Sphereon Begins Processing on Factom, to Bring 1 Million Transactions

Sphereon, a Factom project partner that delivers Blockchain-as-a-Service products, revealed last week that their first live customer is being processed on the Factom network.

Both Sphereon and Factom are creating blockchain solutions for the securing and auditing of data. The announcement was made at the World Blockchain Forum, held in London from September 3 – 5.

This first customer is expected to record 1 million transactions per year from the anchoring and signing of documents. Each document is given a unique hash-based digital fingerprint. Primarily aimed at the enterprise market, the service operates on a Proof-of-Authenticity protocol.

Sphereon’s co-founder, Maarten Boender, believes the first step has been taken, saying:

Although this is the first Sphereon customer to go into production, it is a major milestone for us and the Factom community. We expect two additional customers to go live and into production this month. With more to follow.

Located in Amsterdam, Sphereon offers a Blockchain-as a-Service platform that stores and monitors documents for individuals, organisations and governments. If a record is modified or tampered with, the original document holder is notified of the change. Some blockchain solutions also integrate Artificial Intelligence for the auto-classification documents and tagging of media.

The company hopes to reduce turnaround times and errors, and simplify processes by eliminating intermediaries. The existence of a single document or group of documents, serving as the only credible source of the contract, will discourage disputes between the involved parties.

Factom’s Blockchain Innovation Foundation Making Progress

Sphereon partnered with the Factom Blockchain Innovation Foundation (BIF) earlier this year, revealing soon after that the former had developed 2 enterprise document processing solutions—the Kofax Capture and the Sphereon Orion ScanIT. The first allows for scanned documents to be registered and the second is a workstation scan solution that integrates backend solutions for Microsoft Office and SQL Database Management Systems, among other things.

The BIF, a non-profit organization, was established to promote the use of the Factom protocol and encourage the development of blockchain infrastructure, particularly for enterprises. Several blockchains are already targeting businesses, which have the potential to dramatically decrease resource expenditure and increase efficiency.

Factom itself has its own document auditing services, and has formed several collaborations since its inception in 2014, including receiving grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and U.S. Homeland Security. You can learn more about the project in our guide to Factom.

Factom has been hit particularly hard in the recent bear market, but the upside is that it seems to have found some support against Bitcoin, which could stabilize its value against the US dollar should the price of Bitcoin hold, thus cementing a higher value in the market.

With processing having begun, the Factom project now has multiple active products that use the Factom protocol, which will be a good test of its efficiency.

As more solutions are built on the Factom network, we’ll likely see an increase in enterprise adoption. Sphereon meanwhile will be able to leverage Factom’s network to perfect its blockchain solutions and, hopefully, grow its enterprise customer base.

Related: 11 Blockchain Projects Geared for Enterprises