Bringing blockchains to the world of science and engineering
Today we’re delighted to jointly announce a collaboration with Wolfram Research, the industry-leading company behind the Mathematica platform and the Wolfram|Alpha answer engine. Over the coming year, MultiChain will be integrated into the Wolfram Language and across Wolfram’s line of products. For example, Mathematica users will be able to store and retrieve data in a zero-configuration private blockchain deployed in the Wolfram Cloud, in their own blockchain running on local MultiChain nodes, or in a chain which combines nodes from both.
We’re particularly pleased with this collaboration because it demonstrates our long-running view that, as a technology, blockchains are in no way specific to the finance sector. The perceived association between banks and blockchains is an accident of history, stemming from the fact that most public blockchains, like bitcoin, happen to enable a new type of money. By contrast, private or permissioned blockchains are a shared database technology, allowing a set of participants or organizations to safely collaborate on a database that crosses boundaries of trust.
Of course, banks work extensively with general-purpose databases such as Oracle or SQL Server, and the same will apply for blockchains as well. For example, MultiChain is already being used for dozens of projects in the finance sector. But it’s important to be clear: Blockchains embody a particular set of trade-offs compared to centralized databases, which make them suitable for some use cases and unsuitable for others. Quite rightly, many “distributed ledger” startups focused on specific problems in capital markets are not using blockchains at all.
As for MultiChain, we hope this will be the first of many collaborations enabling software platforms to offer a decentralized data layer to their users. We’re already working with several other companies to explore the possibility in depth. The underlying problem is this: How can multiple organizations ensure they agree on a developing set of facts, without giving control over those facts to a single party? Blockchains combine peer-to-peer networking, public key cryptography, consensus algorithms and a new transaction model, to provide a practical solution.
The full text of the joint press release is included below.
Wolfram to Integrate with MultiChain Blockchain Platform
March 8, 2017 – Wolfram Research and Coin Sciences Ltd today announced a collaboration in which Coin Sciences’ market-leading MultiChain blockchain platform will be made accessible from the Wolfram Language and across the Wolfram family of products, including the award-winning Mathematica. This will enable Wolfram Language users to write applications that make use of blockchain functionality.
“A blockchain is a decentralized ledger that has append-only memory,” said Christian Pasquel, Wolfram’s Development Team Lead. “This is a very simple concept, but it is a powerful building block that will enable a new class of computational applications—we expect everyone who uses the Wolfram Language will benefit from this simple yet powerful functionality.”
Initially, Wolfram will offer users direct access to a zero-configuration private blockchain, accessible in the Wolfram Cloud. Users will be able to create their own blockchain(s)—combining local nodes with those in the Wolfram Cloud, have it store and retrieve data and also expose information about that blockchain to other parties over the web.
“We’re delighted that Wolfram Research has chosen to integrate MultiChain functionality into their flagship product,” said Dr. Gideon Greenspan, founder and CEO of Coin Sciences Ltd. “We have always viewed blockchains as a general-purpose technology for creating peer-to-peer shared databases, so this integration with the Wolfram Language is a perfect fit. Despite the focus which blockchains have received in the finance sector, they are equally useful for decentralized data aggregation and collaboration in many other fields, such as science, engineering, economics and government.”
The integration with MultiChain is slated for release with a Wolfram Language version update later this year.
About Wolfram Research, Inc.
Wolfram is a powerhouse in technical innovation and has been defining the computational future for three decades. As the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language, Wolfram is the leader in developing technology and tools that inject sophisticated computation and knowledge into everything. Learn more at http://www.wolfram.com.
About Coin Sciences Ltd
Coin Sciences Ltd develops the popular MultiChain (http://www.multichain.com) blockchain platform. MultiChain includes features such as permissions management, native assets, data streams and simple configuration and deployment. It has been used successfully for blockchain projects in many of the world’s largest banks, consulting firms, financial technology and IT companies.
Please post any comments on LinkedIn.