Spain’s Biggest Banks Back Red Lyra Blockchain Initiative

A consortium of Spanish companies have joined forces to launch a multi-sector technology platform based on blockchain and distributed ledger technologies.

The not-for-profit platform, called Red Lyra, will provide a secure digital identity system for the development of new products and services, with the first service expected to become operational “in the next few months”.

The initiative has been supported by some of Spain’s biggest banks, such as Santander and BBVA, as well as boasting the likes of oil and gas giant Cepsa and postal service Correos among its founding members.

Red Lyra

The overall goal is for any company to be able to use the network to validate services and identities for applications such as fast customer onboarding, as well as legally apply digital signatures.

Spanish notaries will be able to certify and validate that the digital identity in Red Lyra matches a real identity and they will even make it possible to recover the identity if necessary.

“The project is inclusive and democratic because the members of the network are the ones who decide its future and ensure that no single member has full control,” explained Red Lyra director Alex Puig. “It is a consortium, a collaborative network, helpful for everyone.

“All of the partners and users act in ‘coopetition’, i.e. they cooperate with each other but they also compete, using the network with the assurance that they will never be able to control it without the approval of all participants.”

Blockchain is known as the technology underpinning the digital currency Bitcoin. It is essentially a highly secure database system that enables organisations to create digital ledgers of information and share them with select parties.

Accenture recently suggested that the technology could save banks £9.7 billion a year by reducing infrastructure costs, with experts looking into other potential applications in government and as a way to secure confidential US military data.

IBM believes the majority of banks will use Blockchain within the next three years and several consortiums have already been established to help drive its adoption.

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