The Need-to-Know Blockchain Consortia
While traditional blockchain networks are public, consortium blockchains are permissioned — they are only open to those who have been granted access. Instead of the full decentralization of their more popular public counterparts, consortium networks run on a principle of partial decentralization, enabled by the use of alternative consensus models.
In consortia, consensus participation usually relies on the use of a group of pre-approved nodes. Control over a network is shared between a group of individuals, making consortium blockchain networks a popular and useful choice for venture enterprises consisting of multiple organisations with aligned goals.
Through cooperation and collaboration, blockchain consortiums have begun to enhance the business processes of their members. Here are three of the current industry-leading blockchain consortia that you should know about.
Corda
Corda is arguably one of the biggest collaborative efforts of the tech and legal industries. Originally run privately, founders r3 made the decision to release their code and open-source the software.
By using Corda, companies are able to build blockchain networks that facilitate direct B2B transactions and smart contract privacy. While primarily intended for legal identification purposes, the potential uses of Corda are broad. In the words of r3:
“Corda is a decentralised database platform designed and built from the ground up for the recording and automation of legal agreements between identifiable parties. It is heavily influenced by the requirements of the financial industry but we believe the underlying architecture will lend itself to a broad range of applications.”
The ledger has no central authority and is instead run on a P2P network with distributed timestamping. While r3 describe their project as blockchain, technically Corda use no blocks. They were one of the first major projects to break from conventional blockchain architecture.
The consortium is formed of over 200 organisations from various industries. As well as integrating with tech firms like Microsoft, they collaborate on end-user applications with Finastra, SIA and more. What’s more, they have won the backing of prominent financial partners like Wells Fargo and Bain.
For an extensive examination of the technology behind Corda, we recommend this thorough blog post by Multichain.
Hyperledger
Hyperledger is a permissioned, shared ledger and is amongst the most well known of the blockchain consortia. While many consortia aim to benefit a specific industry, Hyperledger is a huge open-source collaborative effort designed to advance blockchain technologies across all sectors. Its participants, including industry leaders like American Express, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan, Accenture, and Airbus, are managed by its creator, The Linux Foundation.
Hyperledger is an umbrella organisation, best understood through their projects and technical objectives. According to their charter, the Hyperlink Project has four main goals:
“The mission of HLP is to:a. create an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework and code base, upon which users can build and run robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support business transactions.b. create an open source, technical community to benefit the ecosystem of HLP solution providers and users, focused on blockchain and shared ledger use cases that will work across a variety of industry solutions;c. promote participation of leading members of the ecosystem, including developers, service and solution providers and end users; andd. host the infrastructure for HLP, establishing a neutral home for community infrastructure, meetings, events and collaborative discussions and providing structure around the business and technical governance of HLP.”
At any one moment, Hyperledger is incubating a multitude of projects, some of their most well-known and interesting include:
Hyperledger Fabric: Led by IBM, Fabric is plug-n-play blockchain technology intended to develop high-scaling blockchain applications with flexible permissions.
Hyperledger Iroha: An easily integrated blockchain platform and permissioned network that allows businesses to create and manage digital assets.
Hyperledger Sawtooth: An Intel-developed modular blockchain suite using a new consensus algorithm — PoET (Proof of Elapsed Time).
Unlike other consortia, Hyperledger chose not to create and manage their own currency. They are demonstrating the potential of highly scalable, non-monetary, blockchain applications. Backed by some of the most recognizable brands in the world, Hyperledger has earned its reputation as the king of the consortia.
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA)
The EEA is a member-driven standards organization. They believe that the global adoption of blockchain will emerge from interoperability driven by shared open standards.
As Ethereum technology continues to mature, the EEA are developing foundations for use cases within several industries. They customise Ethereum for industry players, aiming to create high-speed, enterprise-level software capable of handling a vast array of modern applications.
They define themselves as the following:
“The EEA is a global community of blockchain leaders, adopters, innovators, developers, and businesses from around the globe collaborating to bring about solutions for the benefit of everyone.”
With almost 400 diverse member companies and 1700 individual members operating in 45 countries, the popularity of EEA speaks for itself. Its board members are from influential organisations, such as Santander, Intel, and the CME Group. This diversity of members allows smaller members to learn from industry behemoths with decades of experience dealing with regulatory bodies.
The intentions of the EEA can be summarized as the following:
- Design an industry-wide governance and smart-contract implementation framework.
- Become the go-to governance and standards body for enterprise applications.
- Improve the technology behind public ethereum and retain its compatibility.
- Ensure rapid technical innovation and enterprise-grade governance.
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