Amazon Managed Blockchain released; Singapore Exchange (SGX) among first customers

Amazon Managed Blockchain
Image courtesy of AWS.

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon Managed Blockchain, a “fully managed service that makes it easy to create and manage scalable blockchain networks” for customers who want to allow multiple parties to execute transactions and maintain a cryptographically verifiable record of them without the need for a trusted, central authority. It supports open source frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum.

Customers can choose their preferred framework (Hyperledger Fabric is supported at launch with Ethereum support coming later this year), add network members, and configure the member nodes that process transaction requests. Amazon Managed Blockchain “takes care of the rest”, creating a blockchain network that can span multiple AWS accounts and configuring the software, security, and network settings.

“Customers want to use blockchain frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum to create blockchain networks so they can conduct business quickly, with an immutable record of transactions, but without the need for a centralized authority. However, they find these frameworks difficult to install, configure, and manage,” said Rahul Pathak, General Manager, Amazon Managed Blockchain at AWS. “Amazon Managed Blockchain takes care of provisioning nodes, setting up the network, managing certificates and security, and scaling the network. Customers can now get a functioning blockchain network set up quickly and easily, so they can focus on application development instead of keeping a blockchain network up and running.”

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According to the company’s press release, in addition to helping set up and manage blockchain networks, Amazon Managed Blockchain provides APIs that allow customers to vote on memberships in their networks and to scale up or down. Amazon Managed Blockchain offers a range of instances with different combinations of compute and memory capacity to give customers the ability to choose a mix of resources for their blockchain applications. It secures certificates for access control using AWS Key Management Service technology, eliminating the need for customers to set up their own secure certificate storage. Unlike existing blockchain technologies that require custom development to extract blockchain network activity data, Amazon Managed Blockchain can replicate transactions to Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB), which will offer a fully managed ledger database with a central trusted authority when it becomes generally available in the coming months. This gives customers the ability to gain advanced insight into key trends, such as who is transacting and what is the rate of their transactions. Amazon Managed Blockchain is available immediately in US East (N. Virginia) and will expand to additional regions in the coming year.

Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX) is Asia’s leading and trusted market infrastructure, operating equity, fixed income and derivatives markets to the highest regulatory standards. “Ever since overcoming the physical limitations of open-outcry trading pits, technology has been fundamental to the transformation of critical financial-market infrastructures,” said Andrew Koay, Head of Blockchain Technology, SGX. “SGX sees blockchain technology as a way to bring innovation to our distributed financial marketplace, and we have developed Delivery-versus-Payment (DvP) capabilities for the settlement of tokenized assets across different blockchain platforms. We are working with AWS to move our existing investments in Hyperledger Fabric to Amazon Managed Blockchain. Amazon Managed Blockchain offers businesses the opportunity to eliminate the heavy-lifting typically required in infrastructure setup. This allows us to focus on adding business value and not worry about managing or scaling the underlying platform.”

AT&T and Nestlé have also signed on as customers.