Earlier this week, blockchain firm Insolar announced a partnership with Canadian miner Uranium One to explore distributed LEDGER technology (DLT) for the Uranium market. The project aims to explore improvements in both the supply chain and commodity trade settlement.
Uranium One is a unit of Russia’s Rosatom, the state nuclear energy company, and is one of the top uranium miners in the world. Currently, much like the rest of the commodities market, uranium trade is conducted using paper. Hence it’s inefficient and time-consuming.
Currently,a majority of the world’s uranium is produced by Kazakhstan,Canada, Australia, and Namibia. Owing to the sensitive nature ofuranium trade, miners and traders have to meticulously furnish documentsfor cross-border transactions. Insolarsaid blockchain could be an ‘ideal solution to provide a trustedand standardized format, including shared governance’.
“Weare exploring the potential that implementation of novel technologiescan offer in very specific areas of our operations,” said FletcherNewton, President of Uranium One Americas.
“Ablockchain platform with advanced capabilities can significantlysimplify trading activities in the market, meeting the increasedrequirements of market participants for security,” said AndreyZhulin, CEO of Insolar.
Switzerland-basedInsolar is an open-source blockchain platform and serves businessesin the supply chain and logistics, energy, retail and automotivesectors. Foundedby a group of Russians, it ran an ICO in late December 2017 in whichit raised $45million. In February this year it launched its public Mainnet.
Thecompany’sblockchainsolution canbe deployed as a public or private network.
Lastyear, Ledger Insight reported thatInsolar was integrating its blockchain platform with thecloudservices of Microsoft and Oracle.
Blockchainis revolutionizing commodity markets by providing a better audittrail and compliance.Russiancommodities company NorNickelaimsto tokenize metals.
Canada’s Minehub haslaunched its supply chain blockchain platform for the metals andmining industry. The solution was developed with support fromING,Wheaton Precious Metals, Newmont Goldcorp, and others.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has formed a mining consortium with Glencore, Tata Steel, De Beers and a few others. It aims to enable supply chain transparency and develop sustainability solutions for the metals and mining industry.
And IBM setup the Responsible Sourcing Blockchain Network (RSBN), initially focused on Cobalt, and includes Ford, VW, Volvo, Glencore and others.
