Introduction

Ant Group Digital Technologies, affiliated with the Chinese conglomerate Alibaba, has unveiled ZAN, a brand dedicated to providing blockchain development tools.

Ant Group Digital Technologies, a subsidiary of China’s Alibaba Group, recently announced the launch of ZAN. The new brand will offer a suite of blockchain development products and services aimed at meeting the needs of both institutional and individual web3 developers.

The announcement, made at this year’s Integration Conference on Bund, confirmed the resolution of key issues faced by the emerging web3 sector, including regulatory compliance and security.

ZAN’s Solutions for Enterprises

For enterprises, ZAN offers specialized solutions for issuing and managing real-world assets (RWAs) on the blockchain. These solutions aim to bring the process in line with local regulations, drawing on Ant Group’s previous experience with porting RWAs to blockchain platforms.

While the ability to integrate RWAs into the web3 ecosystem could provide new avenues for digital applications, it should be noted that the effectiveness of these solutions in actual practice still needs to be tested on a large scale.

Security and Compliance

Security and compliance, critical concerns in the web3 domain, are also addressed through ZAN’s product offerings. The suite provides Electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC), Anti-Money Laundering, and Know Your Transaction features intended to help companies verify customer identities and manage risk.

The effectiveness of these tools is likely to depend on their ability to combine robust security protocols with ease of use for the end user.

Services for Web3 Developers

For web3 developers, ZAN provides smart contract review services aimed at addressing security, performance, cost, and user experience issues in application development. The brand also plans to provide high-performance, high-availability, low-latency, and secure remote procedure call node services.

These offerings are expected to simplify the process of building decentralized applications (dApps), although the efficiency gains and real-time activity tracking capabilities have yet to be independently evaluated.

Piloting and Future Prospects

ZAN started piloting its services earlier this year and secured its first institutional client, HashKey DID, in April 2023. HashKey DID has adopted eKYC services from ZAN for its decentralized identity platform. Early feedback indicates positive reception, but the broader consensus about ZAN’s benefit and effect is still forming.

It is also worth noting that ZAN technologies derive from the innovations of AntChain Open Labs, which announced its TrustBase open source initiative at the same conference.

TrustBase aims to fully cover advanced encryption technologies such as multi-party computing, zero-knowledge proof, and symmetric encryption.

Conclusion

With the launch of ZAN, Ant Group Digital Technologies aims to provide comprehensive blockchain development tools and services to support the growing web3 ecosystem. While the effectiveness of these solutions and services is yet to be fully evaluated, ZAN has already gained traction with its pilot clients and shows promise for the future of web3 development.