Fortune Reports R3 Blockchain Consortium Is ‘Running out of Money’, Director Denies Rumors
While a year ago R3 had suggested that the organization had a bigger objective of bringing $200 mln up in funding, R3 revealed to Fortune that the figure originated from a now-canceled arrangement to offer a stake in a research subsidiary. The anonymous previous R3 employees disclosed to Fortune that the consortium’s internal financial targets are “10X short” of their income, with the figure described as “laughably off.”
Charley Cooper, an R3 managing executive, revealed to Fortune that the organization isn’t at risk of coming up short on income and will release a report on their accounts toward the end of the year:
“We currently have more than sufficient funding and at this point have no plans to raise additional money.”
Toward the end of May, Forex settlement provider CLS put $5 mln in R3 as a major aspect of an announced third round of R3 fundraising.
One anonymous previous R3 worker told to Fortune that one of the issues the consortium faced was an absence of developers for R3’s Corda blockchain:
“Although R3 will say 1,300 architects are contributing to Corda, if you look at the public release notes of R3, there will be no more than three people listed. The public version of Ethereum had 10,000 developers contributing.”
R3’s establishing members had included big banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs; however, Goldman Sachs (and bank Santander) left the consortium in 2016. An anonymous Goldman Sachs source revealed to Fortune that the bank left because of the unexpectedly huge size of the consortium.
According to the fortune, R3 recently cooperated with big business startup Bloxian Technology, which is eminent in that it is a step away from the plan of action of collaborating with banks. R3’s swing to big business blockchain deals implies that they are presently competing with associations like the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, whose individuals include JP Morgan and Microsoft, and also Hyperledger.
Fortune also reported that R3 also filed a claim against Ripple (XRP) a year ago, claiming that the last had damaged an agreement for R3 to buy 5 bln XRP tokens for $0.0085 before the end of next year. Ripple denies a commitment to pay, citing R3’s alleged inability to finish on parts of the agreement. The case will be held in New York City, with the value of 5 bln XRP currently equivalent to around $3.3 bln – which could speak to a much-required money infusion.
