Microsoft, Intel, JPMorgan And Others Create New Blockchain Alliance

Big name businesses team up to develop standards and technology to make it easier for enterprises to use blockchain code Ethereum.

Looking to jumpstart a blockchain bandwagon, thirty or so companies have united to build business-ready versions of the software behind Ethereum, a decentralized computing network based on digital currency.

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance showed off a prototype of the financial technology as it currently is in New York this week.

Several banks have already adapted Ethereum to develop and test blockchain trading applications.

The Alliance is however, just part of a much wider race to try and harness the virtually unhackable blockchain technology and monopolise it for practical everyday use.  Most people will already be aware of blockchain technology even if they don’t know it. It is the code that underpins Bitcoin and other digital currencies.

Ethereum was invented by 23-year-old programmer Vitalik Buterin, who previously worked on the Bitcoin blockchain algorithm. Several banks have already adapted Ethereum to develop and test blockchain trading applications.

New Horse In Town

The move by the 30 or so companies who have joined the alliance is in part a response to the similar IBM created Hyperledger Foundation. The IBM led blockchain project is currently the most well-known solution available, and is supported by a host of other big name companies, such as Hitachi.

Backers of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance have said it is important to have propriety influence over advancements in Blockchain technology and make sure that the market is not dominated by one single player.

The Alliance underscores the enthusiasm around the complicated but still relatively new technology. The fact that all such blockchain enterprises seem to have such a high number of backers also highlights the scale of the hurdles that companies must face before they can deploy blockchain on a large scale in their own industries.

It’s Complicated

Part of the problem resides in the inherent need for the vast number of transactions that each string of blockchain code requires to be truly functional, and the thousands of transactions that must be processed by large corporations on a daily and hourly basis, while also being secure enough to meet the high levels of security that most companies require to function.