Alibaba wins two new patents to secure its blockchain deployments

The approvals come at a time with Ant Financial announced the launch of its Ant Open Blockchain Alliance, a consortium that aims to finance small and medium-sized businesses on its blockchain-based platform.   Both patents were approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

One patent aims to reduce the time to verify block data, while the other is designed to help participants set a validity period for a transaction in a blockchain network.

Regarding the first patent, when data are added to a node, the new technology will determine the update verification value of the node by using just the newly added data, not all the data in the block, according to the patent filing.

The other patent will be used to set up a validity period for a transaction, meaning participants of a blockchain network can only process the transaction during a certain period via either a physical clock or a logical clock, according to Alibaba’s filing.

According to CoinDesk, Alibaba applied for the most blockchain patents in 2018 with 90 blockchain-related technologies, followed by IBM and Bank of America.