back to article SWIFT to trial blockchain – but not for its core payment service

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) has announced it will try to hook its 11,000 members to a blockchain – but not for its payment service. The Register last touched on SWIFT when reporting it had withdrawn its services from Russian entities – an action that highlighted the Society's vital …

  1. sreynolds

    Why?

    Can't someone just sign one of their messages and broadcast them using their existing networks? I mean isn't swift all about routing MT/X messages over almost any network?

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: Why?

      Certainly nothing in the article gives any evidence why a Merkle graph – particularly the limited sort which, for no good reason, people insist on calling "blockchain" – would offer particular advantages here.

      Merkle graphs are useful for things like journals, which is why you find them in filesystems, and other cases where partially-ordered sets are a suitable representation of data changing over time in parallel streams, which is why you find them in git and some other change-management systems. And since we already have widespread applications of Merkle graphs such as those, it really doesn't fucking matter whether "blockchain" ever has credible useful applications. There's nothing novel about blockchain.

      In this case it sounds like what's really needed is broad agreement on a machine-readable document standard with an authentication mechanism, so something like an XML Schema and XML Signature ought to suffice. (Not a particular fan of those, just pointing out that they solve the problems described in the article.)

      1. ChoHag Silver badge

        Re: Why?

        Agreement is needed, certainly, but what's also needed is some marketing glitz to sell the idea to executives and shareholders so that the engineers can get on with the arduous task of formally specifying an XML schema*. Blockchains are back in at the moment so they have selling power.

        The point is not how SWIFT joins this century, but that it does.

        [*] Or more likely ratifying an existing one they've been pushing on the blind manglers for years and even quitely using already in a few places. Or maybe it's JSON or whatever's fashionable this season.

  2. knoxg

    What a load of blockchain

    > "That's because the global financial system has many participants, and many have their own data standards that other players must parse before they ingest or process info."

    SWIFT is already a data standard that other players are parsing, ingesting and processing. I don't see how adding blockchain into the mix is going to suddenly make those messages easier to process.

    Obligatory xkcd comic regarding standards: https://xkcd.com/927/

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: What a load of blockchain

      "I don't see how adding blockchain into the mix is going to suddenly make those messages easier to process."

      It doesn't. Adding more layers also makes things more complex, and thus less secure. But at least some management will get larger bonuses this year ... and middle management will be able to play with pretty powerpoint presentations, as will whoever is in charge of press releases. And ElReg will be able to write about it, and we will be allowed to comment on it. And all of it eats tons of electricity, contributing to minimizing my heating bill this coming winter.

      Blockchain is an ecosystem in a jar.

      1. Tim99 Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: What a load of blockchain

        So we need to add "Agile" and "Web Scale" too?

    2. jake Silver badge

      Re: What a load of blockchain

      "Obligatory xkcd comic regarding standards"

      The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. —Andrew S. Tanenbaum

    3. david 12 Silver badge

      Re: What a load of blockchain

      Swift messages are one-off actions: they happen to the individual participants, and then they are gone.

      Market notifications are the complete opposite of that. They are published, they are public, they are permanent, they are on the published permanent public record.

      Yes, it is just another way to do a secure shared permanent public ledger -- but none of those actually exist at present. so even if this is a trendy speculative investment it's not replacing something that already works.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: What a load of blockchain

        It's not "secure" under any realistic threat model. It might be append-only under some fairly generous ones.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    One more step along the road to CBDC

    AKA, the road to hell.

  4. I Am Spartacus
    Boffin

    Hello bandwagon

    I question why SWIFT are doing this. from the article it's not to move a crypto currency around. I mean, if you have the worlds largest money transfer system already, and it operates electronically, is safe and has all sorts of checks, balances and confirmations, then you have no need of a blockchain backed ponzi scheme.

    So, its the smart contracts then. But they are not executing the smart contracts on the chain, they are checking what has been executed elsewhere. So this is just a new form of trade matching system. But as a number of trade matching services will happily explain, you most definitely don't need a block chain for that.

    I am very sceptical about blockchain. There is some really neat technology involved, but the use of write once ledgers (had that in the early '90's, and then we could do it in hardware as well!).

    But as for a distributed ledger, well, very few people seem to want to adopt this. They want it done on a cloud based service, and then a service provider has a number of end-user ledgers running on different VMs, in err, a central computer system. So, not distributed at all, just replicated.

    So, why are Swift doing this? My guess is because there is a very pretty bandwagon and they want to jump on it.

    1. druck Silver badge

      Re: Hello bandwagon

      Swift has always been a pretty sensible organisation, so why now this madness?

      There is nothing you can do with blockchain can't be sone better with other technologies, and the only thing you ever hear about smart contacts is appallingly insecure code causing millions in losses. Alarm bells should be ringing.

    2. DS999 Silver badge

      Perhaps as a trial / proof of concept

      Maybe they want the option to consider blockchain for money movement in the future, but they obviously they'd need to gain experience with it on something less important.

    3. jake Silver badge

      Re: Hello bandwagon

      "bandwagon"

      Bingo.

  5. Mike 137 Silver badge

    evolution?

    Once there was the noun "trial" derived from the verb "to try". Then the verb "to trial" emerged, which implies that the associated noun should be "trialial". Not unique though - it has been pointed out that since the suffix "gate" has come to mean scandal, the original Watergate scandal should now be called "Watergategate" to distinguish it from a scandal about water. Strange how language evolves, isn't it. Or maybe it's just due to etymology and grammar no longer being taught in school.

    1. Natalie Gritpants Jr

      Re: evolution?

      "grammar no longer being taught in school" - now known as grammargate.

      1. J. Cook Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: evolution?

        Sadly, my grammar and my gramper are both dead, but they both lived long, happy lives.

        (read it using a southern US accent for your mental voice and it'll make sense.)

    2. jake Silver badge

      Re: evolution?

      Language is evolving?

      News to me ... quite the opposite, in fact.

    3. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: evolution?

      This is a matter of usage and style, not grammar as such. Nothing in English grammar prevents using "trial" as a verb; only a degree of care in usage and a sense of good style do.

      And, yes, I have taught grammar, usage, and style in school, at the university level. Unfortunately there's precious little time for it, and composition pedagogy has rightfully shifted away from prescribing arbitrary rules cooked up by Neo-Classicists to actually trying to explain something about how language works, which means there's very little time indeed to spend on the implementation details.

  6. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "the information needs to be quickly shared with investors"

    It's called a web-accessible database.

    No need for the not-scalable blockchain nonsense.

    I'm interested to see if this actually succeeds.

  7. Ian Johnston Silver badge

    Many financial institutions are already blockchain-curious, or more advanced in their consideration or use of the tech

    Name six. Difficulty: no money laundering.

  8. jake Silver badge

    "the information needs to be quickly shared with investors"

    Personally, I've never seen a problem with using properly signed email for this kind of thing.

    1. that one in the corner Silver badge

      Re: "the information needs to be quickly shared with investors"

      And when have you ever seen properly signed* emails from any financial institution?

      *assuming here that you meant verifiably via cryptographic means

  9. Danny 2

    No prestige in SWIFT

    The word is honestly banned in SWIFT "because everything we do is prestigious". On your first day you get a huge internal phone directory, and a slightly smaller list of banned and approved words or phrases.

    I don't think anyone gets a bonus in SWIFT, instead they give you a colossal salary. I'm not sure if they have shareholders except for banks.

    SWIFT isn't just the inter-bank messaging, it also has comparatively small side projects. I worked on Bills of Lading, the documents that facilitate transported goods, and I can readily see why blockchain would prove useful in situations like that.

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