Ankr is a new cryptocurrency partner for Microsoft.
Ankr, which forms a strategic relationship with Microsoft to supply infrastructure for dedicated nodes, received important cryptocurrency news. The excellent news follows the cooperation between AWS and Avalanche’s announcement a few weeks ago.
Recall that the Ethereum token Ankr (ANKR) fuels Ankr, a Web3 infrastructure. Also, it serves as a DeFi platform for staking on many blockchains, making it simpler and more accessible for anybody who wants to take part in blockchain ecosystems by creating decentralised applications (dApps), running nodes, or staking.
In an otherwise very down day for the whole cryptocurrency market, news of the partnership between Ankr and Microsoft quickly pushed the price of ANKR surging.
Regarding which, there are worries arising, particularly from the crisis between Russia and Ukraine, as well as fresh winds of monetary tightening from the main central banks around the world.
In any event, the partnership with Microsoft is crucial for ANKR. Nevertheless, as The Block has revealed, the cryptocurrency project has partnered with American IT behemoth Microsoft to provide node hosting services to commercial customers.
The American news site claimed that the two businesses will collaborate to provide these services by utilising Microsoft Azure’s cloud architecture, with particular goods that will be specifically customised to the requirements of customers who need to run nodes.
Given the importance of Ankr’s partner, it was to be expected that the announcement would cause a token rush. Microsoft’s general manager of AI and emerging technologies, Rashmi Misra, said:
“With our relationship with Ankr, we will investigate how Web3 can address actual business issues while enabling developers and organisations to access blockchain data in a dependable and safe manner. We are constructing Web3’s solid infrastructure layer as a team.
Remarks on the partnership between Ankr and Microsoft
As expected, a new node hosting service will be made available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace thanks to Microsoft’s relationship with decentralised blockchain infrastructure provider Ankr.
Ankr’s blockchain infrastructure and Microsoft’s cloud services will be combined as part of the partnership’s technology integration.
Ankr claims that the corporate node distribution service will provide Web3 projects with low-latency blockchain connectivity so that developers can focus on expanding their applications instead. The service can read or write blockchain data as well as forward transactions and distribute smart contracts.
The company will be able to extend its transaction processes even further by effectively directing requests for remote procedure calls to the most appropriate nodes by upgrading its load balancing system to leverage Azure-based routing technologies, according to Ankr.
With the help of technological integration, users will be able to manage node hosting solutions with the option of bespoke memory, bandwidth, and location for blockchain nodes.
Ankr’s co-founder and CEO Chandler Song offered the following analysis on the situation:
The alliance, while being a tremendous accomplishment for Ankr, also serves as an important barometer for how effectively the decentralised web has grown to mesh with critical actors at every level of web infrastructure. As a result, there will be a very active period of building for blockchain-based apps from new Web3 initiatives and big businesses joining the market.
Crypto mining on cloud services is prohibited by Microsoft.
Microsoft, a leading provider of cloud services, recently implemented additional limitations on activities like cryptocurrency mining in order to improve the stability of its cloud services.
In order to better secure its customers and its clouds, Microsoft has thus prohibited bitcoin mining from its online services, according to British technology news source The Register on 15 December.
The new limitations were added by the firm as a part of the general licencing conditions for Microsoft Online Services. Microsoft clarified in an update to its Acceptable Usage Policy on December 1 that mining cryptocurrencies is not permitted without Microsoft’s prior consent.
Microsoft stated under the “Acceptable Usage Policy” section that users must now request written authorization from the firm before using any of the Microsoft Online Services for cryptocurrency mining.
According to reports, Microsoft stated that its most recent prohibitions on cryptocurrency mining are intended to safeguard online services from dangers including cyberfraud, assaults, and illegal access to user resources.
“We made this move to help safeguard our clients and reduce the chance that services in the Microsoft cloud might be disrupted or compromised.”
The business reportedly also mentioned that it might take into account approving cryptocurrency mining for vulnerability detection testing and research.
Microsoft’s software as a service strategy includes their hosted software offering, or Microsoft Online Services. One of these services is the Microsoft Azure cloud computing network, which offers bitcoin mining for several subscription kinds.
As was previously reported, Microsoft also tested out blockchain services on Azure but quietly ended that project in September 2021.
According to some sources, continuous supply chain issues have caused substantial capacity gaps in Microsoft’s cloud computing platforms in recent years. There are supposedly going to be limitations on more than six Azure data centres till the beginning of 2023.
