Government officials in Xiongan New Area have established cooperation with ConsenSys with a view to create blockchain solutions for China’s “dream city.”
As it was informed by the local media, the Xiongan government had signed a memorandum of understanding with the U.S.-based Ehereum development studio ConsenSys. The main goal of this partnership is to convert Xiongan into a smart city of the next generation and to establish there a major blockchain innovation hub.
Xiongan New Area is an ambitious project of Chinese president Xi Jinping that was officially announced in 2017 and is aimed at building a dream city. Earlier this year, the government of the country has already made their master plan for Xiongan publicly available.
The plan presupposes implementation of the most cutting-edge technologies including blockchain and cognitive computing which will transform the region into a leading innovation center. According to the central government, now they are planning to direct several “non-core” government agency and research companies to the region from Beijing.
Under the provisions of the MoU, ConsenSys will act as an advisor for the government on the issues of application of blockchain technology for creating smart city infrastructure and offering software solutions. This cooperation with the U.S.-based Ehereum development studio is the first case of Xiongan’s partnership with foreign government’s platform aimed at the development of blockchain solutions. Nevertheless, there are no any plans to extend the geography of the project making it available outside China.
In general, today, blockchain in China is considered to be one of the priority areas for development and not only for Xiongan but for the country as a whole as well. As was previously reported by CoinSpeaker, the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is currently paying its significant attention to this technology viewing it as a central one for the new digital economy.
Moreover, just recently, it has been announced that a $1.5 billion blockchain investment fund has been created in Nanjing with a view to support the token economy and public blockchain projects in the country.
As for Xiongan, a number of the local firms including Ant Financial and Tencent will be also involved into the development of blockchain initiatives for both public and private services in the framework of the project.
The founder of ConsenSys, who is one of the co-founders of Ethereum as well, Joseph Lubin expressed the company’s excitement about their new partnership:
“As one of our first major projects in the People’s Republic of China, we are excited to help define the many ‘use cases’ that could benefit from the trust infrastructure enabled by Ethereum technology.”
ConsenSys has already gained rich experience in consulting on government-backed blockchain projects. For example, in 2017 the company acted as an official blockchain city advisor to the city of Dubai on its “Smart Dubai” project. Not so long ago, it also provided its assistance to Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology with organization of a blockchain bootcamp. What is more, ConsenSys established cooperation with South Africa’s central bank to help the bank with its proof-of-concept project for working with wholesale payments.
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