Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

What Is the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance ?

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance  (or EEA), launched in February 2017, brings together various start-ups, Fortune 500 companies, technology vendors, academics, and Ethereum subject matter experts to work on Ethereum as an enterprise-grade technology.

How the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance  Works

Although many technology giants and businesses had been supporting Ethereum via Cloud services and working towards its adoption, most efforts towards its scalability, privacy, and interoperability remained scattered until the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance came into being.

The alliance aims to build, promote, and support Ethereum blockchain technology best practices, standards, and a reference architecture that is capable of handling its real-world applications and usage.

Launched in 2015, Ethereum is a blockchain-based, decentralized software platform that enables smart contracts and Distributed Applications (ĐApps) to be built and run without any downtime, fraud, control, or interference from a third party.

Ethereum is not just a platform but also a programming language (Turing complete) running on a blockchain that helps developers build and publish distributed applications.

The potential applications of Ethereum are wide-ranging, and this has attracted a number of enterprises to explore the technology. Ether, the cryptographic token used on the Ethereum platform is the second most popular cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization with an aggregate market cap of around $218 billion in the second quarter of 2021.

Examples of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance at Work

In recent times, multiple pilot projects have been initiated and worked on by member companies (and others) covering areas such as supply chain provenance tracking, inter-bank payments, reference data, securities settlement, and many others.

However, real-world enterprise use calls for collaborative efforts to build architectures that allow both permissioned and public Ethereum networks. The formation is EEA is an important step in this direction.

The EAA also provides education and training for members. The organization publishes newsletters, videos, and webinars as part of its public service mission.

EEA Membership

The founding members of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance included Accenture, Banco Santander, BlockApps, BNY Mellon, CME Group, ConsenSys, IC3, Intel, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, and Nuco.

According to the EEA website, there are 109 associate and organizational members of EEA as of July 2021. Associate members are represented by the Blockchain Research Institute, Hyperledger, and SAE ITC. Social impact partners include the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition and the Decentralized Identity Foundation.

The members of EEA represent varied businesses from every region of the world, including technology, banking, government, healthcare, energy, pharmaceuticals, marketing, and insurance, with the total count of members now approaching 500.

With a focus on solving real-world challenges of deploying Ethereum at enterprise-scale, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is an important initiative in the adoption of blockchain and decentralization.