Today the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) published a report assessing the business readiness of the public Ethereum mainnet for enterprise use cases.
“Is Ethereum ready for business? We believe the answer is yes, though with some caveats,” said EEA Executive Director Dan Burnett. The report clarifies the caveat as it’s not yet “out-of-the-box” ready.
While one might expect the paper to be overwhelmingly supportive of using the public blockchain, it’s reasonably balanced in weighing the strengths and weaknesses in detail, covering issues such as privacy, interoperability and regulation.
One significant change in the last 12-18 months is the rollout of many layer 2 and sidechain solutions. These don’t only provide scalability and lower transaction costs but also support sidechains and layer 2 solutions being private permissioned blockchains, enabling convergence between the two worlds. Additionally, the transition of Ethereum to Proof of Stake will address many of the sustainability concerns.
In terms of use cases, after stripping out consumer DeFi and NFTs, the EEA’s most common applications are asset tokenization followed by supply chain provenance. It delves into more detail on these two areas as well as the potential of payment solutions and marketplaces.
In its early days, the EEA focused on private permissioned blockchains such as Quorum. While the crypto crash might have impacted the timing of the report’s publication, numerous companies have been actively working on making public Ethereum more useful to businesses for years. For example, the launch of the enterprise-focused Baseline Protocol preceded the latest crypto boom.
“In the current moment of turmoil in crypto markets, this report is a reminder that Ethereum is much more than speculative assets or fintech. It is a robust platform for solving some of today’s most pressing business problems by employing decentralized models,” said Burnett.
There’s also a reasonable chance the next crypto boom could be triggered by mainstream business adoption.
