The Distributed Technologies Research (DTR), non-profit foundation, has launched a globally scalable decentralized payments network, known as ‘Unit-e’. Babak Dastmaltschi, Chairman of the DTR Foundation Council said advancements in distributed technologies will enable open networks, avoiding the need for centralized authorities. Dastmaltschi said blockchain and digital currency markets are at an interesting crossroads. “We are nearing the point where every person in the world is connected together.” He said Unit-e would be launched in the second half of 2019.

The research group, made up of eight nationalities with an average of 10 years of experience building protocols and developer tools, aims to process thousands of transactions per second. It hopes to achieve speeds without compromising decentralization. An official statement by the DTR says “the team ensures the Unit-e codebase maintains the highest standards for innovation, code quality, security, protocol design and open source readiness. The project’s ideology is firmly rooted in transparency with a belief in open-source, decentralized software developed in the public interest with inclusive decision-making.” Pramod Viswanath, project researcher, said DTR deconstructed the blockchain technology to improve almost every element of it in a bid to achieve greater speed and scalability. “The group first sought to understand the blockchain’s performance limits so as to design technologies that operate as close to these limits as possible,” he said.

And interestingly, the Unit-e is gearing to tackle Bitcoin which is the world’s first payment network allowing people and businesses to transact with a central authority. Joey Krug, a member of the DTR Council, said DTR’s groundbreaking research is all about addressing scalability. Krug said the research project will benefit a huge swath of decentralized financial applications.

The DTR is a Switzerland-based non-profit organization. The organization provides funding for innovative research and development of distributed technologies.