Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group has obtained two U.S. patents intended to make its blockchain network more secure and quicker. One patent strives to reduce the time to validate block data, while the other is intended to assist participants in setting a validity period for a transaction in a blockchain network.

The patents were approved by the USPTO, i.e., U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week.

The patents get approved at a time when Ant Financial, the fintech arm of Alibaba, declared the launch of its ‘Ant Open Blockchain Alliance,’ a consortium that proposes to fund small and medium-sized businesses on its blockchain-based platform.

According to the patent filing, when data is added to a node, the new technology will fix the update verification value of the node by utilizing just the newly added data rather than the entire data in the block.

“The application will alleviate a problem in the existing technology, that much time is consumed because a verification value is calculated by using all data in a block,” the filing said.

The other patent would be applied to set up a validity period for a transaction, indicating members of a blockchain network can only process the transaction during a specific period through either a logical clock or physical clock, according to Alibaba’s filing.

For instance, the blockchain can be a consortium blockchain comprising of a third-party payment platform server, a foreign bank server, a domestic bank server, and various user node devices serving as member devices.

The operator of the blockchain can fix a validity period and use online services like asset transfers and cross-border payment, the filing said.

Alibaba is amongst the top three companies in developing blockchain patents, adjacent to China Telecom and OneConnect, reported Chinese blockchain analytics firm Block Data on Chinese blockchain patents.
Alibaba applied for maximum blockchain patents in 2018 with 90 blockchain-related technologies, accompanied by IBM and Bank of America.