U.S. Patent 10790988 was awarded to Alibaba Group Holding Limited on September 29, 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: receiving timestamps and associated signatures from an independent trust time server associated with a trust time authority by a centralized ledger server in a centralized ledger system, storing the timestamps and the associated signatures in a centralized trust timestamp blockchain that stores trust timestamp information of the trust time server for the centralized ledger system that stores data in blockchains each including a plurality of blocks, receiving a timestamp request for a block of a blockchain from a ledger server associated with the blockchain by the centralized ledger server, and transmitting a timestamp and associated signature that is stored in the timestamp blockchain and corresponds to the timestamp request to the ledger server by the centralized ledger server. Link to Full Patent

This blockchain patent was originally filed on December 13, 2019  as U.S. Patent Application 16/713574 at the United Stated Patent and Trademark Office. The application was them awarded a patent grant and published as U.S. Patent 10790988. 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 1 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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