With the proliferation of blockchain platforms and with enterprises seeking ways to utilize private Blockchains or enterprise blockchain platforms, more and more public blockchain platforms are starting to offer a private version of their platform.
ConsenSys which is founded by Jospeh Lubin and which works on building use cases on the Ethereum public blockchain has recently created PegaSys a 50 person team dedicated for enterprise grade blockchain. By doing this ConsenSys hopes to leverage their strength in private and public blockchain and bring the two together seamlessly while ensuring enterprise needs for privacy, performance and permissioning.
UNLOCK met and interviewed Daniel Heyman, co-founder and program director of PegaSys. He leads the strategy and operations for the team. He talked about their launch of Pantheon, a Java based Ethereum mainnet client that has additional features designed for enterprise deployments. As Heyman states, “ We are building PegaSys as the enterprise Ethereum arm so we can create applications that are better suited for private blockchain rather than public ones. Pantheon is a new client that will help us build a more enterprise grade design and architecture and lower the barrier for entry for enterprises with a use friendly license (Apache 2.0) and language (Java).”
Pantheon 1.0 is the first Ethereum blockchain client built from the ground up for enterprises in addition to the public mainnet. As a Java-based, Apache 2.0-licensed software client, it is situated to satisfy the stringent technical, business, and legal requirements of enterprises and governments.
Unlike Quorum, the first client for Enterprise Ethereum, Pantheon uses a new consensus mechanism dubbed “Istanbul Byzantine Fault Tolerance 2.0,” allowing a more even tradeoff between security and speed. Instead of competitive mining, new blocks must be signed by 66% of validator nodes in order to be added to the blockchain, with “leadership” rotated between nodes.
Heyman believes that Pantheon will be successful and grow in terms of usage. “Our R&D teams are working on not only Pantheon new releases, but also on Ethereum 2.0, sidechains and more. We believe that the best implementations of use cases will be those that utilize both private and public chains.”
To strengthen their positioning PegaSys is also partnering with DrumG Technologies to provide the first enterprise-grade distributed applications for the financial sector, using Pantheon as the blockchain protocol. In addition PegaSys is also offering full customer support and training to ensure that clients will be able to successfully implement the enterprise-grade network. “Enterprise support will give our customers the confidence and assurance they need to run Pantheon and Enterprise Ethereum, and also help us roll out better features that enterprises need to get to production,” said PegaSys Program Director Daniel Heyman.
The new client is available in Azure Marketplace, or directly through Azure portal, through a partnership with Microsoft. Pantheon will be available for finance, , supply chain, healthcare, government, and other enterprise verticals deploying Enterprise Ethereum blockchain networks.
When it comes to one of the biggest questions on interoperability Heyman believes that “PegaSys’ core mission and long term goals are to enable private networks to work interoperable with public chains, Ethereum mainnet and others. As of today interoperability even between Ethereum to Ethereum network is not easy. Our goal is to make it easier to interoperate with Quorum and and even others not just Ethereum.”
As for clients in the MENA region or globally Heyman states, “We are in early days; we believe the financial sector will be one of our early clients as they are early adopters, healthcare, supply chain. We currently have some clients in the USA, and Europe. As for MENA we might open a Dubai office, until then we are working with our partners in the region. We already have a strategic partnership with Microsoft and should have a few announcements soon.”
It remains to be seen whether Pegasys will spin off into its own entity, given the news that has been released on CoinDesk which claims that Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin is looking to raise $200 million from external investors and that some startups and projects under ConsenSys are seeking to raise their own capital.
