Baidu, a Chinese internet giant with over 65% of the search engine market share in the country, has launched its own cryptocurrency, called Xuperchain. It’s said to be fully compliant with China’s policies while using a network of masternodes for efficiency. Its whitepaper claims it can process up to 10,000 transactions per second and support blockchain-based applications.
The cryptocurrency is compliant within China and uses a series of masternodes to run its network, built on top of Baidu’s own technology.
According to local news outlets, the blockchain-based network is capable of supporting over 10,000 transactions per second and is designed to support blockchain applications, much like the Ethereum network.
Xuperchain’s underlying code was open-sourced back in May 2019, and can be easily accessed on GitHub. It also has an open block explorer anyone can visit. The cryptocurrency’s whitepaper makes it clear its role is to help modernize China’s governance capacity, helping it become a leader in distributed ledger technology.
It’s unclear how centralized or decentralized Xuperchain is. Its use of masternodes, according to some analysts, implies the need for centralization.