Enterprise Blockchain Newsletter #14
I have been slow with sending out the Enterprise Blockchain Newsletter lately; I will try to keep it up monthly, as promised. Today I would like to point your attention to a few quality stories and new reports that happened recently as the enterprise blockchain space continues to develops both in robust tooling, new partnerships and overall maturity. Now, I hope that most of us are wrapping up a successful 2019 and all eyes are looking at the upcoming year. Wondering what to expect in 2020? Have a look at my article What Are The Top 10 Blockchain Predictions For 2020?.
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Hyperledger turns 4 and new Fabric 2.0 beta
This is the major news on this edition as Hyperledger turns 4! Home of 15 impressive projects, 1,623 contributors and 121,178 code commits, below are some of the numbers so far:
On another node, the most popular project within the Hyperledger family, Hyperledger Fabric just released a long-awaited version 2.0 beta! Here is what is new:
- Multiple organizations must agree to the parameters of a chaincode
- More deliberate chaincode upgrade process
- Simpler endorsement policy and private data collection updates
- Inspectable chaincode packages
- Start multiple chaincodes on a channel using one package
- New chaincode lifecycle
- Private data enhancements
Any many more. I was last week at a NYC meetup at IBM Garage where the above were discussed at length and it is really impressive the amount of work done. Now we have a bit-overengineered process but delivering a detailed granularity in the settings and management of Fabric networks. More here: https://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/latest/whatsnew.html
Ernst & Young Report “Seize The Day: Public Blockchain Is On The Horizon”
This is a very good report commissioned by EY with the goal to assess the readiness of enterprise executives toward blockchain, and particularly, public blockchains. The results are perfectly aligned with what I see in the market as well. Yes, there is an interest in public-only blockchain solutions as everyone is tempted by the potential and the scale of such infrastructure. But on the other hand, we all agree that it won’t happen in the next few years despite the urge and enthusiasm of several companies. If someone is trying to convince you otherwise, they probably have a different agenda or are selling their own “bags”. The most developer-adopted public chain is Ethereum, which lacks any predictability with the launch of Ethereum 2.0 because it might or might not happen in 2021+. The most secure, trusted and decentralized blockchain protocol is the bitcoin network, but it lacks the developer adoption and tooling. My opinion is that we are going into the direction of public blockchain adoption for enterprises, but it will take a while and the transition will involve hybrid solutions first.
Nevertheless, EY’s report is an excellent read:
Enigma Discovery: Bridging Private Enterprises and Public Ethereum
Last week Enigma announced their implementation of Enterprise Ethereum Alliance’s Trusted Compute Specification (TCS) with encrypted state and Ethereum interoperability. This was done with help from Intel and leveraging their SGX trusted execution environment. This news is quite positive for companies wanting to bridge both their private and sensitive data and the public Ethereum network.
Read more here: https://blog.enigma.co/enigma-discovery-bridging-private-enterprises-and-public-ethereum-30302f5f9f5d
XBourse will use project:DABL as a cloud for DAML applications
Project:DABL is easy to use low-code cloud environment where developers can focus on their applications without the need to worry about the infrastructure. XBourse is already using DAML to develop markets-as-a-service offerings with bespoke solutions such as a private corporate bond issuance platform with integrated functionality for a secondary trading market and a collateralized loan module to provide margin, if needed.
State Street and Gemini Launch Digital Asset Pilot
State Street, the second largest custodian in the world will do a proof of concept (PoC) with Gemini. In the PoC, trade orders will be executed on the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange engine but the data will be viewed on the State Street portfolio management screens. Effectively will be a paired service of digital asset custodian and portfolio management/asset allocator dashboard.
Deutsche Börse: New DLT Solution for the Securities Lending Market: The HQLAx Operating Model
The Germany-based exchange and marketplace Deutsche Börse is heavily invested in blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs). They have partnered with HQLAx to develop a solution for managing collateral swaps. As I have written before, in the securities lending and repo markets, there are great inefficiencies, specifically around the management of collateral. It’s worth mentioning that HQLAx’s platform is developed on top of R3’s Corda protocol.
The HQLAx model consists of four layers:
- the leading Eurex Repo F7-trading system where transactions are executed,
- the digital collateral registry layer, which enables delivery-versus-delivery (DvD) ownership transfers of baskets of securities,
- the participating custodians/tri-party agents where the securities are deposited, and
- the Deutsche Börse-owned Trusted Third Party (TTP) entity which connects the custodians/tri-party agents to the digital collateral registry.
Architecture Stack Update: Quorum Released Plugin for Remix and Hyperledger Besu and Corda New Versions
Quorum is the permissioned blockchain protocol developed by J.P. Morgan, and it is one of the most adopted (alongside Hyperledger Fabric and Corda) in the enterprise world. They have just made life easier for developers with the release of a plugin. The plugin allows you to:
- connect to the RPC endpoint of a Quorum node
- manage the public keys and choose which ones will be included in your private contract
- optionally connect to a Tessera (Quorum’s private transaction manager) node to automatically pre-populate the available public keys
- deploy, attach to, and interact with contracts just like you normally would in Remix
https://medium.com/remix-ide/quorum-plugin-for-remix-ee232ebca64c
Meanwhile, the other Ethereum-based enterprise-ready protocol, Besu, has introduced a critical bugfix release and now the current release is 1.3.7. Download it here: https://github.com/hyperledger/besu
Corda also announced that the enterprise edition of the protocol ver 4.3 is now generally available. More here: https://medium.com/corda/corda-enterprise-4-3-is-now-ga-e3e760a8e0cc
