What Enterprises Want From Ethereum?

Coindesk reported that Amber Baldet, the blockchain lead for JP Morgan, dealt with the question of collaboration between various Ethereum communities in her speech at the EthCC – Ethereum Community Conference – in Paris. The basic question of what blockchain builders wanted from Ethereum was up for debate.

Public and Private Blockchains

According to her, all blockchain builders, private or public, faced similar concerns that conversations and collaborations between enterprises would help resolve. She said that public and private builders faced similar problems, but tried to resolve them in different ways.

Explaining the workings of her own company’s private blockchain network, Quorum, Baldet talked about how JP Morgan, one of the world’s biggest banks, is attempting to develop collaborations between different blockchains.

She spoke at length about how she engaged with different cryptocurrency communities in a bid to find common ground. She said these conversations with enterprises, corporates, banks and even central banks were critical to mutual education as well as development in both industries. She said that the crypto industry and financial industry were not, in effect, mutually exclusive.

Answering the Question

The one thing that both private as well as public blockchain builders wanted from Ethereum was the ability to interoperate. This way, Baldet said, organizations and enterprises could occupy their own private universes which would be separate from public networks, but would still be able to gain the auditability as well as security of a public blockchain network.

The challenge that enterprises were facing across the board was the failure to interoperate. She said that people needed to move beyond the concept of enterprise blockchain and think about creating simple, user-friendly tech that can interact with current technology.

People also needed to move in the direction that Polkadot, Cosmos and Interledger had taken in terms of creating interoperability solutions that allowed blockchains to interact.

Another issue that interoperability would address would the issue of scalability, a challenge that most public blockchain networks are struggling with today. Interoperability would not mean scaling up the public Ethereum network, rather, it would take the load off the network and create space for more inputs.

She said that the community now needed to start developing software that worked not just for one group or another, leading to constant bifurcation of power structures.

At the end of the day, what is needed is technology that will encourage interoperability between networks and blockchains.