Bank of China Moves to Patent Blockchain Scaling Solution

Bank of China, one of the four largest state-owned commercial banks in the country, has filed a patent application for a process it says is better able to scale blockchain systems.

According to a document released on Feb. 23 by China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), the application was first submitted on Sept. 28 last year and invented by Zhao Shuxiang.

The application details that, instead of letting a new block store transactions from its previous one, a data compressing system could be used to pack transactions from multiple blocks into what the patent calls a "data block."

For instance, as the patent application describes, once the system receives a request to compress transactions from block 1 to 1,000, it causes a new data block to be formed and temporarily hosted on a different storage system. The system will then run the packed data through a hash function with a hash value.

Further, the compression system will give labels to identify blocks on the blockchain, newly formed data blocks and the compression event. The corresponding relationship among the three labels is also recorded on the blockchain.

Using this method, the patent claims a reduction in the amount of the data stored in new blocks as transactions mount in a blockchain, while ensuring that data from all previous transactions will still be tamper-proof and traceable.

While the patent is currently in the review process and is yet to be granted, it comes as part of a wider effort by the country's state-owned commercial bank in advancing its businesses through using distributed ledger technology.

As reported by CoinDesk last year, Bank of China has already partnered with China's internet giant Tencent to trial blockchain in financial applications.