Blockchain technology receives a lot of hype for its potential to disrupt a range of industries, making traditional companies difficult to resist the temptation. Haier Group, the world leading white goods maker, eyes the market potential for blockchain-powered smart home appliances, becoming the latest Chinese giant to ride the blockchian wave.

Zhou Yunjie , president of Haier, said in a recent public speech that Haier Group will integrate state of the art technologies, such as artificial Intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and big data to into its smart home solutions to cater to every users’ needs.Besides, the company will build the U+ platform for establishing the better connection of human-machine interface.

The world’s largest appliance manufacturer has unveiled its smart home solution platform on March 14. The platform allows home owners to control and monitor various devices at his home, including the heating, lighting, security, and entertainment, automatically and sometimes remotely via the Internet.

Zhu’s speech highlighted the important role of blockchain playing in Haier’s strategic layout. In 2017, Haier Group has launched a smart contract platform based on distributed ledger technology, enabling users to sign and honour contracts in an intelligent way.

Specifically, the smart contract platform provides contacts text interactive service which allows internal synchronization and online visual interaction,disrupting the existing contract certification process. All data related to interaction and signing agreements will be stored in the company’s big data platform as well as on blockchain, solidifying the evidence through the whole process.

In the smart contract platform, various types of non-standard contracts will be standardized, and standardized contracts will be stored directly after the user signs the contract. Under the premise of guaranteeing the legal effect of the contract, this blockchain-based platform is quite helpful in streamlining the process, improving the efficiency and reducing the cost.

Haier’s smart contract technology has been successfully piloted at a rural water station. By using this technology, the water station saved a large number of contract paper.

In addition,there was a rumor going viral online earlier this year that Haier Group has introduced a special kind of refrigerator that could be used to mine cryptocurrencies. But the news was not verified by the company.