Tech giant Microsoft has been awarded a blockchain-related patent for techniques for implementing a cross-chain token management system.
The patent was granted Tuesday to Microsoft’s subsidiary, Microsoft Technology Licensing, as the company plans to make it easier and more efficient to create crypto tokens for various distributed ledgers.
According to the patent, creating and managing tokens is currently “difficult and cumbersome” due to the lack of standardization between different blockchains.
Microsoft’s patent describes a ledger-independent system to help users create and manage tokens across different networks.
Examples of such platforms in the patent application included major blockchain platform Ethereum, IBM-backed Hyperledger Fabric, JPMorgan’s enterprise blockchain platform Quorum, R3 Corda, and Chain Core.
The computer system described is intended to provide the user with one or more “token templates”, each of which corresponds to a type of physical or digital asset. The ledger-independent token service is designed to act as a single interface for managing the token lifecycle across multiple blockchains, allowing developers to write code to handle and manage tokens “in a manner that is agnostic to the underlying distributed ledger networks.” .”
At the request of a user, the system provides templates with various attributes and control functions. Those would depend on the type of token needed, for example a digital or physical asset. After the user selects the desired template, the system creates the token on the designated networks.
The system also provides a common interface for managing the tokens, so developers don’t have to worry about token-specific code to interact with it.
