The world's fifth-largest telecommunications company by revenue, Deutsche Telekom AG, intends to play a key role in the NEAR blockchain as a validator. This became possible after the company joined the Enterprise Node Operators program of the NEAR ecosystem to support the decentralization and security of the network.
Oliver Neiderle, head of digital trust and web3 infrastructure at Deutsche Telekom, called the collaboration promising and innovative. He also added that the NEAR blockchain team shares the company's aspiration "for greater data sovereignty and control over personal data in the interests of users."
According to a statement from Deutsche Telekom, the collaboration with NEAR expands its “staking portfolio” and allows it to take a worthy place in the field of “decentralized artificial intelligence and scalability.” At the same time, the telecommunications company did not specify the scope of its participation as a network validator.
A few days ago, Deutsche Telekom subsidiary MMS and one of Germany's oldest banks, Bankhaus Metzler, launched a pilot project to study the possibility of using excess renewable energy for bitcoin mining. The companies' experts believe that this data could help stabilize Germany's energy system, which is currently going through hard times.
