Introducing Quorum: JP Morgan’s Ethereum-Based Blockchain for Enterprises

Ethereum 1 min, 54 sec READ

by Chris Madill

JP Morgan’s project, Quorum, brings Blockchain tech to the world of private-enterprise, and could provide some interesting innovations

One of the world's largest financial institutions, J.P. Morgan, has been privately developing an “enterprise-focused” version of the Ethereum Blockchain. JP Morgan’s project, Quorum, looks to bring the advantages of Blockchain technology into the private networks of banking institutions.

Quorum is designed to run in a permission-based setting, unlike Ethereum, where all transaction/token data is visible on a public ledger. This kind of privacy is considered a necessary feature for the implementation of Blockchain within “enterprise-grade” private networks. Jeffery Wilcke, one of the founders of Ethereum, explains:

“The JP Morgan chain requires special rules that will allow private transactions, IE there's a separation between public and private contracts. [Public transactions] can be seen by anyone and [private transactions] can only be seen by parties that have access to a key belonging to that particular party.”

Quorum provides the “ability to transact or transmit information without surrendering information ownership” through a security-layer on top of its Blockchain. This “zero-knowledge settlement layer” allows Ethereum tokens to be transmitted while selectively choosing what type of intrinsic data is visible to those viewing the transaction. This type of innovation could prove useful to the wider Ethereum community going forward. Amber Baldet, Executive Director of JP Morgan's Blockchain Center of Excellence, explains how Quorum’s innovations could benefit the Ethereum platform as a whole:

“We could do a lot to reverse the aggregation and centralization and creation of data lakes, which over time, especially in a transparent public Blockchain, are going to at some point become surveillance lakes.”

Quorum is an interesting glimpse into the potential future of Blockchain technology. As more private Ethereum forks are created, applications like JP Morgan’s could provide innovative solutions to some of the problems facing Ethereum today, such as scalability. These off-chain “private universes” could run next to, rather than on-top of, the Ethereum Blockchain, relieving some burden from the Ethereum mainnet. In future, a vast network of smaller private-chain networks interacting with Ethereum and other public Blockchains, could help Blockchain technology evolve into a true Internet of Value.