Internet Retail Behemoth, Amazon, Wins Two Blockchain-Related Patents

By Kapil Gauhar

Amazon has been awarded two blockchain-related patents which may further solidify its presence as a potential contender in this domain. The official award of a patent concludes a years-long filing, dating back to 2015.

The first patent is Signature Delegation, that tells about cryptographic signatures in a Merkle-tree based data scheme. Merkle-trees are one among the underlying innovations which make blockchains possible. The data structure helps participants in a peer-to-peer network for checking that the data is unaltered or to make sure that other participants aren’t telling a lie and sending fake data.

The second patent is Extending Grids in Data Storage Systems that demonstrates a method for creating an extendable shard in a database. It’s helpful when it comes to creating considerable flexible datasets, such as those which are seen in a blockchain. This patent was filed nearly three years ago, indicating that Amazon might have been aware of Bitcoin and other technologies quite early.

The patent covers areas which are similar to those of leveraged in torrent blockchain-based data storage projects like Siacoin, Filecoin, and Arweave. Probably, Amazon may strike its another multi-billion-dollar-a-year cash cow and include one of these services to its already expensive AWS offerings.

The news comes months after Amazon peeped into the cryptosphere with its data streaming marketplace patent. The patent describes a multi-streaming service to track transactions as well as various data for Bitcoin and other cryptos.

The Amazon’s rush into securing its patents mirrors similar moves which were taken by the other Fortune 500 companies like Bank of America, Xerox, JP Morgan, and Square. These firms are using the proliferation of open-source software for staking-out proprietary to claim on the new technology.

The 8th largest company in the world, by annual revenue, Amazon has maintained a stranglehold on cloud computing as well as data storage. The company boasts about triple the market share of its competitor, Microsoft.

Though IBM, Google, Alibaba, Microsoft have been turning up the heat, and the latter two have been delving into the blockchain technology even more. IBM’s Hyperledger consensus algorithm has obtained considerable open-source traction.

To combat this, the internet retail behemoth may be using this string of patents to jockey with the major competitors in the domain and reinvigorate its flatlining 33% market share.

However, the move accords with the company’s several attempts to solidify itself being a cloud provider of blockchain services. Currently, Amazon is competing with Google blockchain services, Microsoft Azure, and IBM Hyperledger to commercialize proprietary Blockchain-as-a-Service offerings.