When it seems like opening its Blockchain to all is the right thing for R3 consortium to do, considering all that it has endured in the month of November, Bitcoin Core Developer and Advisor to Coinkite, Peter Todd, cites that it has similarities with Bitcoin.
R3 today announced that it has made the Corda distributed ledger platform open source so that it may grant the global developer community universal access to its source code. It is hoped that this will encourage collaboration and contribution from developers, and provide a review of the platform. The idea is to enable more companies and people to utilize its tech so as to create more value and implement a network effect.
According to the CEO of R3, David Rutter, open sourcing Corda is the next step in making the platform - deemed the biggest collaborative effort of its kind in the distributed ledger space - one that will provide new technological solutions for players in the financial services industry. It is also hoped that it will allow them to integrate and work seamlessly with each other in a common and open manner, and enable interoperability like the common protocols on which the Internet operates today.
After its release, Todd claimed that Corda was composed of the architecture he’d helped develop last year based on his Proofchains work, a situation he’d expected. He also notes that R3 seemingly copied Bitcoin's broken Merkle tree, adding that it is more like Bitcoin without Blockchain.
In response to a tweet stating that Corda sounded more like Bitcoin plus Ether, Todd replied by tweeting: “It's actually more like Bitcoin without Blockchain.”
R3’s opening of the platform comes after its criticisms
Todd posted last week that R3 refused to make Corda available to third-party peer review, citing that the consortium “vetoed one of the banks from hiring me to do a review.”
This was in response to another tweet that claims that more banks plan to leave R3 and that funding for the project has stalled. A post in the thread says:
“R3 seeking $150M, but over the last few months, commitments for only $56.5M have materialized. R3 seeking 40% equity - may give it up.”
These comments emanated from the sudden departure of several entities including Goldman Sachs, Santander, Morgan Stanley and the National Australian Bank from the prominent Blockchain consortium this month, with little public explanation.
Todd also claims that two journalists told him they had been threatened by R3.
Angel investor in Bitcoin and Ethereum startups, Chandler Guo, recently said that although venture capitals may like the ideas of other public chains like R3, they will later realize that Bitcoin is the real thing after the Blockchain bubble bursts.
A day before going open source, the consortium announced its first partnering firm, Calypso Technology, to develop capital market applications on its Corda distributed ledger-based smart contract platform.