Japan Exchange Group Launch Their Own Blockchain Consortium

Tokyo Stock Exchange , Inc. (TSE) has announced today that TSE, Osaka Exchange, Inc. (OSE) and Japan Securities Clearing Corporation (JSCC) will form a consortium of Japanese financial institutions to continue proof of concept (PoC) testing and discuss the possibility of applying Blockchain technology to capital market infrastructure.

Late last year, Japan Exchange Group, Inc. (JPX) established an internal research group to study the applicability of blockchain to capital market infrastructure. They concluded that blockchain has the potential to transform the capital market structure, but that further research and development is still needed before actually applying blockchain to the capital market infrastructure.

According to the announcement, the JPX group companies will cooperate with a wide range of stakeholders, such as financial institutions and blockchain engineers, to make steady progress in verifying the technology. They will also seek participation from a wide range of Japanese financial institutions to gather broad industrial expertise.

They say the group will also consider a structure for efficient information sharing between the blockchain engineer community and financial institutions through efforts such as training in blockchain technology by blockchain engineers and training in operational workflows by financial institutions.

TSE will create a test environment for PoC using Hyperledger fabric, the open source blockchain platform, in cooperation with IBM Japan Ltd.. PoC testing by the new consortium will start in spring 2017.