Researchers from
Strathclyde Business School are at the forefront of new advances in
Blockchain, the financial technology which promises to
revolutionise how we do business.
In a ground-breaking experiment, researchers from Strathclyde
Business School, National Physical Laboratory,
the Toronto Stock Exchange (TMX), and consultancy firm Z/Yen,
timestamped financial stock trades using atomic clocks and recorded
the trades directly on a distributed ledger.
The 'Atomic Ledger' project recorded over 20 million
transactions, timestamping each with Co-ordinated Universal Time
(UTC), over three hours of trading to the ChainZy distributed
ledger system.
Daniel Broby, Director, the University of Strathclyde's Centre
for Financial Regulation and Innovation said, "The role of
distributed ledgers and precision timing is becoming ever more
relevant as Fintech companies adopt blockchain for financial
transactions. This trial will have real world policy impact.
"It's at the cutting edge of both finance and technology,
helping make money payments over the internet cheaper, faster and
more efficient."
Distributed ledger technology - also known as blockchain - is
one of the core technologies of the new financial technology
(Fintech) movement.
It enables financial market counterparties to store financial
assets in a shared ledger, rather than relying on centralised
ledgers as is predominately the case now.