Chain Inc, an enterprise software company that partners with leading financial firms to design and build blockchain networks, has partnered with the Initiative for Cryptocurrency and Contracts (IC3), underscoring its commitment to building interoperable software that is scalable across the financial services industry.

As part of this partnership, Chain will host the next IC3 Retreat for its industry partners in San Francisco February 2017. The invitation-only workshop features discussions on current advancements in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and the field's future with focus on privacy, security, performance, and compliance. 

“We are very pleased to announce this partnership and look forward to closely collaborating with IC3’s eminent research team,” said Ryan Smith, CTO & co-founder, Chain. “Modern cryptographic protocols are the foundation of secure blockchain networks. We believe that these techniques combined with robust software engineering will transform the infrastructure used for financial transactions.”

IC3 is an initiative of Cornell University, Cornell Tech, UC Berkeley, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the Technion. It was founded to advance the development of blockchain technology by making its collective world-class expertise in cryptography, distributed systems, game theory, and programming languages available to industry partners.

Professor Emin Gün Sirer, co-Director of IC3 and Associate Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, said, “We are delighted to have Chain join IC3 as a Sponsor member. The Chain team shares our vision of ubiquitous blockchain-based networks that are fast, scalable, confidential and secure. We look forward to collaborating with Chain to accelerate the deployment and adoption of reliable smart contract solutions.”

Headquartered in San Francisco, Chain has raised $45 million from leading venture capital firms and strategic investors. It has developed and maintains the Chain Open Standard, an open source blockchain protocol for high-scale financial applications. Chain's platform includes Chain Core, an enterprise-grade production node, and the Chain Sandbox prototyping environment.