As revealed by Reuters two weeks ago, ConsenSys has acquired the Enterprise Ethereum platform Quorum from J.P. Morgan, which also made a strategic investment in the company which Reuters put at $20 million.
“The creation of Quorum was a first for J.P. Morgan, both in terms of developing its own blockchain protocol, and open sourcing software for the developer community,” said Umar Farooq, Global Head of Blockchain, J.P. Morgan . “We’re incredibly proud of the usage of Quorum over the past few years and are excited to have ConsenSys as a partner to take the vision forward.”
ConsenSys also incubated Hyperledger Besu, another flavor of Enterprise Ethereum. When we reported the news two weeks ago, we raised the possibility of a future rationalization between the two open source protocols. The company said it plans to merge its existing engineering roadmap with Quorum ‘leveraging the best of both codebases’.
In the announcement, ConsenSys said it would use the ConsenSys Quorum brand for both Enterprise Ethereum flavors, the Go Quorum-based version or the Java oriented Hyperledger Besu-based version.
ConsenSys has been responsible for high profile implementations of Quorum including for trade finance blockchain komgo, agribusiness consortium Covantis, and LVMΗ Αura for luxury goods. But another ConsenSys project backed by big banks, Liquidshare, is adopting Besu.
“Even before the very first block on Ethereum was mined and ConsenSys was formed, we’ve collaborated with J.P. Morgan on Ethereum proofs of concept and production systems, “ said ConsenSys CEO and founder Joe Lubin. He continued that they “look forward to unifying our Hyperledger Besu-based Enterprise Ethereum client with Quorum, and supporting all of the Quorum installations globally.”
Lubin concluded that they plan to work with J.P. Morgan “for many years and ushering in an era of enterprise and mainnet compatibility.”
Meanwhile J.P. Morgan will continue with its two high profile Quorum projects, the JPM Coin and the Interbank Information Network (IIN) payments messaging network.
