EY recently announced the launch of the open-source Baseline Protocol, a smart contract and tokenisation platform purpose-built for enterprises on top of the public Ethereum blockchain in collaboration with Microsoft and Consensys.
The announcement claims that the Baseline Protocol will integrate all the latest innovations in blockchain technology, including "zero knowledge proofs, off-chain storage and distributed identity", all while maintaining full privacy so that no sensitive business information is stored on the publicly accessible Ethereum blockchain.
The protocol appears to be a step towards growing confidence in the accessibility of public blockchain technology to larger enterprises, who traditionally rely on closed proprietary systems to run their ERP, CRM and other internal systems of record. Indeed, the Baseline Protocol claims that it intended to overcome the difficulties businesses have had integrating blockchain with the high standards of privacy, security and performance required by corporate IT departments.
Beyond the founding trio, the Baseline Protocol was brought together by a number of other collaborators who are forming the protocol's technical steering committee (TSC), including AMD, ChainLink, Core Convergence, Duke University, Envision Blockchain, MakerDAO, Neocova, Splunk, Unibright, Provide, and W3BCLOUD.
The code for the Baseline Protocol is currently only available to a limited group of tests, with plans for the code to be fully open-sourced in April 2020. In the interim, interested parties can sign up to be involved though this Google Form.
Commenting on the announcement, Paul Brody, EY Global Blockchain Leader said:
This initiative builds on that groundwork and starts filling in gaps such as enterprise directories and private business logic so enterprises will be able to run end-to-end processes like procurement with strong privacy.
John Wolpert, Group Executive for Enterprise Mainnet, ConsenSys, said:
The EY vision to leverage the public Ethereum network without putting any enterprise data at risk aligned strongly with our view of the blockchain as an enterprise integration network. By working with EY, we can help build a powerful business ecosystem on open standards that is designed for privacy and security from the ground up.
This latest developments joins a increasingly long list of EY's blockchain achievements, including the recently released Smart Contract Analyser, its first generation of EY Ops Chain Public Edition being released into the public domain, as well as the second generation of EY Ops Chain and EY Blockchain Analyzer.