By
Mayowa Adebajo
March 12th, 2024
The new tool named ‘BlockOne IQ’ will enable Wall Street companies to utilize Thomson Reuters’ data on trading systems that run on two types of blockchain types – Ethereum and R3’s Corda.
Thomson Reuters Corp introduced a blockchain-based tool that will allow customers to add market data to systems what makes the multinational mass media giant the first major player to create a smart oracle for lean experimentation purposes.
The new service is named ‘BlockOne IQ’ and it will run two blockchain types – R3’s Corda and Ethereum but Hyperledger and other technologies are also in plans. The tool will be initially released to R3 and Enterprise Ethereum Alliance members and will also be available to developers via the Thomson Reuters Developer Community.
The smart oracle was designed to help organisations represent real market conditions in a more accurate way by analysing current and historical data with cryptographic proof that Thomson Reuters is the source.
“After speaking with our customers, it became clear that there isn’t currently a participant in the blockchain ecosystem that is acting as a trusted source of external data for many of the financial services use cases,” said Sam Chadwick, Director of Strategy in Innovation and Blockchain, Thomson Reuters.
“At our core, Thomson Reuters provides access to aggregated, high quality data and analytics – two characteristics that play well in an oracle and smart contract system – so it’s a natural transition for us, and another mechanism to deliver our content to industry participants,” he added.
John Dwyer, Senior Research Analyst Celent commented on the news: “Bringing trusted and secure external data to the blockchain ecosystem will be hugely beneficial. This move is coinciding with rapid expansion of new alternative data sets in capital markets and an extraordinary level of innovation across both public and private blockchains.”
Thomson Reuters which sells data and owns Reuters News has been standing for investments in recent technologies like blockchain to overcome its major competitors such as Bloomberg LP and IHS Markit Ltd that provide market data and software to Wall Street.
The first time Tompson Reuters spoke about an oracle back in October when the company representatives unveiled the media giant’s plans to create a platform that would help developers provide access to ethereum smart contracts only for authenticated users.
Shortly after this statement R3 also mentioned its plans to encourage collaboration and contribution to the Corda platform by giving developers an access to the source code.
Corda, a financial grade distributed ledger capable of managing institutions’ financial agreements in perfect synchrony with their peers, was largely inspired by the benefits of blockchain systems. However, its design choices make it able to meet the needs of regulated financial institutions.
Corda was developed in close collaboration with over 70 banks and financial institutions. It supports a range of consensus mechanisms and has no native digital currency. The platform’s design directly enables regulatory and supervisory observer nodes. Meantime, an access to data is available only to parties that have a legitimate need to know. The transactions are confirmed by the parties to the transaction, not by unrelated validators.