Two Chinese companies created a piece of software that will facilitate the use of the digital currency. The Winter Olympics will take place from February 4th to 20th, 2022.
Efforts to develop the digital yuan in China continue to increase so that people can use it in Beijing during the 2022 Winter Olympics. For that reason, the government of that Asian country is working jointly with private companies on the development of a piece of software to implement this currency.
The Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, along with other companies, is making a “massive effort” across the state. They are seeking to develop the technology that will support an event that usually attracts many tourists and fans from around the world.
The objective is to help the people who will attend the sporting event that will take place between February 4th and 20th, 2022. This technology will allow them to use the digital currency in hotels, restaurants, and stadiums, among other facilities.
The Beijing Microchip Blockchain and Edge Computing Research Institute companies have partnered with the People’s Bank of China. From this joint effort, a piece of software emerged that will help promote the digital yuan and facilitate its use.
The launch of the software, called Chang’an Chain, occurred on January 27th. They say that this program has “autonomous control capabilities and auditable open-source code.”
Its creators add that more than “10 core modules, anti-quantum encryption algorithm, manageable channeling agreements, and hybrid fragment storage” constitute it. This is reminiscent of the Sharding protocol, which seeks to scale the Ethereum network in the next three years.
Sharding proposes a distribution that works in such a way that each node will validate only a part of the transactions. By redistributing the validation form, the Ethereum network would be able to process new blocks every 2 to 8 seconds.
The Implementation of the Digital Yuan Grows
One of the leaders in the race for central bank digital currencies (CBDC) worldwide is precisely China. There have been experiments in various cities in the country, where people have received 170,000,000 digital yuan (equivalent to around USD 26,166,531) through raffles.
In Shenzhen City, Chinese citizens were able to exchange cash for digital yuan (or vice versa) in January. To do this, the Agricultural Bank of China had enabled ATMs that are compatible with smartphones. That allowed the people of that locality to access the wallet where their digital yuan was.
Shanghai recently joined the cities that have been testing the digital yuan. The People’s Bank of China conducted a test with citizens who do not own smartphones. To fulfill their objective, the authorities activated a physical card for payments with the digital currency.
In various stations of the Shanghai subway, there are vending machines that are accepting the digital yuan as a form of payment. Citizens can use the digital yuan in these machines that provide soft drinks and candies, among other products.
The Government of China began its most recent testing in the city of Chengdu, in southwest China. That happened after they distributed 40 million digital coins to 200,000 users through a raffle.
By Alexander Salazar
