Сredits partners with IBM to turn the Buzz around Public Blockchain into Real Business

Blockchain is a revolutionary concept with potential to reshape the world. To access markets that could be worth trillions of dollars, Credits sought to conquer bandwidth and scalability issues.

Credits built a new-generation public blockchain platform running on IBM Cloud bare metal servers, which beats competitive offerings on transaction load, processing speed and price.

Recognizing an untapped opportunity

It’s been a decade since blockchain exploded onto the technology landscape. Since then, speculation around the implications for various industries has been building, but adoption is yet to go truly mainstream.

For early providers of public blockchain networks, one of the challenges has been finding the right infrastructure. To move into everyday use, the networks must be able to process huge volumes of transactions in parallel at sufficiently high speed and low cost.

Konstantinos Sotiropoulos, CIO and Deputy CTO at Credits, says: “Our vision was a network that could process more than a million transactions per second for low fees, and that includes smart contract features and easy integration with existing platforms. It’s been estimated that the market for blockchain technology could be worth trillions of dollars, with applications for financial services, IoT [Internet of Things], retail, logistics, medicine and more.”

Credits developed the first completely autonomous blockchain platform that enables creation of services using smart contracts and process scheduling. The company began looking for the right cloud service provider to help it move fast on this opportunity. The key selection criteria were: high processing power, low latency and a cost-effective pricing model. Additionally, as Credits developed its solution and grew its customer base globally, it needed to be able to ramp up resources extremely fast, making seamless scalability another priority.

Finding a platform for success

Following a review of major cloud services offerings on the market, Credits chose IBM Cloud solutions. The IBM team ran a proof-of-concept exercise to identify the optimal infrastructure for the company, designing an environment based on IBM Cloud bare metal servers located in IBM Cloud data centers in Dallas in the US, Sau Paulo in Brazil, Chennai in India, Singapore, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, London in the UK and Frankfurt in Germany.

“For us, IBM Cloud beats the competition on quality, price and support,” comments Sotiropoulos. “IBM is a leading expert in private blockchain technology, complementing but not competing with our proposition. They have the global resources to support our ambitious growth plans. Plus, they do not charge for internal network traffic, which keeps our costs low.”

The beta version of Credits’ new blockchain solution is now available, providing users with a fast, scalable platform for development of decentralized applications (dApps). The offering includes autonomous smart contracts and an internal cryptocurrency.

“Lots of companies would benefit from blockchain, but don’t know where to get started,” says Sotiropoulos. “Working with Credits, they get a pre-built platform with guaranteed performance and scaling, so they can focus on developing the dApps that represent real competitive advantage.”

With a dedicated IBM consultant to assist with the migration, Credits transitioned to the IBM Cloud quickly and easily. The infrastructure is connected to client-side applications installed on user equipment either at the client’s site or in the IBM Cloud, which process and store transactions, execute and confirm smart contract rules, request processing from third-party systems, and provide data when required. Each IBM server instance hosts a replica of the blockchain ledger and a database.

Sotiropoulos adds: “We are so confident that IBM will play a central role in our success that we signed a six-year contract. IBM Cloud solutions are supporting us as we launch the Credits public blockchain network in wider markets.”

Credits is also investigating how it can apply its unique blockchain technology to IoT use cases, to increase trust and security. The company plans to create new IoT models, which integrate its blockchain technology with the IBM Watson IoT™ Platform and IBM Cloud infrastructure. The solutions will ensure that only data owners or authorized parties will be able access data collected by the IoT sensors.

Turning concept into business value

By migrating its public blockchain network to the IBM Cloud, Credits gained stable performance and cost-efficiency. Combining the company’s proprietary technology with the infrastructure’s high processing power enables faster response times than the competition. Taking advantage of the low cost per transaction, Credits can minimize the fees it charges users.

“The Credits platform supports volumes of more than a million transactions per second, which is far more than the seven per second and 300 per second currently offered by the two most established public blockchain providers,” explains Sotiropoulos. “Our transaction execution speed can be as little as 0.01 seconds, when our competitors take minutes. The transaction cost varies, but can be as low as USD 0.001, rather than the USD 10 currently charged by the most recognized provider. The exceptional power and economics we gain from the IBM Cloud is a key competitive differentiator, which will help us increase our trading volume per day from USD 2 million.”

Extremely fast agile development has got Credits to where it is today, and the company continues to develop its offering at a rapid rate of innovation. IBM support is proving invaluable along the way.

“The pace of change at Credits is incredibly high – and IBM is one of the only vendors we’ve found that can keep up with us!” says Sotiropoulos. “The responsiveness from IBM is enabling us to reduce time-to-market for our solutions, so we can build our revenues sooner.”

Credits has set its sights on becoming the most adopted blockchain in the financial and IoT spheres. As it grows its client base, the company can rely on the simple scalability of IBM Cloud solutions.

Sotiropoulos concludes: “At a touch of a button, we can add more than 200 nodes to our IBM Cloud infrastructure and know that they’ll be ready in minutes. Having those resources at our disposal allows us to focus on making the most of the exciting opportunity in front of us: introducing a new era for public blockchain.”