CordaCon 2019 – London event is packed out

• R3 momentum increases as ecosystem swells to over 350 firms
• Annual conference attracts over 1,100 attendees
• CEO predicts traditional business models and technology must change or face extinction

Traditional business models remain under threat across the full value chain as enterprise blockchain continues to gain momentum, according to R3 CEO & Founder, David E Rutter

His comments came during R3’s annual CordaCon event, attended by over 1,100 developers, business leaders and industry experts in the heart of London’s financial district. The event drew a significant increase on previous years.

Since inception four years ago, R3 has risen to become a key player in blockchain-inspired technology to enhance a range of business processes including trade finance, insurance and financial services. R3’s global blockchain ecosystem has now grown to over 350 companies.

Among the announcements at CordaCon included a strategic partnership with Accenture and SAP, for R3’s Corda platform to enable two of the tech industry’s major players to provide a real-time gross settlement token-based exchange, with instantaneous settlements to reduce friction throughout the transaction chain.

Mr Rutter added: “Traditional business models are under threat across the full value chain. We will see the continued convergence of traditional Financial Market Infrastructure and broker businesses such as SIX, NY Stock Exchange, and Nasdaq with the crypto exchange world, such as Coinbase and Binance. We’ll also see new players emerge and the nimblest will win.”

Many of R3’s early adopters were at the event to talk about the work they are doing on Corda—such as TradeIX with Marco Polo, CryptoBLK with project Voltron, The Institutes Risk Alliance, SDX, B3i and ABI Lab to name a few.

Mr Rutter is a financial services veteran, having served as CEO of ICAP’s electronic broking division, before forming R3 and US treasuries platform LiquidityEdge, in the process of being acquired by MarketAxess in a USD 150 million deal

Mr Rutter added: “Corda’s longer term product strategy includes delivering capability on settlement and value transfer because we fundamentally believe we are embarking upon the beginning of a ‘tokenization of everything’ era. Digital Assets or tokens will reimagine how value is moved and managed and will fundamentally change the nature of business.

“Security tokens are squarely now under the purview of the regulators and will fall under global securities regulation. I believe long-term success and sustainability of tokens must rely on compliance with key principles pushed by the maturing regulatory framework. We will need a strong, well balanced ecosystem, regulatory framework, innovative mindset, and know-how from existing market infrastructure, as well as the right enterprise technology.

“We expect to see further enterprise blockchain consolidation. A year or two ago there were dozens maybe more platforms aspiring to be enterprise blockchains and we are already down to two real contenders in Corda and Fabric, with many other still trying to make Ethereum work at scale with proper privacy protections.

“On Interoperability, as applications go into production the need for seamless interoperability becomes more evident, so the surviving platforms need a rock solid interoperability story. I believe what we call “business network operators” the solution providers and of course their customers know that there won’t be just one solution for say Trade Finance so being able to send obligations to other customers on other BNO becomes an absolute necessity.

“The second order of this would be interoperability between blockchains and I think I was first asked about this over four years ago and the story for me is the same. While I think that may be important over a longer time frame it’s not a next year crucial deliverable.  And for us anyway we are just looking to further solidify our interoperability story and I am pleased we have been focused on this for some time now.”