Comments on Square’s Cryptocurrency Payment Network Patent

Square has made the news recently with a patent on Cryptocurrency payment network with real-time transactions.

We’re very excited about this development as it completely validates the approach we’ve taken with the GRAFT blockchain!

Another important question one might ask is “Will GRAFT project be impacted by this development”?

We will be studying Square patent further and any action we might want to take, but we wanted to provide a brief summary of our initial thoughts on the subject:

Square’s provisional application was dated later than GRAFT published its first white paper (July 15, 2017), providing GRAFT an excellent basis for prior art argument should this ever come to a head.
There are enough substantial differences in GRAFT and Square’s approaches starting with Square’s emphasis on a private, closed system, while GRAFT’s being on an open, decentralized approach
Decentralized open source projects are extremely resistant to outdated IP prosecution practices as there’s not single central commercial entity to go after
Square is not known for predatory IP behavior, which could be the case if the patent was issued or sold to a patent troll. We believe that Square filed the patent to ensure their own “freedom to operate”.