The Hyperledger <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2019/08/29/hyperledger-unanimously-approves-first-ethereum-codebase-for-enterprises/#710281c9794c">consortium</a>, dedicated to bringing blockchain to companies, has approved its first code that links companies directly with a public blockchain, in this case, Ethereum. Called Hyperledger Besu, the open-source base is almost identical to another Ethereum enterprise solution, called Pantheon, developed by the Ethereum ConsenSys startup and running since April of this year. After a heated debate over whether Hyperledger was designed to expand by adding new codebases, or converge on a more unified offer, the vote passed unanimously.

One of the most critical differences between Pantheon and Hyperledger Besu is that since Hyperledger's Technical Steering Committee approved it, the renowned Ethereum customer will receive support for new user training, certification of developers working with high-risk companies, and will integrate more easily with existing codebases, perhaps easing the path to adoption by ensuring that companies in potentially competing networks can work together.

Historically, we have seen an increased demand for authorized networks due to different characteristics that companies do not want to share. However, we see now, and we believe that Hyperledger will be part of this, that compatibility with the leading network will become one more player for business use cases.

Grace Hartley, operations leader at ConsenSys.

Among the existing blockchain code bases with which Hyperledger Besu could be integrated are Hyperledger Fabric, initially developed by IBM and contributed to the Hyperledger community; Hyperledger Sawtooth, initially developed by Intel; Hyperledger Caliper initially developed by Huawei and Hyperledger Grid, developed initially by Cargill.

To give an idea of the scale of the work supported by these codebases, projects already underway include the IBM Food Trust Network, composed of Golden State Foods, Nestlé, Wal-Mart, along with others seeking to bring transparency to the food supply chain, and Salesforce Blockchain, a more natural way to create networks of companies that share a typical record of transactions, with Hyperledger Sawtooth technology.

The most significant difference between these tools and Besu is that, while current solutions only allow networks of invited companies that already trust each other to streamline work processes through the use of a shared and distributed ledger, Besu can also be integrated with the public blockchain Ethereum, which allows groups of outsiders to form networks without permission in that blockchain.

Besu was built by a team of 26 full-time employees at Brooklyn-based ConsenSys. Together, the team and 30 other employees are called PegaSys and operate as an independent startup. As is typical of projects incubated within Hyperledger, Besu was co-sponsored by other members of the consortium, in this case, Ethereum co-founder and CEO of ConsenSys, Joe Lubin, JP Morgan chief engineer Samer Marwah, and Red Hat senior engineer Mark Wagner.

Besu evolved from PegaSys' Pantheon <a href="https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/crypto/ethereum-classic-takes-off-amid-bearish-market-trend/">ethereum</a> client, which was launched in April of this year, is based on the JAVA encoding language popular among enterprise developers and meets the standards first developed by the nonprofit Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. Unlike many other blockchain codebases, Besu and other Hyperledger solutions adhere to the Apache 2.0 software license, which means that companies that rely on the blockchain infrastructure or use any of the open-source tools, retain full ownership of any intellectual property they create.

Historically, companies have been reluctant to use public blockchains such as Ethereum for fear that valuable information about counterparts in a transaction may accidentally be made public. As a result, while public blockchains promise to eliminate even more unnecessary intermediaries than private blockchains, adoption has been minimal.

Besu claims to have addressed these privacy issues with a new permission system that allows users to control who can access a network, privacy features that temporarily move some transactions out of the public blockchain, and by giving users the option to settle transactions in the public blockchain or use a private consensus mechanism. A separate code base developed by PegaSys to further enable Ethereum's public blockchain transactions, called Orion, is not collaborating with Hyperledger.

As of July 31, 2019, 28 external contributors have created a total of 111 Besu updates. Dozens of new companies have also tested the platform, according to Hartley, and on May 2019, his team at PegaSys team teamed up with LiquidShare, a European group backed by Euronext, Société Générale, BNP Paribas and Euroclear, to build a platform to be launched in 2020 to facilitate small and medium-sized enterprises' access to capital markets.

"It's a very active community," says Hartley.

While Besu's admission to Hyperledger is the first for public blockchains, Besu is built on the momentum developed from other projects inside and outside Hyperledger. Earlier this month, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance that stands behind the standards that guide Besu's development formed its own public blockchain working group chaired by Ethereum Foundation director Aya Miyaguchi. In April 2017, Hyperledger's technical steering committee approved Hyperleder Burrow, a solution for authorized blockchains that uses the same ethereum virtual machine (EVM) as ethereum, and six months later, Hyperledger Quilt, developed initially by Ripple, was admitted as a way of connecting almost any blockchain to any other blockchain.

Hyperledger was founded in 2015 after a company of the same name was purchased with venture capital by Digital Asset Holdings, which then delivered the trademark and initial code to the nonprofit Linux Foundation. Now comprised of more than 250 members, including Accenture, American Express, Baidu and DTCC, the technology backed by the nonprofit was used by more than half of the members of the inaugural Forbes Blockchain 50 list earlier this year. While it is impossible to identify the exact number of projects using Hyperledger platforms, since anyone can download open source software, Executive Director Brian Behlendorf estimates that there are between 100 and 200 active projects.

Now that Besu has been admitted to Hyperledger, the code base still needs to be integrated into Hyperledger's GitHub code repository and Rocketchat workgroup and obtain a Linux Foundation certification that says developers follow best practices in their implementation of infrastructure technology. As for Hyperledger, the group's executive director, Brian Behlendorf, says that while there will never be a "hypercoin," Besu's admission marks a transition to a new phase of integration of public blockchain with private blockchains.

"Hyperledger's first objective was to demonstrate the concept of enterprise blockchain, to bring out some things that can be implemented in production," Behlendorf says. Moreover, he adds:

Moreover, now that those bets are paying off, now that we see much success, over time, our mission has to evolve to support hybrid models. How do we get more efficiency, rather than just being a team of rivals?

Brian Behlendorf. CEO of Hyperledger.

Hyperledger Adopts First Ethereum Public Customer for Businesses

I am an industrial engineer specializing in blockchain. Enthusiast of cryptocurrencies and writing the latest news regarding the Crypto world.

Hyperledger Adopts First Ethereum Public Customer for Businesses

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