Antshares Raises Millions in ICO, Partners with Microsoft

An open source, blockchain-based project, Antshares, has reportedly raised $4.5 million in their ICO to help fund their blockchain that operates under an “Onchain universal blockchain” framework. In addition to this, they have also announced a partnership with software giant, Microsoft.

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Introducing Onchain’s Universal Blockchain Framework

The purpose of the Antshares project, which is located in Shanghai, China, is to digitize, record, and track physical goods and assets. This can range from real estate titles to corporate equity, from supply chain assets to creditors’ claims.

The larger picture has been staked out by Onchain’s founder and CEO and creator of Antshares, Da Hongfei. According to Hongfei, the Antshares team’s vision is to make Onchain a universal blockchain framework, which would make use of different plug-in modules that could be applied to any broad category of blockchain including public chains, consortium chains, and private chains.

Hongfei elaborated on the project, saying that it was designed to both digitize assets and enable decentralized trust-free exchanges of these assets. Essentially, meaning that you can register and execute the transactions of your own digital assets without a middle-man.

The way in which the Antshares “digitizes real-world assets” is by recording them through the use of e-contracts. These e-contracts then generate tokens that function as general underlying data for said records, which could be anything from equities and creditor’s claims to bills and currencies.

Additionally, the Antshares blockchain is based on dBFT consensus proposed by Onchain’s CTO Erik Zhang.

Antshares ICO Rakes in Millions and Becomes Trailblazer

The team also hosted two phases of ICOs, one that concluded in October 2015 and another which ended early in September 2016. The two ICOs raised 2,100 and 6,119 BTC respectively, with mainly domestic investors participating in the first and over half of the participants in the second being from overseas.

Along with its impressive ICO showing, the Antshares team seem to be trailblazers of sorts: claiming to be the first open-source blockchain project developed in chain, the first “significant” chinese ICO (6119.53 BTC raised in its August/September crowdsale), and the first organic Chinese blockchain project to work with both Microsoft Azure and the Hyperledger Project.

The Antshares team has also teamed-up with Microsoft to work on R&D with the fortune 500 company, specifically with their Azure PaaS. An example of what they will be working on is something they call The Legal Chain, which is a consortium chain developed by Fadada (China’s leading online legal service firm), the Onchain for-profit entity (which in turn was created by the Antshares team), and Microsoft Azure that provides a blockchain-powered digital legal evidence repository.

The team is cooperating with Microsoft in other ways as well, this includes a direct utilization of the Antshares blockchain that remains confidential.

Also, the Antshares team has joined the Hyperledger Project as both a member and a contributor, which is a first among all Chinese teams. According to Da Hongfei, they will be spearheading the community building and knowledge sharing of the Hyperledger project in China, starting with the localization of the Hyperledger knowledge base into Mandarin.

Hongfei believes that the their blockchain project will enable interoperability in a future that is increasingly heading towards a multi chain environment.

“We believe that an inclusive and diversified development is what we are truly after: one world, many solutions. Those who are chanting for one universal panacea solution are simply trying to replace the old tyrant with a new one.”

What do you think of the Antshares blockchain project? Let us know in the comments below!

Images Courtesy of Antshares, Eventmanagerblog.com, Hyperledger Project