From competitors to partners, blockchain giants R3 and Digital Asset will work together to create a win-win model

According to Coindesk's June 18 report, R3 and Digital Asset, the world's two largest blockchain companies, are working together to further expand their blockchain ecosystem.

(Source: pixabay )

After announcing a partnership with Hyperledger Sawtooth last month, Digital Asset announced on Tuesday that it will introduce the smart contract language Digital Asset Modelling Language (DAML) into the Cordedger Fabric and R3's Corda platform.

After Wall Street legend Blythe Masters suddenly resigned from Digital Asset in December last year, Digital Asset co-founder Yuval Rooz became CEO. He told CoinDesk:

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Since taking over the company, we announced the integration of Hyperledger Sawtooth and VMWare, and now we are working with R3 to continue to expand our ecosystem. Vendors of distributed ledgers will get more business because DAML will allow developers to build applications faster.

And recently, Digital Asset has also partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Aurora to make its open source smart contract language DAML more interoperable. The partnership will also provide multi-platform DAML support for various blockchain networks, in particular the Hyperledger Fabric and R3's Corda platform.

Although AWS has a Qurom book database, the database is centralized and not a true blockchain. Rooz said he expects DAML to work more closely with centralized database providers.

He said:

We can now take a big break from the market for distributed applications.

Take a step back

Between 2014 and 2015, DIGITAL ASSET and R3 are competing with each other, competing for the same customers and competing for outstanding talent. For example, R3's current CTO Richard Gendal Brown and Clearmatics research director Tim Swanson, who were former Hyperledger consultants, joined Digital Asset after Digital Asset acquired Hyperledger. Later, Brown and Swanson joined R3 full time.

Dan O'Prey, CEO of DIGITAL ASSET, head of the DAML community and co-founder of Hyperledger, said

“In the early days, all companies seemed to be a complete stack provider, so they had to build a ledger, and they had to build smart contracts and various environmental solutions.”

Later, both companies saw the development of the blockchain field and immediately adjusted the company's development strategy. For example, the strategic decision made by R3 makes it more focused on Corda, the platform, while DIGITAL ASSET focuses on other aspects, he added:

Both of our companies are very fortunate, and we decided to focus on different areas, which made us from competitors to partners.

Todd McDonald, co-founder and chief product officer of R3, expressed support for this view, but he also stressed that the intersection between the founders of the two companies may also play a role in it. He told CoinDesk:

The first round table of R3 was Yuval. There were only about 20 people in the room at the time. And before Dan's Hyperledge was acquired, it was one of the first companies we worked with, so we had a deep relationship.

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