The Norwegian is the largest financial group in the country with the market capitalization of $32 billion. IOTA and DNB plan to use the partnership as a platform for developing applications based on IOTA’s Tangle.
(Source: IOTA Blog)
The two partners aim to work with stakeholders in their respective ecosystems to develop intuitive solutions across diverse business segments. According to IOTA, there are three primary areas of interests which include co-creation and exploration of relevant business models, cross-silo hackathons, and data privacy management protocols. Commenting on the partnership, David Sonstebo, the founder of the IOTA said:
“Norway has always been a vanguard in adopting cutting-edge technological paradigm shifts that improve the efficiency of our society; I am very excited at the IOTA Foundation which is spearheading Distributed LEDGER Technology (DLT) and IoT payments working with Norway’s largest financial institution on carrying this tradition onwards.”
DNB for their part has also reportedly been investigating potential use cases for blockchain technology. Before singing this MoU with IOTA, the bank had previously carried out several research projects in collaboration with the R3 blockchain consortium.
The IOTA Foundation and Norway's biggest bank DNB teams up to explore the potential of Economy of Things and myDatahttps://t.co/y48a3525KH#IOTA #DNB
— IOTA (@iotatoken) May 31, 2018
Reports in the local media also suggest that DNB has many ongoing projects with several partners including Hyperledger, EOS, and even the Ethereum Blockchain. Commenting on the partnership with IOTA, Lasse Meholm, the Head of DLT at the bank said:
“As the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M) communication and payment for microservices seem to escalate in the future, we think engaging in a Distributed Ledger based technology like IOTA gives us valuable experience and know-how on future revenue streams and business models. We are looking forward to diving into the IOTA space.”
This partnership with DNB is the latest in a series of significant collaborations that aim to push the adoption of Tangle technology. Tangle is a DLT protocol that is more focused on IoT implementation.
Tangle facilitates seamless machine-to-machine (M2M) communication as well as real-time, fee-less microtransactions which are some of the core tenets of a fully functioning IoT ecosystem. DNB’s partnership with IOTA comes at a time when Europe is paying particular attention to data privacy issues, and Tangle might hold the solution.
IOTA recently partnered with the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) to develop Tangle-based solutions for the administrative functions of the UN. The partnership is expected to inject a higher level of efficiency in the organization’s offices across the globe. The UN wants to leverage the immutability and robust security features of Tangle DLT to improve its workflow processes. Earlier in the year, the Bosch Group also made a significant investment in IOTA.
In a related development, IOTA has landed a strategic partnership with the Norwegian Science and Technology University (NTNU) and Nordic Semiconductors to advance Tangle technology. Wilfried Piments, the IOTA Foundation Business Development Chief, announced the joint venture partnership in a blog post on June 1, 2018. The collaboration will see NTNU and Nordic Semiconductor explore IOTA’s technology and the data marketplace. It is hoped that the partnership will demonstrate real-world use cases for IOTA’s framework.
