and prepare for them in the long term:

We gathered the strongest thinkers inside and outside the company, we called them "weirdos" (a positive term for researchers with different ideas). Their job was to communicate with technical experts, venture capitalists, startups and other relevant people, and finally submit a disruptive plan.

Among the plans proposed by these "weirdos", 70%都of them are related to blockchain technology. Hu Liang, general manager of State Street Bank's Emerging Technology Center, said that they are currently testing a securities lending solution based on blockchain.

The main goal of this solution is to improve the operational efficiency of securities lending. In most cases, there is no automatic attribution link between collateral and accounts. The blockchain system can reduce manual operation processes, speed up processing, and its recording function is also conducive to the writing of compliance reports.

The securities lending solution is one of many blockchain financial services launched by State Street Bank, which will go beyond the prototype stage in 2017. John Burnett, head of the company's blockchain research and development department, said that you will definitely see the internal application of blockchain at State Street Bank in 2017.

The US financial giant is a founding member of Hyperledger, an open-source blockchain platform managed by the Linux Foundation that has successfully tested Ethereum (forked), R3CEV’s Corda and its own Fabric blockchain applications.

On January 3, Burnett announced that "some basic deployments or blockchain-based applications will be completed by the end of 2017," involving at least 10个blockchain projects to promote business automation. A State Street Bank spokesperson said that these 10 projects "are more than just experiments," and at least half of them have completed the prototype research stage.

Other blockchain proof-of-concept projects deployed by this emerging technology center are either not yet public or only applicable to its internal systems. However, judging from the current participation and venture capital strength, 2017 is destined to be the year with the highest acceptance of Bitcoin's underlying technology, and related regulatory measures will gradually improve.