UEFA and AntChain, the blockchain business of Ant Group, have announced a five-year global partnership around blockchain technologies.
The companies aim to jointly explore how blockchain technology can be used to further the digital transformation of football industry and improve the experiences of fans around the world. According to the official press release, AntChain will become the official global blockchain partner of UEFA EURO 2020.
This is the first such partnership for UEFA, which also revealed the tournament’s Top Scorer Trophy designed by Alipay. The UEFA EURO 2020 Top Scorer Trophy is a major international football Top-Scorer trophy to utilise blockchain in its design and will feature a hash value at its base through which the scoring records of the tournament’s top scorers will be uploaded and permanently stored on a blockchain based on AntChain’s solution.
The design of the trophy draws inspiration from the first character in Alipay’s Chinese name, 支 (pronounced as zhi), which means support, as well as payment. The character reflects Alipay’s roots that trace back to 2004, when the company was founded as an escrow service to tackle the lack of trust between online buyers and sellers, facilitating online and offline commerce, the press release adds.
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