China’s biggest search engine Baidu launches its own blockchain project called Xuperchain. On Jan. 6, Baidu announced the launch of its public beta for Xuperchain during an online press conference. The release of Baidu’s cryptocurrency comes ahead of China’s upcoming digital Yuan.
This will enable users to develop and deploy applications without building their own blockchain platforms, according to the company’s website. Baidu said the cost for deploying an application can be as low as 1 yuan or $0.14 cents. The company’s aim is to let small and medium-size businesses and developers cheaply deploy their decentralized application.
Xuperchain was open sourced in May 2018. According to the company’s website, since then Xuperchain network has nearly 3.5 million users and has processed over 450 million transactions. The news report says that Xuperchain will be compliant with Chinese blockchain standards, that means Chinese government will have their hands in some shape/form. The Xuperchain network is run by masternodes, The project uses the parallel chain technology to simplify smart contracts.
China has done what American companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon couldn’t or weren’t not allowed to do. It is interesting to see what happens with projects such as NEO, Ontology and other Chinese projects. Baidu’s Xuperchain will also expose Bitcoin to its millions of users as well.