T-Labs announces project with major blockchain startups
March 2, 2018

The blockchain group, from the Deutsche Telekom Innovation Laboratories (T-Labs) launched its prototype operating stack service this week at the Bosch Connected World (BCW) 2018 conference and hackathon.
The blockchain group, from the Deutsche Telekom Innovation Laboratories (T-Labs) launched its prototype operating stack service this week at the Bosch Connected World (BCW) 2018 conference and hackathon. The service was created to simplify the decision-making process for developers wondering which blockchain technology to use in their projects. Instead, developers can concentrate on building their applications.
Despite the hype across the enterprise world, the usage of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) is still minimal. Companies are just starting to consider the actual benefits, but they are confused by the multitude and complexity in this nascent tech space. John Calian VP blockchain at Deutsche Telekom says “enterprises and developers alike want to quickly use the benefits and features of blockchain technology to make their ideas happen without worrying about the underlying complexity of combining different decentralized technologies. That’s the job that we took on, and the services that we will bring to the enterprise will be consistent with the types of infrastructure we already provide.”
Building the Stack
Starting in November 2017 T-Labs has launched the development bringing together a group of blockchain startups to build the prototype operating stack. Benefiting from the expertise in Berlin, T-Labs partnered with BigchainDB, IOTA, Jolocom and Riddle & Code to abstract the complexity of blockchain development for enterprises. With the prototype developers can combine different DLTs to enable decentralized storage, identity management, smart contracts and payments. This allows enterprises to build a decentralized back-end in a matter of minutes.
The current prototype allows for basic storage of data and hashes on a DLT of choice. In the next steps of development, the following functionalities are possible: advanced storage options, identity management and modeling of ownership structures, smart contracts as well as decentralized payment.
Project Partner Descriptions
All the partners involved and working together in the project are:
T-Labs is a research center aiming to bring innovative ideas and cutting-edge technologies to the market. By initiating the prototype operating stack, T-Labs together with IMPAQ is building on this tradition to bring the potential of blockchain enabled decentralization to the enterprise.
BigchainDB provides a solution for decentralized and immutable storage for data-rich blockchain use cases in a permissioned environment, giving you the look and feel of a classic database with added blockchain characteristics. The T-Labs prototype significantly facilitates and harmonizes the setup and deployment of a BigchainDB network, making it available for the enterprise audience.
IOTA provides the integration of its distributed ledger technology as a storage option for hashes in the T-Labs prototype. With the provided prototype, integrating IOTA into your software stack becomes flawless.
Jolocom provides a modular solution that enables individuals, organizations and things to get a backend-agnostic self-sovereign digital identity. In the T-Labs prototype Jolocom provides the tool to create and securely verify claims about an identity. This allows to model trustable complex relationships between them (e.g. ownership structures of IoT devices with organizations/individuals). Modeling these relationships with a self-sovereign solution enables a frictionless bridge between different ecosystems and network environments.
Riddle & Code provides blockchain solutions for IoT through dedicated soft- and hardware. They apply sophisticated security measures used extensively in the credit card industry to bring immutable Identity of Things into the blockchain ecosystem. By that, they enable complex ownership modeling in unprecedented ways.
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