JP Morgan’s Ether Experiment

It seems like only recently that JP Morgan was talking about how ‘Bitcoin is a Fraud, only fit for use by drug dealers and murderers.’
It’s been a pretty quick turnaround from that stance to seven months later, today, when JP Morgan unveiled its Quorum Blockchain Platform.

Working in synergy with the National Bank of Canada, with big name participants like Goldman Sachs and Pfizer, the Quorum platform aims to make a Blockchain based solution to issuing financial instruments. With a successful test today, spun out of a year’s effort and millions of dollars of investment, there are dozens of potential use cases to streamline processes.

It’s also built on Ethereum.

Most press releases mention that in passing, but it’s a significant fact- Though the Quorum Platform is marketed and pitched as if it’s a Blockchain platform on it’s own, it actually rides on the Ethereum Network. As such, Quorum needs to work through the same scaling issues and transaction speed limits that Ethereum based projects need to deal with. Vitalik Buterin himself, creator of Ethereum, has raised his doubts about several aspects of the Ether platform and is currently working on a next generation platform called Ether 2.

While JP Morgan remains optimistic about the project, going so far as to say that they are considering making Quorum an independent entity — There are still plenty of hurdles for it to cross before it can be considered a serious solution to real world issues.