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For instance, the Ethereum blockchain network can easily streamline various transactions in commercial real estate by providing a much more simplified and quick view of a virtual snapshot of vital information like credit history and property details to expedite the processes. It can easily streamline various Enterprise IT solutions too.
Hence, before we jump into Ethereum Enterprise Alliance or EEA, we should understand what Ethereum is.
Ethereum is essentially a decentralized platform for applications that run exactly as programmed without any certainty of censorship, fraud, or third-party interference.
In non-technical terms, it is an open-source and decentralized blockchain platform for smart contracts and applications. Also, it has its cryptocurrency called Ether, the crypto-fuel that can efficiently perform operations on the entire Ethereum blockchain. It essentially utilizes EVM or Ethereum Virtual Machine to compile codes written in the native language of Ethereum, Solidity. Also, as the code is duly executed on the blockchain, it can't be tempered or manipulated. Now, let's look at EEA.
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
Essentially, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance connects Fortune 500 companies, enterprises, startups, academics, and technology vendors with different Ethereum subject matter expertise holders or experts. By working together, they learn from and build upon the only actual smart contract supporting blockchain, which currently runs in real-world production, Ethereum, to define the enterprise-grade software capable of handling the highly demanding, most complex applications at the high speed of business and its processes.
The EEA is a group that consists of a group of companies of different shapes as well as sizes.
Alliances such as this are essential groupings of various industry players, some of which are active users of Enterprise mobility solutions, which will help smooth the road of Ethereum for its widespread adoption.
The worldwide acceptance of Ethereum has been quite gradual but consistent as well as steady and even though its technology is still in its early stage and will need to overcome several significant roadblocks and offer a solution to a wide range of issues of its prices dropping before it becomes entirely fully functional for business purposes and dealings.
The Ethereum Enterprise Alliance is just a start. This alliance is an effort to customize Ethereum for different industry players. Its members consist of an eclectic mix of many large as well as established organizations in their related industries, such as:
- Microsoft, Intel, Samsung (Technology)
- Santander, JP Morgan Chase, Scotiabank (Bank)
- Shell, BP (Oil and Gas)
- Mastercard (Payments)
- Bank of Canada (Central Bank)
- Accenture, Consensys (Consulting)
- Thomson Reuters (Media)
- Deloitte (Accounting)
Role of Ethereum Enterprise Alliance
This alliance's partners will help develop foundations for use cases within different industries like post-trade settlement as well as supply-chain tracking.
The main aim of the EEA is to provide a detailed and proper roadmap that distinguishes the entire enterprise features and even provides resources that will allow businesses to learn about Ethereum quickly and easily. To make it relatively easier for enterprises to easily leverage the blockchain technology of Ethereum in addressing given particular industry use cases is among the primary concerns of this specific alliance.
It is worth noting that the EEA is aimed at the "private" corporations that may have had problems utilizing the open-source Ethereum technology. But, the group uses public features along with the private network. Hence, it brings out meaningful interoperability, which means that it has developed dApps on the public network which can run on a particular private network such as Quorum of JP Morgan. It is one of the most advanced private networks on par with artificial intelligence programming.
The EEA would likely see many industrial use cases employed on the Ethereum network. The EEA must develop a particular framework that campaigns to see certain uniformity in the industry-wide governance for different enterprises that seek to utilize the platform. Thus, it is a positive initiative for the overall adoption and implementation of intelligent contracts.
Also, the platform allows for the ledger to create different decentralized applications, deployment, and execution of smart contracts.
The EEA has the innate potential to attract many businesses to the entire public blockchain projects easily. The EEA even offers the Ethereum blockchain & bitcoin legitimacy. Also, it provides confidence in corporations as well as businesses. Just look at the giants like Microsoft and JP Morgan to know that Ethereum has vital support. Even though they may not support the utilization of Ethereum as an investment tool, they are still promoting the technology. Hence, these sentiments will undoubtedly boost the value of the coin.
Also, the EEA is a vital aspect for the entire Ethereum community to quickly learn from the form and companies that have experience dealing with governments worldwide. Hence, it assists in giving the platform a presence in the entire era of different regulatory concerns.
Essentially they have developed a multi-layer architecture stack. It comprises five layers.
- The base layer consists of a peer-to-peer network protocol layer.
- The second one is the core blockchain layer. It is responsible for consensus as well as the execution of transactions along with data storage. It will consist of both on-chain as well as off-chain solutions.
- Now the third layer is privacy, as well as the scalability layer.
- Then, the fourth stack comprises the tooling layer. It will handle aspects such as permissions as well as oracles.
- The last layer is the application layer. Once finished, it is a particular milestone that will benefit the entire public Ethereum blockchain, as most of the developers see a tremendous amount of potential in the public chain. The development of these layers is quite similar to enterprise application development.
As we know, Ethereum or ETH remains an open-source, decentralized cryptocurrency. Still, it isn't run by the EEA. However, EEA continues to play a significant role in its overall development.
EEA Purposes on Blockchain
The EEA is designed to serve the three primary purposes of its blockchain.
At first, it will undoubtedly become governance and a standards body for the enterprise applications of Ethereum. Customization of smart contracts to efficiently work in the organizations requires permissions as well as access levels from different disparate entities.
This alliance will design a framework for the entire industry-wide governance and implement different smart contracts with various inputs from the members. It will likely make it easier to transfer real-world transactions onto a particular blockchain.
In the second place, it aims to retain compatibility with and enhance the public Ethereum. In case the smart contract of Ethereum is to reach its current business potential and change the entire way people conduct transactions, in that case, its public blockchain developer needs to include contributions from a wide range of stakeholders. Also, the alliance aims to plug in new features based on the various use cases developed in-house and even contribute to the roadmap of Ethereum.
Finally, the third stated purpose of this particular alliance is to ensure that rapid and swift technical innovation, as well as enterprise-grade governance, occurs. Familiar frameworks and standardization of different technical requisites will undoubtedly clear the roadblocks for other developers interested in innovating within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Also, Ethereum can easily benefit from the experience of the alliance in dealing with different government regulations. Most technology startups dealing in artificial intelligence development work in environments unfettered by the government's constraints. Hence, through their experience in dealing with governments and regulatory bodies, different alliance members have developed valuable strategies for working within the set constructs of government regulation. Hence, such institutional knowledge can quickly assist member startups in efficiently dealing with multiple regulatory bottlenecks as they scale their operations.
Read the blog- 5 things to consider in assessing a mobility solution for the enterprise environment
The Partnership of Hyperledger and EEA - Impact on Enterprise Blockchains
Recently, Hyperledger and Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, popularly known as EEA, finally announced that they are becoming members of each other's significant projects. Both organizations are signing as associate members of each other, specifically.
These consortia already count different companies and projects within their respective membership lists. Also, they are entirely dedicated to the diffusion of adoption of blockchain technology and putting the decentralized solutions right into the hands of the various member organizations, some of which lead to artificial intelligence app development.
Even though both of them share similar missions, this particular announcement represents the overall convergence of the two closely related but separate massive initiatives within the entire enterprise blockchain space.
The mission of EEA is centered around obtaining open standards. The goal of the group is to deliver a standards-based, open architecture and specifications to speed the adoption of Ethereum. Also, it describes itself as the first standards organization in the entire Ethereum ecosystem.
Considering the history of open standards, it is quite a big deal for the entire Ethereum community and especially for the blockchain industry, certainly as a whole. Basically, in most technological ecosystems, there is a bit of difficulty in getting all of the stakeholders to agree on a particular common set of given software standards as well as architecture specifications that are necessary for making sure that the software or the specific hardware to be built by one given organization is compatible with the products of the other organization.
Hence, in the case of the blockchain industry, universal standards are relatively harder to achieve as most blockchain communities are highly decentralized by their inherent nature. Hence, the purpose of such standards organizations such as EEA is to solve this challenge by creating a universal set of already agreed-upon practices which everyone will certainly follow when designing blockchains and blockchain applications. Hence, open standards ensure that one project remains compatible with blockchain built by some other organization.
However, Hyperledger oversees open-source projects that help developers create blockchains or various blockchain applications. Also, its inherent missions are actually to promote open-source code in the entire blockchain space. The Linux Foundation, which believes in the fundamental importance of open standards, oversees Hyperledger. However, they aren't colored as part of its current mission.
Through joining forces, Hyperledger, as well as EEA, are ensuring that open standards, as well as open-source code, can quickly develop side by side in the entire blockchain industry. It is significant as it is possible to have open standards without having open-source software and vice versa.
However, the partnership doesn't mean everyone will adhere to all of the standards and source codes these organizations promote. Indeed, no laws say you must abide by the Hyperledger, EEA, or anyone else whenever you build a blockchain protocol or application. However, this partnership will undoubtedly encourage more openness at different levels altogether.
Now, whether Ethereum even needs a business alliance or not arises. In this regard, various things need to be considered. Let's look into it.
Is there a Need for Business Alliance for Ethereum?
At present, three things need to happen to clear the space for intelligent contracts of Ethereum in the entire industry.
- The technology of Ethereum, which is still in its nascent stage, has to mature. Also, security is a necessary prerequisite for business apps. In the case of Ethereum, hackings at exchanges and ether thefts have certainly generated headlines even as the foundation of blockchain works out the kinds within its entire system.
However, the problems have only acted to dissuade the enterprises using enterprise mobility solutions from actually adopting the particular Ethereum technology. At present, the current governance standard for this technology also needs some work. For instance, the community is already in a dispute over a recent proposal, making it relatively easier to retrieve lost funds simply over the public blockchain.
- This one is related to the first problem. Various changes must be made to the public blockchain of Ethereum to make it quite suitable for usage in enterprises. It is essential as any corporate initiative to create an innovative contract platform must have specific import rules and transaction history data from a given existing database. Also, a bank would require transfer associate rules along with the loan recipient's history before it starts recording different transactions and even generating particular intelligent contracts on the blockchain of Ethereum. The main problem is the technical one, along with a philosophical disconnect.
Essentially, most of the information concerning the transactions is stored in the private database silos of small and large companies. It presents a problem for a particular consensus protocol like Ethereum. Every node must replicate information from the source databases to verify and validate specific future transactions. Different external factors come into play, from data source to network latency to each node and the integrity of data transmitted by the reference to every given node.
- Various governments worldwide have yet to create a regulatory framework to deal with these small contracts. Also, if and when these particular rules are implemented, the entire Ethereum community and developers will face difficulty in dealing with their inherent implications as they will encompass different industries, including finance, which is highly regulated.
Conclusion
The entire Ethereum technology is undoubtedly in its nascent stage. It must overcome different roadblocks, which consist of technical and regulatory ones before it becomes entirely functional for business dealings. Various alliances like Enterprise Ethereum Alliance are basic groupings of varying industry players, which will assist smooth road to the widespread adoption of Ethereum.
