Due to Singapore’s business-friendly environment, it hosts a large number of new blockchain startups. According to Ravi Menon, the Managing Director of Singapore’s Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), there are as many as 50 startups that are working on blockchain-based technologies, a report by «blokt» says.

A growing blockchain ecosystem supports these startups; Singapore’s local universities are researching the technology, venture capitalists are eager to invest, and large tech firms are exploring use cases of blockchain as well.

Potential Benefits

MAS partnered with R3 to form Project Ubin, a blockchain-based project that makes financial transactions and processes cheaper, more resilient, and more transparent.

Earlier this year, Sopnendu Mohanty, the MAS fintech chief, said to finews.asia: «Distributed ledger technology, or DLT, has shown potential in making financial transactions and processes more transparent, resilient and at a lower cost. Project Ubin aims to help MAS and the industry better understand the technology and the potential benefits through practical experimentation.»

Constantly Evolving

Mohanty added: «Project Ubin is meant to be a series of practical experimentation, and we look at the benefits and costs only at a broad level. The technology is constantly evolving and improving, so it may be premature to try to quantify the dollar value now.»