Ant Financial, a spin-off of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and akin to Paypal in the U.S., has revealed its blockchain-driven open ecosystem and a cross-chain product ODATS (Open Data Access Trusted Service) at the Apsara Conference held by Alibaba as an annual tech and cloud computing conference.

Julian Gordan, VP Asia Pacific at Hyperledger, an open-source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies, revealed at the conference that Hyperledger will work with Ant Blockchain to promote the interconnection of blockchain ecosystem and realize the cross-chain interoperability.

Jiang Guofei, vice president of Ant Financial, introduced that the company’s self-developed financial engine powered by blockchain – Ant Blockchain – has technically been able to support 1 billion accounts and 1 billion daily trading volume with 100,000 tps (transactions per second).

Founded in 2016, Ant Blockchain has already covered over 40 fields including commodity traceability, public welfare, medical health, copyright, cross-border remittance, supply chain finance, e-invoice, insurance, etc. Li Jieli, director of Ant Blockchain Baas business, predicted that Ant Blockchain will serve 100 million people next year.

Last June, Ant Financial has leveraged blockchain technology to offer cheaper cross-border remittance between Hong Kong and the Philippines (the world’s third-largest remittance market with inflows of $33 billion in 2017), helping hundreds of thousands of Filipino working in Hong Kong lower their cost of sending money back home.

At the Apsara conference, Alibaba also announced its ant blockchain’s partnership with Bayer Crop Science, the agricultural division of pharmaceutical and life science giant Bayer AG.

This will be the first in-depth application of Ant Blockchain in agriculture. According to the cooperation agreement between the two parties, Bayer will provide superior technologies and product resources of crop science, and ant blockchain will provide technical support in blockchain and traceability, as well as its advantages in marketing, logistics and financial resources.

“This is just a beginning. In the future, Ant blockchain will allow more traditional industries to migrate onchain. By taking advantage of blockchain technology, we’ll build the passport to the commercial society with trust.” said Jiang.

In pursuit of next-gen technologies, Alibaba has been making great efforts in blockchain, as well as artificial intelligence (AI). The company said on Wednesday that it has developed an AI chip called Hanguang 800.