World’s Largest Palladium Miner Launches Blockchain Platform

Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel), the world’s largest palladium producer, has joined the ranks of global corporations that seek to integrate blockchain technology into their business processes.

Partnership With Hyperledger

The company has recently joined the Hyperledger project — along with such big names as Microsoft, Salesforce, Gloscad, and Milligan Partners. This open-source global initiative hosted by the Linux Foundation promotes the integration of blockchain technologies across various industries. Nornickel is currently working on a distributed ledger technology based on Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT). It is a consensus algorithm that allows for the creation of public blockchains based on Hyperledger Fabric, which is considered to be is one of the fastest and the most efficient consensus algorithm for public blockchains to date. “Hyperledger is our core technology,” Sergey Batekhin, Senior Vice President on Sales, Procurement, and Innovation of Nornickel, commented. He continued:

“By joining Hyperledger, we plan to share our expertise and knowledge to improve blockchain technology. Our company has formed a considerable pool of ideas, concepts, and initiatives that can be offered to other industry players. By joining the e Hyperledger community, we are making our inventions accessible to interested parties around the world.”

Tokenizing Commodities

The company plans to implement Hyperledger Fabric technology. The platform will go live in a test mode within this year. Developed in partnership with the leading IT companies, it will be used to tokenize Nornickel’s products — including multi-billion dollar palladium contracts. The key idea behind the Nornickel’s platform is to streamline business processes and attract new investors to the company. Eventually, this will lead to reduced funding costs and help to free up turnover capital.

Palladium-Backed Stablecoin

An idea of stablecoins backed by commodities is not new. Venezuela tried to tokenize its gold reserves, while Russia was contemplating an oil-backed digital coin. In that context, tokens backed by precious metals might become an interesting investment tool for serious market players, according to Nornickel CEO Vladimir Potanin. Speaking on the sidelines of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum, the head of Nornickel said that the company plans to launch is stablecoin backed by palladium contracts in autumn 2019. The pilot project will be launched in a test mode and support only a limited number of Nornickel’s contracts. Would you be interested in palladium-backed stablecoin? What does this pivot to blockchain mean to the global economy? Let us know what you think in the comments below.