J.P. Morgan’s Former Head of Blockchain Amber Baldet Launches Decentralized App Store


Amber Baldet, J.P. Morgan’s former head of blockchain, announced a new blockchain start-up called Clovyr.

“Amber is extremely talented and helped build the outstanding team we have today. We respect her desire to start her own venture and we wish her nothing but the best,” a J.P. Morgan spokesperson said.

JPMorgan is one of the oldest financial institutions in the United States. It is the largest bank in the United States, and the world’s sixth largest bank, with total assets of US$2.6 trillion. Being a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers and small businesses, commercial banking, financial transaction processing and asset management, JPMorgan serves millions of consumers, small businesses and many of the world’s most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients.

Two years ago, J.P. Morgan developed its blockchain technology Quorum for clearing and settling derivatives and cross-border payments. Amber Baldet led the bank and helped it set its strategy. Now she has been replaced by Christine Moy, another senior product manager at the bank.

Amber Baldet announced leaving her job in April. But then her next steps were unknown. And now she and her partner Patrick Mylund Nielsen, a former JPMorgan’s employee as well, are ready to reveal the details of Clovyr, a new startup that seeks to provide a new layer of enterprise-driven services between blockchains and user-facing applications.

Clovyr is a decentralized application store that will host a selection of well-vetted applications alongside some in-house developer tooling designed to simplify application development for enterprises. Clovyr is building tools that make it easier to be smart about how data is collected, stored, and disclosed.

“It’s a way to help people think differently about decentralized application design,” Baldet said.

Clovyr will initially be compatible with Parity and Geth, two popular Ethereum software clients. According to the founders, other blockchain integrations can be added if there is a demand. The team plans to launch a full tech stack for privacy-protecting decentralized application design, that would achieve compliance with upcoming data protection law, the GDPR.

“When public cloud started to be a thing, a lot of businesses said, Oh, cloud, it’s a great idea architecturally, but we’re going to go ahead and build our own private cloud internally, because it’s safer and we know what we need,” Baldet said. “Now they’re spending millions of dollars to undo a lot of that work in an attempt to migrate to the public clouds that have evolved to the point where they are secure and robust and connected.”

Starting the project, Amber Baldet became an instigator for a bet between bitcoin developer Jimmy Song and Joseph Lubin. Jimmy Song said took on Lubin’s proposed bet that “blockchain tech”—the use of a decentralized ledger without a cryptocurrency—won’t have any significant users in five years.

The post J.P. Morgan’s Former Head of Blockchain Amber Baldet Launches Decentralized App Store appeared first on CoinSpeaker.