How TestNet will help Ethereum based blockchains and dApps to interoperate?
When Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) was formed in the year 2017, it focused on customizing the Ethereum blockchain for industry players. In simple words, this translates to members of the alliance exploring private versions of the Ethereum blockchain for it to be adopted across industries. As a result, Ethereum blockchain has been the foundation of many enterprise blockchains including Hyperledger Fabric, R3 Corda, and JP Morgan’s Quorum.
The EEA which now boasts of more than 180 companies with 1400 (approx.) individual members has recently launched a TestNet for blockchain testing. This testing ground aka sandbox will enable the members of the alliance to test their blockchain or dApps before launching it.
EEA has partnered with blockchain testing and development firm Whiteblock. With this partnership EEA will gain access to Whiteblock’s Genesis testing platform. The platform will allow users to manage and utilize the EEA TestNet, wherein the alliance members will be able to collaborate around building and testing the next generation Ethereum enterprise apps.
How TestNet will help EEA members?
· EEA TestNet relieves the members from the necessity of launching a live environment to test applications before they are launched in the market.
· The alliance members would now be able to define their own scenarios, introduced their own nodes, and deploy decentralized apps (DApps).
· The TestNet provides Metamask support and full data as well as analytics capabilities.
· The blockchain projects will be able to independently verify any scalability metrics they claim for e.g. transactions per second
· Ethereum forks and dApps will also be able to simulate real world internet issues like low bandwidth or network latency
Interoperability
One of the major issue faced by Ethereum clients and protocols had been that they were not interoperable. For e.g. Quorum, the enterprise blockchain built by JPMorgan is unable to talk to Hyperledger Besu. This issue was not such a big problem earlier when enterprises were working in silos however, when these blockchains and network are put together in an app, and they aren’t interoperable, it definitely becomes a major issue.
The EEA TestNet will work as a pre-certification sandbox, where Ethereum forks are going to be standardized. The standardization is going to be done in accordance with certain specifications pre-defined by EEA, this is going to make these Ethereum forks interoperable with each other.
EEA TestNet aka sandbox is going to the place where the members are going to test different possible environments and then around the end of 2020, will be able to actually certify these specifications. When these networks, dapps and Ethereum forks are going to be EEA certified, enterprises will rest assured that they are without doubt interoperable.
With EEA TestNet, members will be able to test-run applications which are currently following the EEA specifications. The specifications don’t define which consensus algorithms to use like Proof of Work or Proof of Stake.
According to statements made by the company, the working groups of EEA are exploring Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus algorithms, especially the ones related to Istanbul Byzantine Fault Tolerant to add to TestNet specifications.
