Ernst & Young, one of the world’s largest professional services networks, is expanding its blockchain services in China in partnership with major local blockchain projects.
According to a Feb. 5 announcement, EY will deploy its blockchain products on the Ethereum blockchain and Blockchain Open Source a platform run by Tencent-backed Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Consortium, or FISCO.
EY will specifically offer its two blockchain solutions — EY Blockchain Analyzer and EY OpsChain — through the Chinese national blockchain initiative, the Blockchain-based Service Network. The offerings will be available to users in China as well as across the entire EY Asia-Pacific region. Designed for business interaction via public and private blockchains, EY OpsChain will be the first EY solution deployed on BSN.
According to the announcement, the service availability will be subject to regulatory approval. Yifan He, executive director at the BSN Development Association, told Cointelegraph that EY will need approval from the State Information Center of China. He noted that it is not totally legal to run public chain nodes in China in accordance with regulations by the Cyberspace Administration of China. “But an IT system in China to access public chain nodes outside China is not illegal,” he noted.
“Because EY will mostly deploy the related products on framework FISCO BCOS, we have been working together to do integration for a while,” He added.
EY Global Blockchain Leader Paul Brody said that the new development is a major step forward in connecting the world’s largest economies through blockchain technology:
“China is one of the largest markets for blockchain technology in the world, and this is the EY organization’s first big step in deploying the EY blockchain platform in a scalable manner. By offering both FISCO BCOS and Ethereum, EY professionals will serve clients within China and across the Asia-Pacific region and connect those users to the global blockchain.”
As previously reported, FISCO BCOS is an open-source and coinless blockchain platform designed for financial service developers. The initiative’s founding members include major local Chinese companies like WeBank, Tencent Cloud, Huawei and Shenzhen Securities Communication. In 2019, FISCO BCOS was selected as the technology infrastructure for BSN, a state-backed initiative aiming to help businesses deploy blockchain-based applications.