Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA): What Is It?

Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA) was launched in 2017 to bring together different industry players. The aim is for these “players” to work together on Ethereum as an enterprise-grade technology. In the hierarchy of cryptocurrencies, Ethereum’s ether is right close to the top. Much of the potential of ether is based on the smart contract capabilities of Ethereum’s blockchain.

Smart contracts allow different parties to conduct transactions amongst themselves using the Ethereum blockchain. These smart contract transactions are not only limited to the finance industry. For instance, we can employ the Ethereum blockchain to streamline transactions in commercial real estate.

Despite the great potential and obvious utility of Ethereum’s blockchain to different sectors, mainstream adoption has been slow. The major reason for such occurrence is the fundamental disconnect between Ethereum and these corporations. These large corporations have constructed hierarchies and permissioned access to their information systems. Meanwhile, Ethereum is built on the philosophy of transparency and decentralized authority.

Therefore, to reconcile these two parallel perspectives demands work of an order of magnitude. The Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA) is a start to reconciling Ethereum blockchain and mainstream corporations.

Read about Ethereum Plasma

What Is Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA)?

It is an association of Fortune 500 enterprises (Microsoft, JP Morgan, Accenture, etc.), startups, Academics, and Ethereum blockchain experts. Although these companies have different objectives, they are all blockchain enthusiasts. EEA is established to customize Ethereum for industry players. The core mission of EEA is to build, promote, and broadly support all Ethereum based technology best practices.

What it means is that participants can develop their in-house private Ethereum blockchain. Also, if one member company makes a codebase on the Ethereum blockchain and it is useful to another member company, the code can be shared. The EEA has four visions, which are all listed on their official website. These visions include the following:

• To be an open-source standard but not a product

Ethereum Enterprise Alliance will define open-source standards for the development and operation of Ethereum’s blockchain across all member companies.

• To address enterprise deployment requirements.

EEA will facilitate and control cross-deployment across its members for different business needs and use cases where they are applicable. For instance, if a member implements a blockchain-based KYC platform on Ethereum, EEA can assist another member in implementing the same when and where required. This will save a lot of development costs for EEA member companies.

• Evolve in tandem with advances in public Ethereum

The members of EEA will be making their private blockchain leveraging Ethereum technology. However, they can always get experts on the subject matter from the existing public blockchain of Ethereum. Therefore, both the public and private versions will advance together.

• Leverage all existing standards

The Ethereum public blockchain was launched in 2015, thus making it 6 years already. Therefore, new blockchains formed by EEA in the future can leverage the standards of the old blockchain.

• The EEA Membership

Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is a collaboration of more than 100 members. Meanwhile, organizations with the mindset of developing and improving private or public blockchain are welcome to be a member. Before you become a member, you have to fill out an application form specifying your name and other personal details. You will be required to provide your company size and other relevant details. Once you complete and submit the form, you will receive a DocuSign document for the membership agreement and other information.

Although EEA has many members, the founding members are Accenture, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Intel, ConsenSys, Banco Santander, Nuco, BlockApps, CME Group, BNY Mellon, and IC3.

Also, members from other regions of the world include Mitsubishi UFJ, Samsung SDS, Toyota Research Institute, National Bank of Canada, etc.

How Does Ethereum Enterprise Alliance Our Work?

Before the launch of EEA, many technology giants and businesses had been offering support to Ethereum through cloud services. However, most of the efforts toward’s Ethereum’s scalability, privacy, and interoperability remained scattered until the advent of EEA.

The alliance aims to build, promote, and support all Ethereum blockchain best practices and standards. EEA also aims to develop a reference architecture with the capability of handling its real-world applications and usage. Ethereum as a blockchain system was launched in 2015. Ethereum blockchain enabled the building and running of smart contracts and distributed applications (Dapps) without downtime, fraud, or interference.

Meanwhile, Ethereum is not just a platform; it is also a programming language (Turing complete) that runs on blockchain. It helps developers to build and publish distributed applications. There are various ways to apply Ethereum, so Ethereum has attracted many enterprises to explore the technology.

Consensus Algorithm

Enterprise Ethereum Clients implement at least the Clique Proof of Authority Consensus Algorithm. Most clients implement more than one consensus algorithm, and clients that also operate on Mainnet will need to implement EthHash. The Our Working Group expects to agree on a Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus algorithm as an additional implementation requirement for Enterprise Ethereum Client. The consensus algorithm implementaion should ve modular and configurable.

Permissioning Requirements

Ethereum Ethereum clinets might support local key management allowing users to secure their private keys. Clients might also support secure interaction with an external key management system for key generation and secure storage. The alliance aims to build, promote, and support all Ethereum blockchain best practices and standards. EEA also aims to develop a reference archhitecture with the capability of handling its real world applications and usage. Ethereum as a blockchain system was launched in 2015. Ethereum blockchain enabled the building and running of smart contracts and distributed applications (Dapps) without downtine, fraud, or interference.

With EEA, you can send private transactions. These are transactions where thye metadata or payload data are readable only by parties participating in those transactions. Meahwhile, Ethereum is not just a platform; it is also a programming language (Turing complete) that runs on blockchain. It helps developers to build and publish distributed applications. There are various ways to apply Ethereum, so Ethereum has attracted many enterprises to explore the technology.

Some Real-Life Our Works Done By Ethereum Enterprise Alliance

Since the launch of EEA in 2017, multiple pilot projects have been initiated and worked on by member companies. These pilot projects cover areas like supply chain provenance tracking, inter-bank payments, reference data, securities settlement, and many others.

However, real-world enterprise use demands collaborative efforts to build systems that allow both permissioned and public Ethereum networks. The establishment of EEA is an essential step to achieving this goal. EEA also educates and trains its members, publishes newsletters, releases videos and webinars as part of its public service mission.

Does EEA Have Any Rival?

Yes, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is not the only one trying to standardize blockchain development and deployment. The rivals include the likes of IBM’s Hyperledger and R3 Corda.

Hyperledger is an open-source, multi-project collaborative effort that is hosted by the Linux Foundation. The aim is to advance cross-industry blockchain technology use cases.
R3cev is an innovative blockchain firm that is focused on developing and empowering the next generation of global financial service technology.

Although EEA is the youngest amongst them, its future looks promising as it keeps gaining huge support. Since the day it was launched, EEA has more tripled in size.

Conclusion

Ethereum Enterprise Alliance is undoubtedly a great body, but time will tell if it will flourish or flounder. Also, Ethereum’s blockchain has to overcome many roadblocks (technical and regulatory) to become fully functional for business transactions. Alliances like EEA will surely help smoothen Ethereum’s road to mainstream adoption.

Also learn about Stellar Payment Network.

The Best Blockchain For Your Business

Blockchains are a powerful concept. They are decentralized trustless peer-to-peer networks enabling the participants to transact without trusting anyone in the network. Transactions performed on the Blockchain are grouped together in blocks which are then chained together using cryptography.

Blockchains are here to solve a fundamental problem in our society which is the need for an individual to trust a third party with their money or valuable data.

So, you have decided that you are going to incorporate blockchain to streamline your business process. Now you need to decide which platform you need to build upon. The Blockchain technology domain is one of the fastest-growing and the most unpredictable areas to work in. After the advent of Ethereum, countless other public Blockchain platforms have propped up claiming to be better than it, the same is true for private/permissioned Blockchain platforms. When you think about implementing Blockchain technology in your business, you are overwhelmed by the number of options there are to choose from. This article is going to help you make a better and more informed decision.

Permissionless or Permissioned

First and foremost, you have to figure out which parties will have access to read and write data in the Blockchain. The questions you need to ask yourself are:

Do you need it to be open to anyone?
Do you need the data to be public?
Will the Blockchain be open to anyone to write?
Do you need a cryptocurrency or crypto-token?

If you answered "yes" to all of them, what you are looking for is an open permissionless Blockchain platform. If you answered "no" to at least one of the above questions, you might need a permissioned platform.

Public or Permissionless

Open/Permissionless Blockchain platforms are exactly what they sound like. They are public and open for anyone to read and write data. The community collectively owns and maintains permissionless Blockchain platforms. Permissionless platforms are plagued by scalability problems as they have to sacrifice speed and efficiency for decentralization and security.

They typically have a native token that is used to incentivize the participants in the network and can also be used as fuel to run computations on the platform.

Some of the well known public Blockchain platforms are:

Bitcoin
Ethereum
EOS
TRON

To read about these platforms in more detail, click here.

Some of the use cases of a public platform are:

Banking
Supply Chain management
Real Estate
Healthcare
Digital Identity
Food safety
Cryptocurrency & Fungible/Non-fungible token
Notary
Voting
Asset Tokenization
Internet-of-things

Public Permissioned

A blockchain which is open to be read by anyone, but has limitations on who can write data to it. They are comparatively less decentralized and are typically owned collectively by a group of organizations to bring transparency in their processes. By design, they are faster and more efficient than their permissionless counterparts because of relative centralization.

Some of the use cases of the public permissioned platforms are:

Supply chain management
Personal health records
Digital identity system

Private Permissioned

A Blockchain which is not open to being read by anyone, and is also limited to a certain number of participants who can write to it. They are the most centralized variant of the technology and anyone or multiple organizations can own them.

Some of the use cases that the private permissioned Blockchain platforms are:

Inter-department communication
Inter-organization supply chain

Scalability

If you have decided to go with a public Blockchain platform, then you need to decide the platform which will fulfill your resource appetite. The questions you need to ask yourself are:

Will your users be doing a lot of transactions on the Blockchain?
Are fast transaction confirmations essential to the success of your project?
Will you be storing a lot of data on the Blockchain?
Would you rather prefer to pay the gas on behalf of your users?

Scalability issues have plagued Blockchain platforms today. There is something called the "Scalability Trilemma", a term coined by Vitalik Buterin (Founder of Ethereum), referring to the tradeoffs that crypto and Blockchain projects have to make. The three components are decentralization, security, and scalability. That is to say "you can't have everything". There are tradeoffs that you have to make between these components. Therefore, there are only two things that you can have at the expense of the other.

If you answered "no" to the above questions, then this probably means that your use of Blockchain is minimal. In that case, you should go with a platform with a proven track record of reliability.

These platforms can include:

Ethereum
Bitcoin, in some cases

If you answered "yes" to at least one of the above questions, then this probably means that your project is resource-intensive, and Ethereum won't do the job. You are looking for a platform that can handle and confirm a lot of transactions per second.

In that case, these platforms will do the job:

Zilliqa
EOS
TRON

But you have to keep in mind that the projects that claim to be scalable enough to process thousands of transactions per second are usually making some tradeoff on either decentralization or security of the platform.

Security

The security is probably the most important aspect of the Blockchain platform that you are ultimately going to use. You need to ask yourself:

What's the security of the underlying consensus algorithm?
Have you tested the consensus algorithm in production?
Has the code been peer-reviewed and audited?

If security is your utmost priority, then you have no other choice than going for the Bitcoin Blockchain, you can harness the security of the most popular Blockchain platform in the world. Bitcoin Blockchain has limited functionality. If you want to go for a platform that offers more control and lets you build more complex smart contracts, then Ethereum is an equally good choice.

Niche

Is your project more suited to be built on a permissioned platform?
Does your project target a specific Blockchain use case?

There are quite a few Blockchain platforms that target a specific use case.

Hyperledger Indy - Digital Identity
Hyperledger Grid - Supply Chain
Corda & Quorum - Financial Applications

Developer Community

Since Blockchains are still fairly new, having a vibrant and resourceful developer community around that platform will enable your engineering team to get help in the time of need. Certainly, the skilled developers in the community and the resources available online will enable them to build your product in a better way. The questions are:

How big is the current community around that project, or will it be in the coming years?
How responsive is the community in providing feedback and support?

Since Bitcoin and Ethereum have been around the longest, they have the most vibrant and resourceful community. But other platforms are catching up fast.

Future Roadmap

Finally, you need to judge the changing trends of the Blockchain world and which platforms are going to win in the long run.

Will it support communication with other Blockchains in the future?
Are they actively working on increasing the transaction throughput without compromising on security or decentralization?
What are their plans to attract more DApp developers in the future?
What other future upgrades do they have in store for their users?
Do you foresee a big enough developer community around that project?

These questions will help you make better decisions.

Still unsure about which Blockchain is best for your business needs? Talk to a Blockchain expert from Xord here and get FREE consultation on choosing the best blockchain solution.