The early internet was a magical place because it was driven by people and their creativity. Builders knew that whatever they made, they owned — a simple promise that established the right incentives for the technology to flourish. But now, the internet is stagnating and it’s harder than ever for new apps to break through.

Shanghai Municipal People's Government and Ant Group Co., Ltd. signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Shanghai. According to the agreement, Ant Group will increase its investment in cutting-edge technology research, actively participate in the construction of Shanghai's artificial intelligence industry ecology and blockchain industry innovation platform, and help build Shanghai's international science and technology innovation center.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Office of the Central Cybersecurity and Informatization Committee, and the National Standardization Management Committee have issued the "Guidelines for the Construction of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology Standard System" (referred to as the "Guidelines"), which clarify a series of measures to accelerate the development of key blockchain standards and promote the high-quality development of the blockchain industry. In terms of goals, the "Guidelines" propose that by 2025, a standard system supporting the development of the blockchain will be initially formed, focusing on standardization areas such as basic commonality, application, and services, and more than 30 blockchain-related standards will be formulated, basically meeting the standardization needs of the blockchain in China. By 2027, a standard system supporting the development of the blockchain will be fully formed. More than 50 blockchain-related standards will be formulated to continuously promote the development of blockchain basic commonality, key application demonstrations, and security guarantees. A batch of key application standards that support the future development of the industry will be moderately advanced, effectively guiding the development of blockchain technology and industry in China, and improving the level of technology and application services.

The State Intellectual Property Office has announced that Bank of China Limited has applied for a patent for a method, device, and computer equipment for updating SDK based on blockchain, with a publication number of CN117369845A and an application date of September 2023. The patent abstract shows that the application relates to the field of Internet technology, specifically to a method, device, computer equipment, storage media, and computer program products for updating SDK based on blockchain. The server stores the description information generated when the SDK is generated on the blockchain, and when a change occurs in the SDK, determines the change information of the SDK and stores it on the blockchain. At the same time, it can also send change notification information to the client of the SDK to indicate that the local SDK needs to be updated. Since the server discovers the change in the SDK by actively monitoring it and sends a change notification to the client of the SDK when a change is detected, the entire process does not require human intervention and there is no possibility of missing a change notification.

Zhengzhou Municipal People's Government issued a notice on the "Action Plan for the Construction of Zhengzhou Digital Government", which mentioned: building a full-cycle traceability platform in key areas, relying on the city's brain blockchain platform to support the construction of various traceability platforms, strengthening data interconnection and sharing, building a new traceability supervision method, and gradually establishing a comprehensive, multi-level, and three-dimensional supervision system; the section on continuously improving the business environment proposes to explore and promote the "blockchain + artificial intelligence" full-process electronic commercial registration, promote intelligent approval of the entire process and chain of enterprise registration, changes, cancellations, and provide full lifecycle services for enterprise registration, changes, cancellations, etc.; the section on innovative pilot demonstration construction proposes to accelerate the layout of future industries, and proactively lay out innovative pilots such as quantum information, blockchain, and network security.

Berkshire Hathaway Insurance Company (BHSI) announced the expansion of its cross-border capabilities, including the adoption of a permissioned blockchain solution developed by ChainThat. BHSI can provide insurance services to 178 countries. BHSI uses WorldLink to improve the workflow efficiency of its cross-border business. WorldLink is currently used for 95% of its global insurance and is based on the insurance technology ChainThat's Beyond Multinational Programs platform. ChainThat estimates that costs could be reduced by 30% through the efficiency of its SaaS product.

Hong Kong Polytechnic University officially announced that two of its projects have received a total of approximately HKD 17.36 million in funding from the Intelligent Transportation Fund. Among them, the digital twin-based long-span bridge health monitoring project received approximately HKD 13.4 million in funding, while the blockchain information physical system for managing urban berths received HKD 3.95 million in funding. This project uses Web 3.0 and blockchain technology to establish decentralized identities for drivers, realize intelligent access control for parking lots, and develop spatiotemporal aggregation analysis systems, using artificial intelligence technology to evaluate the supply and demand of parking spaces.

On January 1st, it was reported that the "Blockchain White Paper (2023)" from the China Information and Communications Research Institute showed that as of December 2023, there were a total of 10,291 blockchain companies worldwide, with China and the United States leading the way with 2,802 and 2,697 companies respectively. According to research on the blockchain industry in 2023, the top 5 domestic blockchain products with high usage rates are FISCO BCOS (Jinlianmeng blockchain underlying platform), Chain Maker (Changan Chain), Ant Chain, Hyper Chain (Qulian), and Xuper Chain (Baidu Super Chain).

Pakistan has adopted a blockchain-based customer identity verification (KYC) platform for its financial institutions. This move aims to enhance the security and efficiency of financial services while reducing fraud risks. Through this technology, Pakistan hopes to strengthen compliance and transparency in the financial industry, thereby promoting the healthy development of the country's financial sector. (Coingeek)

Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. has obtained a patent for a "vehicle management method, device, terminal, and storage medium based on blockchain", with authorization announcement number CN110889520B and application date of November 2019. The patent abstract shows that this application example discloses a vehicle management method, device, terminal equipment, and storage medium based on blockchain. The method includes: the vehicle management node obtains parking information of the vehicle, obtains the corresponding vehicle information of the vehicle from the blockchain based on the hash value of the license plate in the parking information; obtains the vehicle service points within the distance threshold range of the parking lot location and pushes the vehicle service orders corresponding to the vehicle service points to the user terminal; obtains the vehicle service reservation information returned by the user terminal and the first signature information of the vehicle service reservation information by the user terminal. If the consensus node in the blockchain network reaches a consensus on the vehicle service reservation information, the service reservation block containing the vehicle service reservation information is added to the blockchain, and the parking discount information is sent to the user terminal. By using this application example, the flexibility of selecting vehicle service points can be improved, and the accuracy of recommending vehicle services can be improved.