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12 of the biggest enterprise blockchain players of 2020

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Enterprise blockchain started gaining traction in 2017 shortly after Bitcoin had reached its all-time high of nearly $20,000. Since then, enterprise blockchain has mainly been defined by private blockchain networks used by businesses for things such as supply chain management. 

The enterprise blockchain space has changed quite a bit since 2017. For instance, 2020 has brought in a number of enterprise blockchain use cases that leverage public networks rather than private ones. The COVID-19 pandemic has also driven many companies, both large and small, to use blockchain for guaranteeing proof-of-health or to revive tourism. Finally, some blockchain companies this year have started showing an interest in decentralized finance, taking steps to drive this new sector.

Listed below are a total of 12 companies and solutions that have made strides in the enterprise blockchain space this year. 

Ernst & Young

Big Four firm Ernst & Young has played an active role in enterprise adoption. The firm was one of the first to explore the cryptocurrency space in 2016 when the company conducted a survey to better understand the potential of digital assets. Since then, EY has been leading the way for public enterprise blockchain adoption.

For example, EY continues to contribute to the development of the Baseline Protocol, which uses the Ethereum public mainnet as a tamper-resistant state machine to record business data. In May 2019, EY open-sourced its Nightfall code for conducting private transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. 

Moving forward, EY plans to make Nightfall and zero-knowledge proofs easier to use for developers. Paul Brody, blockchain lead at EY, previously told Cointelegraph that developers will eventually shift from building decentralized applications to creating zero-knowledge applications, or “ZApps,” with EY’s blockchain solutions.

IBM

Big Blue’s open-source blockchain for business platform is powered by Hyperledger Fabric, an important technology that has contributed to the growth of the IBM Blockchain platform. For example, the IBM Food Trust network is currently being leveraged by major food producers, such as Nestlé, Dole and olive oil giant CHO. 

The Food Trust network dates back to 2016 — one of the earliest examples of enterprise blockchain when IBM blockchain was being leveraged by Walmart to determine food products that needed to be recalled. Another important project powered by IBM Blockchain is Maersk’s TradeLens platform, which helps shipping giants digitize their supply chains.

In addition, the Digital Health Pass platform uses IBM Blockchain to help provide verifiable health credentials, which has become extremely important due to the COVID-19 pandemic. IBM Blockchain’s partnership with the American software company Red Hat is also notable in terms of open-source development and a cloud strategy that heavily relies on blockchain technology.

Hedera Hashgraph

The decentralized public network Hedera Hashgraph was developed in 2016 with the goal of enabling developers to build secure applications with near real-time finality. Since then, Hedera’s network has grown to be owned and governed by an impressive list of companies, including Google, IBM and Boeing. 

Hedera has recently demonstrated an important blockchain use case with the release of its “SAFE HealthCheck” app, which is being applied for remote COVID-19 testing. The app is currently being used at Arizona State University, where it provides over 70,000 students and staff members with remote testing and digital health status verification. The Hedera Consensus service, the company’s enterprise blockchain solution, is also being used for other important use cases including acting as an early-warning system for airstrikes in Syria.

IconLoop

South Korean blockchain company IconLoop was founded in 2016 to enable real-world blockchain applications within the banking, healthcare and government sectors. The company is headquartered in Seoul and has raised over $15 million in funding. IconLoop recently announced that Jeju Island, a tourism hot spot in South Korea, will use its Decentralized Identity blockchain to provide secure COVID-19 contact tracing. 

It’s also notable that The Financial Services Commission recently approved IconLoop’s decentralized identity authentication service into the “Innovative Financial Services and Regulations Sandbox.” In October this year, Cointelegraph reported that IconLoop secured $8 million in a Series A funding round, which will be used to help launch a blockchain-based digital identity authentication service called my-ID.

World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum Global Blockchain Council was developed to help advance blockchain technology for the global public interest. As such, the WEF council has launched a number of initiatives that leverage blockchain for public development. In May of this year, the council developed a list of blockchain principles to protect the rights of those in the blockchain community. 

Understanding the risks and benefits of blockchain, and the right to store and manage cryptographic keys are included on the list. The blockchain council also recently launched a proof-of-concept to track greenhouse gas emissions from mining and metals companies across a blockchain network. It’s also notable that the WEF believes that blockchains can enable sustainable digital finance.

PayPal

PayPal, one of the largest online payments systems, has taken a keen interest in cryptocurrency and blockchain since 2014. It was during this time that the company announced it would enable merchants to accept Bitcoin (BTC) through Braintree via several partnerships. The company noted it was looking for a way “to understand how to leverage blockchain to better serve merchants and users.”

In 2016, PayPal’s administration became interested in developing its own blockchain to enable high-speed transactions using digital currencies. However, PayPal really shook up the crypto sector this year when the company announced plans for a new service to support cryptocurrency starting in early 2021. In November of this year, PayPal’s crypto trading and payment platform went live for U.S. users. PayPal’s recent entry into the cryptocurrency market is predicted to impact the price of Bitcoin moving forward.

Microsoft

Software giant Microsoft offers a blockchain-as-a-service through its cloud computing arm, Azure. While many companies such as GE Aviation and Starbucks leverage Microsoft’s blockchain platform for supply chain management, the company has taken a much larger role in blockchain development.

Most recently, Microsoft announced a partnership with EY to use the Ethereum blockchain for Xbox gaming royalties. In regards to the pandemic, the Albany Airport is trialing a “Wellness Trace App” to ensure cleanliness of surfaces inside the airport. The app is powered by the Microsoft Azure blockchain. In June of this year, Microsoft joined the InterWork Alliance to help create global standards for tokenized ecosystems.

Visa

Payment giant Visa has shown an interest in blockchain and cryptocurrency since 2015 when it made an investment in blockchain startup Chain. In October 2016, Visa announced a preview of “Visa B2B Connect” as a system powered by Chain to quickly and securely process business-to-business payments globally. 

Visa’s early efforts in the blockchain space eventually flourished into groundbreaking developments in fintech. For instance, Visa now powers a number of crypto debit cards, like those from Binance and BlockFi. In December of this year, Visa joined forces with blockchain services company Circle to make USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin transactions compatible with certain credit cards.

However, Visa’s growing interest in fintech has also been met with scrutiny. In January, Visa acquired fintech firm Plaid, which was criticized by the U.S. Department of Justice, provoking a lawsuit against the payment provider.

JPMorgan

JPMorgan Chase is the biggest bank in the United States and one of the largest financial holdings in the world. The organization showed an interest in blockchain in 2017 when JPMorgan joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, an association comprising companies interested in advancing the Ethereum blockchain.

In 2018, the banking giant published the “Bitcoin Bible” to explain to investors the positives and negatives of investing in crypto. In February 2019, JPMorgan announced its “JPM Coin” to help banks settle transactions quickly, which was subsequently launched in 2020. JPMorgan also leads the Interbank Information Network, a blockchain consortium consisting of over 130 banking partners that use distributed ledger technology to enhance compliance and reduce processing delays. 

Related: JPM Coin debut marks start of blockchain’s value-driven adoption cycle

While JPMorgan is clearly pro-blockchain, the firm has taken a harsh stance toward Bitcoin over the year, yet this outlook seems to be changing as the price of Bitcoin continues to reach new all-time highs.

Baseline Protocol

Announced in March of this year, the Baseline Protocol initiative was launched as an Oasis open-source project to enable advanced interoperability for blockchain applications. Baseline Protocol started with 14 founding companies and has since grown to a community of over 700 members, with sponsor organizations, such as Accenture and ConsenSys supporting the project.

The Baseline Protocol is attempting to resolve the blockchain interoperability dilemma, which will ultimately bring more organizations onto the Ethereum blockchain. Currently, big companies, such as Coke One North America and SAP, are leveraging the Baseline Protocol to synchronize and share business data among multiple participants.

The Baseline Protocol, with help from enterprise blockchain company Provide offering “Baseline-as-a-Service,” will eventually pave the way for enterprise DeFi. This will allow businesses to move items of value, such as financial data included in invoices, across various networks.

Salesforce

Software giant Salesforce rolled out its first blockchain-based product in May 2019. Known as “Salesforce Blockchain,” this is a low-code blockchain platform that extends the power of Salesforce’s customer relationship management system, or CRM, which caters to over 150,000 customers.

Salesforce previously told Cointelegraph that its blockchain is meant to connect businesses with IT teams to drive ROI. The product is used by a number of companies, such a Automobili Lamborghini — the Italian automobile brand — to authenticate heritage Lamborghini cars.

In April of this year, Salesforce integrated Lition’s commercial blockchain technology to help the company leverage data decentralization in its CRM. Most recently, Salesforce partnered with IBM to bring IBM’s blockchain-based Digital Health Pass onto the Salesforce platform.

Fujitsu

Japanese IT company Fujitsu began showing interest in blockchain technology as early as 2016. In 2017, the IT giant announced that it was developing blockchain software powered by Hyperledger for data handling, access and distribution. Shortly after this, the company announced plans to commercialize its enterprise blockchain solution, making Fujitsu a direct competitor with IBM’s blockchain solution.

Most recently, Fujitsu has taken an interest in digital identity, leveraging its blockchain solution to detect a user’s identity and credentials for online transactions. It’s notable that Japan’s third-largest bank, Mizuho Bank, along with local payments giant JCB, plans to pilot a digital identity interoperability system powered by Fujitsu’s blockchain solution.



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Blockchain

Why you wouldn’t eat chicken nuggets, and why you shouldn’t trust Big Data

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Dezember 29, 2020

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Just like you might think twice about eating chicken nuggets once you see how they are made, you’d likely hesitate about volunteering your personal information once you see how it is used and monetized.

Freedom has become one of the world’s most commoditized assets — and over the years, the internet has eroded it.

We live in a world where we’re confronted with 5,000 words of terms and conditions when buying sneakers. Crucial details about what companies do with our data is buried in masses of legalese — prompting most of us to click “I agree” without thinking of the consequences.

In other cases, companies are unacceptably opaque about how our data is used. This is a big problem when businesses are offering their services for “free”… provided we can give our email address, phone number and a few other details.

A scene from the recent sci-fi series Maniac perfectly illustrated where the world is heading. A character is given a choice — they can either pay for their subway ticket or get it for free in exchange for some personal information. As you’d guess, they bluntly chose the latter.

That’s basically what we’re doing every day — giving our data to corporations, big and small, and sacrificing our privacy and freedom in the process.

It’s gotten so bad that individual states have had to step in with rules and regulations designed to protect the public, many of whom are unaware of what they’re signing up for when they tick a seemingly innocuous box on a website.

And it’s also telling that tech giants are worried about the taps being turned off. When Apple unveiled a new feature that would enable users to opt out of having their activity tracked across apps and websites, Facebook launched a ferocious PR campaign against the measures. The social network said it was speaking out to protect the small businesses who rely on its platform for targeted advertising. Cynics among you will see it as a brazen attempt to protect profits by a company charged with some of the most insidious and influential data mining in history.

Pandora’s box has been opened

The tide is beginning to change — because we’ve opened Pandora’s box — and the world is starting to have long-overdue discussions about the privacy we’re entitled to online.

For more than 10 years now, we’ve experienced abundant financial freedom thanks to Bitcoin (BTC) and its rivals… but there’s still a long way to go in other parts of our society.

Last week, I went to the shop and spontaneously bought some moisturizer, and when I got home, I did a Google search to learn more about the product. For the next seven days, I was bombarded with moisturizer ads on Facebook.

Just like our health, our well-being and our careers, freedom is an inner personal responsibility that we need to monitor, maintain and protect — especially in the digital realm, where it can all too easily be sold in exchange for access to free services.

To feel free and safe in our homes, we rely on the privacy of our ownership, and the trustworthiness of our friends and neighbors. Government laws and housing association rules underwrite this. But we also entrust our financial privacy to institutions — in the expectation that they will be held accountable by regulators and central banks — and the whole reason Bitcoin launched in 2009 was because our expectations weren’t being met.

Why blockchain is the answer

Every modern proof-of-stake blockchain tackles the problems surrounding digital privacy and trust in a unique way, and in these vibrant communities, decentralized governance helps to ensure that standards are upheld, with slashing mechanisms serving as a deterrent to those who are tempted to work against a network’s best interests.

With PoS blockchains, users benefit from informed consent. They’re kept in the loop about proposals for improving and expanding the network and ideas for new services. Digital social consensus means they can read debates about the pros and cons associated with each proposal, come to their own conclusions, and cast a vote accordingly. Can you honestly imagine a tech giant doing this?

Privacy issues can be solved by generating abstract network addresses that are not permanently tied to public keys — or through the use of special proxy smart contracts, which are similar to VPN and Tor but on top of the blockchain.

Can blockchain technology solve some of the most pressing privacy and trust issues seen in a generation? I believe so. Once the technology is there and transactions are cheap enough, consumers will be able to make a choice — share their private data or pay a small fee instead.

We need to learn harsh lessons from the past and make the right decision this time around. I remember the early days of email when spam messages were a big issue. A small sender’s fee was considered as a way of circumventing this problem — but in the end, the likes of Gmail came out on top. Now, there’s no monetary cost… we just pay the small price of Google hosting all of our electronic correspondence.

Proof-of-stake blockchains can deliver cheap transactions, decentralized governance that regulates the network’s rules, maximum privacy, and no data collection policies. Each story starts with trust — and in the blockchain world, the trust starts with the network.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Vladimir Maslyakov is the CTO of Thekey.space and former CTO of Exante.eu. He developed several distributed financial systems as an IT architect. He has been a blockchain enthusiast since 2012 and is an initial member of the Free TON community.