How Commerzbank Is Throwing Out the Business Blockchain Playbook

With a plethora of business blockchains vying for prominence, banks are under increasing pressure to pick a winner - after all, without network effects, surely the benefits would be lost?

"We strongly believe that there will be not one blockchain solution, there will be a lot of blockchains - the big challenge is that these blockchains talk to each other."

Commerzbank, as one of the largest trade finance houses in Europe, has participated in the development of two trade finance-focused blockchain proofs-of-concept - the Batavia platform based on Hyperledger Fabric and Marco Polo, which is based on R3's Corda.

This ecumenical approach to blockchain networks isn't the only way in which Commerzbank is further departing from standard enterprise blockchain practice.

The company's blockchain lab has 23 developers, up from five a few years ago, and is working on increasing that number, in part to be able to add new protocols to its portfolio.

"There is not one silver bullet blockchain that is good for all future use cases," he explained.

"We think of a specific use case, and go for the best blockchain for that."

Commerzbank normally aims to have 10 active use cases on the go at any given time, Hammerer continued, and the list of blockchains his team is working on reflects those needs.

While Commerzbank may be a blockchain maverick among banks, it wants to make sure that the technologies it picks will connect it not only with other financial institutions but with enterprises in a variety of sectors someday.

Rather than focus on applications for a specific sector, the EEA's objective is to support development and interconnectivity of private versions of one particular blockchain across a wide range of sectors and use cases.