Baseline: Repo public // Unibright on the TSC // „Baselining“ explained

March 19, 2020 — Today, the GitHub repository of the Baseline Protocol will go public. The Baseline Protocol has the potential to be the icebreaker for enterprises looking to use the Ethereum Mainnet as a middleware bus. The opening of the repo and the corresponding bootstrapping phase of the Baseline Protocol will be supported by the Technical Steering Committee (TSC), in which Unibright’s CTO Stefan Schmidt holds one of 11 seats.

In this blog post we explain what the role of the TSC is, and give an example for what “baselining” means, based on Unibright’s MultiPartyApproval template.

The Baseline Protocol Technical Steering Committee

The first individuals and companies have stepped up to identify themselves as supporters, stakeholders, and responsible and accountable parties of the Baseline Protocol.

Unibright’s CTO Stefan Schmidt holds one of the 11 seats of the TSC, together with colleagues from ConsenSys, the Ethereum Foundation, EY and others, and states:

I am humbled and honoured to be a member of the Baseline Technical Steering Committee. I am looking forward to working together with great colleagues, of which some I already know from our work within the EEA EMINENT (Ethereum Mainnet Integration for Enterprises) TaskForce. I especially want to thank Kartheek Solipuram from EY for all the work he and his team have put into the initial version of the Baseline Protocol. I am convinced that if we all work together, we can make the Baseline Protocol the worldwide standard for enterprise blockchain usage.

One of the TSC’s roles will be stepping in to resolve any conflicts on merges or maintainer self-organization. It is important to emphasize that the Baseline Protocol is a protocol, and not a product. From Unibright’s perspective, it should not be “occupied” by single companies or stakeholders, but rather be understood as a design pattern with the most possible “common sense” between all contributors, maintainers, and users.

What is “baselining”?

To explain “baselining” as a design pattern, we want to give an example from the Unibright Framework world — the MultiPartyApproval-Template — which was also the template of choice for our public demo.

In the following video, Unibright’s CTO and Baseline TSC member Stefan Schmidt explains:

• Why it is meaningful to define business processes on an abstract level, like with our Unibright Workflow Designer, and to be not only “blockchain agnostic” but also “design pattern agnostic”.
• That enterprises may be cautious to use a public blockchain, because they do not want to give others any insights (even if they are pseudonymized) into their processes.
• That a “private” chain does not solve all the concerns enterprises may have towards privacy, as a private chain still can give others insights that should not be made public.
• How integration changes (or doesn’t change) in regards to Baseline as long as you have a low-coding integration component like the Unibright Connector which can connect to blockchains, off-chain-systems and APIs (like that one of Baseline).
• How important code generation (like with our Unibright Lifecycle Manager) becomes in the world of Baseline, because generated code becomes the “shared” and trusted codebook of all participants of a business process.
• How tokenization processes (like with out Freequity components) come into play, when blockchain is not “only” used as a middleware, but also as a token environment for tokens representing digital identities or even securities.

How to become part of Baseline?

You can check out the Baseline repo on GitHub and contribute to or maintain it as a developer. You can join EEA and support the Task Forces in their daily work to drive enterprise blockchain adoption.

Our great colleagues at Provide (whose CEO, Kyle Thomas, is also on the Baseline TSC) have already built a functional proof of concept of their orchestration and blockchain APIs to be “baselined”, called “Shuttle”, so you’ll be able to check out some “baselining” yourself soon.

To get a quick start, you should also check out a great Baseline FAQ by EY’s Paul Brody:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethfinance/comments/fds4sy/a_sort_of_baseline_explainer_faq/

We will keep you updated on progress on the Baseline Protocol and of course on our Unibright development around it.

Unibright is a team of blockchain specialists, architects, developers and consultants with 20+ years of experience in business processes and integration. Unibright turns ideas into businesses, and improves processes with the help of blockchain technology.

Unibright develops enterprise solutions, invests in start-ups, builds process modelling tools and integration platforms and offers a 360° ecosystem around tokenized assets.

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Learn more by visiting the Unibright website, Twitter and Medium.