Chinese technology giant Baidu on Monday launched a blockchain-based service for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), easing the development of decentralized applications (DApps).
Reported by state-owned news outlet STCN, the new service will allow developers to build DApps without building their own decentralized network.
Primarily, the goal of the company is to make the DApps development process more efficient, and it will provide developers with smart contract templates and other functional components.
The new service will be based on the internet giant’s proprietary enterprise blockchain Xuperchain. Per the company, its decentralized network has 3.5 million users and processed over 450 million to date. Several reputable institutions and companies, including Tsinghua University and local streaming services giant iQiyi, also manage the nodes of the network, facilitating the verification of transactions.
The company even open-sourced the underlying code of Xuperchain last May.
The report also outlined that the new SME-focused service will be budget-friendly, and users can utilize it for 1 yuan (around $0.14) with its quantity-based fee structure until March.
Capitalizing on blockchain
Known as the Chinese version of Google to the rest of the world, Baidu is investing heavily in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain.
The efforts of the company were boosted when Beijing endorsed blockchain technology and encouraged companies to capitalize on it. Baidu is also among the 197 companies developing blockchain tech that are approved by the country’s internet censorship agency.
With its new service, Baidu has entered into the arena of much-talked blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS). Last year, the tech giant also launched an operating system, Baidu Blockchain Engine (BBE), for the development of DApps.
Meanwhile, other Chinese technology giants, including Tencent and JD, are also jumping into the BaaS business and have already published whitepapers for their proposed platforms.
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