Microsoft has joined the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a trade association focused on promoting distributed ledger technology.
A statement co-authored by Marley Gray, Director of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise BizDev & Strategy, explained the decision to join:
At Microsoft, we’re focused on providing the best platform and home for distributed ledgers, bringing together the technological promise of blockchain with the power and capabilities of Azure, such as Azure KeyVault, multi-factor authentication, and more. We brought Blockchain as a Service to market with Ethereum in November of last year and since then have added over a forty partners. Most recently, the R3 consortium of over 40 major banks chose Microsoft Blockchain as a Service as their preferred platform to experiment and develop new blockchain-related offerings.
Microsoft joined the Digital Chamber as it believes the association provides a “needed voice” in the development of regulatory frameworks and input into public debates about the uses of distributed ledger technology and how to enable it to flourish while protecting the public. The U.S. software giant also approves of the association efforts to establish training, education, and self-regulatory schemes to assist new entrants and grow innovation across the industry.
Gray noted:
As we work with others in the industry to explore the promise of this technology, it is equally important to engage with regulators and policymakers as they think about distributed ledgers. Virtual currency is already the focus of regulatory interest at both the state and Federal level in the US as well as in other markets around the world. We welcome this, as it is vital that users be protected and virtual currencies not become a haven for criminal activity. But even as this particular application of distributed ledgers is regulated, it is important to recognize that other uses are still evolving or nascent, and need the freedom to develop and grow.
Microsoft also welcomed new Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) partners, including Jumbucks, Bitswift, Storj, Vcash, Shadow, Blocknet, Blitz, Gamecredits and Okcash. All are or will be available for testing in Azure DevTest labs.
According to Gray, Ether.camp has made available Ethereum Studio, a web-based integrated development environment (IDE) for Ethereum developers, on Azure. The IDE permits developers to write and compile Solidity smart contracts, play with them in Sandbox, and then send the contracts to the real net
On Azure, Emercoin has also published their Emercoin client, Emercoin SSH service, and Emercoin WEB Wallet.
Gray also revealed two new contributing bloggers on the BaaS platform:
- Yorke Rhodes - global business strategist - focused on Azure’s partner blockchain ecosystem will be providing updates for new and existing partners (BaaS updates) into the program as well as industry business insights.
- Jason Albert - assistant general counsel at Microsoft - focused on distributed ledgers from a legal, regulatory and compliance standpoint will be blogging about activities regarding Microsoft’s work with the Digital Chamber of Commerce, legislation, regulations and compliance issues in this space.
