Microsoft completes royalties blockchain rollout
Microsoft has boasted its blockchain-powered platform for Xbox is now a complete end-to-end financial system of record.
One more time. Together with ‘Top Four’ accounting giant EY, Microsoft has been using distributed ledger tech to handle gaming royalties for its content creators since 2018.
Now, Microsoft says its automated system is so good at calculating these invoices that it slashed processing times by 99%.
Thanks, Jamie Dimon? Microsoft uses its own Azure enterprise blockchain software, which deploys ledgers based on the open-source Quorum developed by JP Morgan (before Ethereum’s ConsenSys bought it in August for an undisclosed sum).
Microsoft originally said it hopes to process one million transactions per day, but it now says it can do double that.
Remember: private blockchains (like Quorum’s) are significantly more centralized than public blockchains (like Bitcoin’s), which only handle around 300,000 transactions per day.
No shit. Microsoft’s corporate blockchain might be boring (it doesn’t even do crypto), but the Redmond giant is no stranger to Bitcoin.
US-based users have been able to top up their Microsoft web store accounts with BTC since 2014, save for a brief period in January ‘18 (when it dropped more than 30% from its then-record high).
Arguably cooler, Microsoft also uses Bitcoin to underpin a neat ID system that hopes to rid us of the password.
Unlike Quorum, it’s a ‘Layer 2’ solution that runs alongside Bitcoin’s blockchain, meaning it retains a certain degree of decentralization. That’s what we’re here for, right?