AWS Partners With Digital Currency Group For Blockchain Cloud Testing

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has partnered with blockchain investor Digital Currency Group (DCG) to offer support for blockchain development and testing on Amazon’s cloud.

DCG invests in numerous startups that look to work with businesses who want to use blockchain technology.

A blockchain is effectively a ledger that records every bitcoin transaction. In the enterprise, businesses can take advantage of encrypted blockchains to carry out and verify digital transactions within their networks without the need for a central authority.

Innovation

“Today in financial services, distributed ledger technology is at the forefront of any discussion related to innovation. AWS is working with financial institutions and blockchain providers to spur innovation and facilitate frictionless experimentation,” said Scott Mullins, head of worldwide financial services business development for AWS.

Those startups under DCG’s umbrella will now be able to use Amazon’s AWS cloud infrastructure and support for the development of these blockchains, as well as the businesses interesting in trialing the technology.

“DCG is a recognized leader in distributed ledger technology, and we are excited to work with them and their portfolio companies to provide laboratory environments for enterprise experimentation with blockchain technology on AWS,” added Mullins.

DCG itself has been the target of investments from financial institutions such as Mastercard and Western Union, and the group’s portfolio includes more than 70 bitcoin and blockchain companies.

“At DCG, one of our fundamental beliefs is that the venture capital (VC) model has to evolve to enable disruption in financial services, and AWS was a natural collaborator given most of our portfolio relies on the AWS Cloud,” says DCG’s director of community, Meltem Demirors.

DCG will enable experimentation with blockchain technology for businesses with ‘proctored’ experiments conducted by DCG and its partners on the AWS Cloud on “secure, stable, and access-controlled development, test and production environments”, the group said.

Some of DCG’s companies include BigchainDB, Chain, Onename, and Everledger, DCG said it only expects its portfolio to grow over time as the demand for blockchain technology increases.

Last week, the continued success of Amazon Web Services (AWS) helped Amazon deliver strong first quarter results.

In the last quarter it is clear that AWS was the best-performing Amazon division, after revenues at the cloud business climbed 64 percent to $2.56 billion (£1.7bn). Previously in its fourth quarter AWS generated revenues of $2.4 billion (£1.7bn), showing that AWS remains on a healthy growth path.

Take our cloud quiz here!