In an effort to position Chengdu as a national blockchain research and development center, a group of companies and universities have come together to form a new blockchain consortium, Sichuan Daily reported.

On 14 June 2017, Tianfu Software Park, BTC123, and University of Electronic Science and Technology of China announced the establishment of the Southwest blockchain innovation and development alliance. This marks the first blockchain consortium in southwestern China.

According to CoinDesk, the initiative was announced during a forum named "The Global Summit Forum of Blockchain" held in Chengdu. Leon Li, CEO of Huobi, and Star Xu, CEO of OKCoin were among the event attendees.

The effort aims to establish a blockchain innovation and development service base to provide business incubation, corporate investment and financing services, and corporate training. It seeks to achieve this through the integration of school and enterprise resources.

Last year in June, over 30 Chinese financial firms formed ‘Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Consortium’ dedicated to blockchain technology. Yet another distributed ledger technology-based coalition was announced in April 2016 – the ChinaLedger Union.