In a press release published on March 4, 2020 via Cision, EY announced that it had partnered with Microsoft and ConsenSys to launch a new blockchain-based service offering: with its new ‘Baseline Protocol’.
Baseline Protocol is a curated collection of public domain blockchain tools which targets enterprise users. The purpose of the Baseline Protocol is to help enable enterprises to “build and deploy procurement and other business processes securely and privately on the public Ethereum blockchain”.
“Over the last two years, EY has been advancing the state of the art for private, secure transactions on public blockchains. This initiative builds on that groundwork and starts filling in gaps such as enterprise directories and private business logic so enterprises will be able to run end-to-end processes like procurement with strong privacy.”
Paul Brody (Global Blockchain Leader, EY)
According to a separate announcement released by ConsenSys, the Baseline Protocol “combines advances in cryptography, messaging and blockchain to deliver secure and private business processes at low cost via the public Ethereum Mainnet”.
This first release is to feature “process design and key components” which will facilitate such operations as volume purchase agreements, in addition to acting as a foundation for decentralized applications (‘dApps’) which “link supply chain traceability with commerce and financial activities”.
Furthermore, the project is to be governed by the ‘Ethereum-Oasis Project’, which is managed by OASIS and funded by the Ethereum Foundation and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.
Interested parties have been invited to sign up for access to the full source code by filling in and submitting a form listed at the bottom of the ConsenSys article.
“A lot of people think of blockchains as the place to record transactions. But what if we thought of the Mainnet as middleware? This approach takes advantage of what the Mainnet is good at while avoiding what it’s not good at…
The EY vision to leverage the public Ethereum network without putting any enterprise data at risk aligned strongly with our view of the blockchain as an enterprise integration network. By working with EY, we can help build a powerful business ecosystem on open standards that is designed for privacy and security from the ground up.”
John Wolpert (Group Executive for Enterprise Mainnet, ConsenSys)
This wouldn’t be the first time which these three companies have worked together, having teamed up in mid-2019 on a supply-chain project codenamed ‘Radish34’ – which eventually evolved into the present Baseline Protocol.
The new protocol’s ‘Technical Steering Committee’ (TSC), includes: ConsenSys, EY, Microsoft, AMD, ChainLink, Core Convergence, Duke University, Envision Blockchain, MakerDAO, Neocova, Splunk, Unibright, Provide, and W3BCLOUD.
