A new app allows members of the Communist Party of China to pledge their loyalty to the Party by writing down the reasons they joined, and answers will be stored on a permanent distributed ledger using blockchain technology. This way a person’s party loyalty will stay recorded in cyberspace forever.

The platform is called Lian Shang Chuxin and, similar to the now well-known Study Xi Strong Country app, it’s another online tool inspired by the teachings of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Communist Party of China on blockchain

It follows the now well-established tradition of naming state-sponsored online platforms after untranslatable bureaucratic jargon. In this case, the name comes from Xi’s phrase “don’t forget your original intentions,” which urges Communist Party members to stay true to their mission.

The term “Original Intentions” is a specific phrase mentioned by Xi during his remarks at the 19th National Congress of the CPC in 2017, after which it became a significant propaganda and educational campaign for party members to stay committed to their party.

According to the post, the technology behind the dapp was developed by a Beijing-based company called Lingzhu Technology, which says it’s a blockchain developer without much detail on its tech or the team behind it.

The company’s registration data shows it has received investment from state-owned capital tied to China’s Tsinghua University and claims it has developed a blockchain called OF.

In fact, this company issued a little-known cryptocurrency dubbed OFCoin and got it listed on exchanges like OKEx and CoinMex early in 2018, months after China cracked down on initial coin offerings and fiat-to-crypto trading.

OFCoin’s price jumped by as much as 90 percent to $0.000326 on Saturday just hours after the CPC released the dapp and said that Lingzhu Technology is behind it. As of writing, the coin has fallen by 35 percent from that peak with just a few million dollars in daily trading volume.

It’s not clear if Lingzhu has conducted any public sale of the tokens. The listing profile on CoinMex states that OFCoin planned a private token sale of 20 percent of its 51.2 billion OFCoin in January 2018 at a ratio of 300,000 OFCoin to 1 ether, when the ether price was about $1,000.

The rally in OFCoin is just one ripple effect in China from Xi’s speech. (via)