Welcome to the first episode of our new News Flash series, where we share the latest developments in the blockchain space, straight off the press. In today’s episode we have Ryan Rugg, Global Head of Insurance at R3 and a regular speaker at Insureblocks.

R3, which featured in one of our previous episodes (R3 – The blockchain banking consortium) started in 2015 as a consortium of financial institutions that joined forces to test blockchain solutions. Three years later, their hard work has culminated in an exciting new project and we are proud to announce the release of Corda Enterprise to the insurance industry.

Corda Enterprise is R3’s commercial offering that brings greater enterprise capabilities to the Corda platform. It builds upon Corda’s functionality, enhancing availability, security and performance.

 

Corda

Corda, the blockchain created by R3, is the only blockchain that has been designed and built specifically for business. Corda’s focus on privacy, security and scalability distinguish it from other blockchains. Unlike Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric, where all the information is shared between every node on the network, Corda shares information on a bilateral and multilateral level only with parties that need to see it.

This choice has certainly paid off as there are currently over 200 financial institutions, regulators, insurers, trade associations, professional services firms and ISVs that are working on Corda. Many of these have featured on Insureblocks, such as B3i, which replaced the IBM Hyperledger Fabric with Corda, Insurwave and RiskBlock.

Corda also appeals to industries beyond insurance. Fusion LenderComm, a syndicated lending platform and GuildOne’s Royalty Ledger, a blockchain solution for the oil and gas sector, both utilise Corda.

This wide participation across industries is the reason Corda is an open source project. R3 wanted Corda to be a decentralised and open environment where every company can work with others or create and share their own innovative solutions. Continuing in this spirit, Corda and Corda Enterprise are fully interoperable. Anyone can remain on Corda without procuring the Enterprise licence. Anyone can upgrade to Corda Enterprise and still work with applications on the Corda blockchain.

 

Why Corda Enterprise?

The whole idea of Corda is to enable businesses to transact directly and privately, reducing transaction costs and streamlining operations. However, many large users faced technical, regulatory and compliance issues that prevented them from using blockchain internally at scale. After listening to Corda members’ requests, R3 is launching Corda Enterprise and has implemented additional functionalities so that every business can benefit.

These extra features enhance security and make Corda Enterprise easier to scale:

* Blockchain Application Firewall - enables Corda Enterprise to be deployed inside corporate data centres while retaining the ability to securely communicate with other nodes on the netw...