U.S. Patent 10742423 was awarded to Alibaba Group Holding Limited on August 11, 2020 and is entitled “Managing blockchain-based centralized ledger systems.” The first named inventor is Yuan Zhang of Shanghai, . The abstract contains an overview of the patent disclosure:

Disclosed herein are methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for managing blockchain-based centralized ledger systems. One of the methods includes transmitting individual timestamp requests for to-be-timestamped blocks in a blockchain to a trust time server independent from a blockchain-based centralized ledger system that stores data in the blockchain, the blockchain including a plurality of blocks storing transaction data, receiving respective timestamps and associated signatures for the to-be-timestamped blocks from the trust time server, and storing information of the respective timestamps and associated signatures for the to-be-timestamped blocks in respective timestamped blocks in the blockchain, any adjacent two of the timestamped blocks in the blockchain being anchored with each other. Link to Full Patent

This blockchain patent was originally filed on December 13, 2019  as U.S. Patent Application 16/713639 at the United Stated Patent and Trademark Office. The application was them awarded a patent grant and published as U.S. Patent 10742423. The primary examiner was Ghodrat Jamshidi.

Alibaba Group Holding Limited, who is the original assignee of this patent, has at least 1834 total granted patents in the United States as of the date of this article. This blockchain patent has been cited 2 times by other U.S. patents according to our law firm research, and can be considered an innovative patent in the field of cryptocurrency and blockchain.

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