VMware Blockchain Unveils Enterprise Version of Ethereum – Ledger Insights

Today VMware Blockchain for Ethereum was unveiled in beta with two early adopters, the Central Bank of Israel and Infosys.

Ethereum has been targeting enterprises since the launch of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance in 2017. However, the competition recently lessened when ConsenSys acquired enterprise blockchain Quorum from JP Morgan. ConsenSys also initiated the second main Ethereum offering, open source Hyperledger Besu.

Aside from providing a trusted brand for enterprise technology, VMware says the permissioned version of Ethereum is unique in four ways. The first relates to privacy, where it uses a combination of zero-knowledge proof and multiparty computation. We recently wrote about the Bank of Israel testing a privacy solution from VMware as part of its central bank digital currency investigation. And VMware published a related article on UnTraceable Transactions (UTT) earlier this year.

The other key feature that VMware’s Ethereum solution boasts is scalability. It takes a different approach to others that typically use Layer 2, sharding that splits the blockchain into fragments, or special programming languages. Instead, it executes transactions in parallel.

Typically parallel execution can be problematic because the ordering of transactions, especially in trading, is often crucial. In conventional systems, when a transaction is initiated, for example to sell a stock, the software may lock the stock until the transaction is completed. Instead, VMware’s approach is optimistic, allowing transactions to occur in parallel. At the end of processing, it verifies that there are no problems before writing to the blockchain. If there is a problem, it will not continue and will try again. That’s our rough take on one aspect of how it scales.

Governance is a third area where VMware Blockchain for Ethereum is different, and deals with much more than onboarding. In addition, VMware offers support, which is essential for enterprise solutions and is often challenging with distributed ledgers (DLT) aimed at the enterprise.

Infosys also announced a new blockchain solution for Vital Records Management that uses VMware Blockchain. It enables the verification of records such as birth and marriage certificates using the immutability of the blockchain. However, no personal data is stored in the chain, presumably only hashes of documents.

Meanwhile, VMware Blockchain has had a close relationship with Digital Asset for some time. It invested in the startup and provides the blockchain underpinning the ASX DLT-based post-trade solution CHESS, with Digital Assets DAML providing the software layer. Troublesome companies also work with Broadridge.