Baidu beats the Chinese CBDC and launches its digital currency Xuperchain

Baidu, the Chinese internet technology giant, has officially launched its own digital currency Xuperchain developed on a private blockchain, anticipating the issuance of the expected Chinese national digital currency or CBDC. 

According to the reports, Baidu’s new Xuperchain will allow users to distribute blockchain applications at a lower cost thanks to the open-network of super alliance nodes that will be distributed throughout the country.

The fact that Baidu was working on using blockchain technology is not news. Back in September 2019 they had already published the whitepaper of Baidu Blockchain or Xchain, which is nothing more than the older version of Xuperchain, developed as a blockchain-as-a-Service or BaaS.  

Thanks to the beta version of Xuperchain, users are not required to create the blockchain themselves, but to distribute it. 

As revealed on the website, users will be able to pay up to 1 Chinese yuan (about $0.14) until March 2020 to distribute a blockchain application through the platform. 

Moreover, the website also shows that to date the network has seen over 3.5 million users and 450 million transactions. 

Another local report describes Baidu’s new blockchain as follows:

“[Xuperchain] provides users with an environment for rapid deployment and operation of blockchain applications, and computing. The flexible payment capabilities of resources such as storage and storage directly reduce user deployment and operation and maintenance costs, and make trust links more convenient”.

In addition, Xuperchain seems to have several important advantages over its competitors: faster, cheaper and fully compliant with Chinese regulators. However, at the moment, the use of distributed masternodes casts doubt on its degree of decentralisation. 

Thanks to Xuperchain’s scalability, which can handle over 10,000 transactions per second, and the cheaper cost of use, the Chinese companies which were already encouraged by the Chinese government to use blockchain, will now be able to distribute applications in a more cost-effective way. 

The release of the Baidu cryptocurrency in China was unexpected but interesting, especially considering that the government itself, together with the central bank, is working on the launch of its own CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency).