How to choose the best Enterprise Blockchain Platform for your Business?
So, you want to transform your business with blockchain technology. How to get started? what platform to choose?
Last year we saw many companies, including several corporate giants, investing in blockchain technology. Most of the blockchain companies that successfully launched ICOs in the past two years and many industry leaders who are planning to transform their business with distributed ledger technology have already started the blockchain development and in 2019, a majority of these projects are finally moving from the POC stage to production-ready stage. Rather than starting from scratch, enterprise blockchain platforms enable businesses to adopt blockchain technology much faster and flexible. In this article, we’ll learn about the importance of using blockchain platforms and the most prominent blockchain platforms available in the market today.
Businesses can use blockchain to record any transaction and keep track of their assets. As a decentralized and distributed ledger, a blockchain network can allow for enhanced authenticity to business processes. Businesses that collaborate with a third party entity for their business operations may consider adopting blockchain technology for themselves.
Many established business firms prefer enterprise blockchain platforms rather than public blockchain. As compared to a public blockchain, enterprise blockchains provide an improved level of privacy and security. It is less anonymous and the transaction visibility is contained within the network. Moreover, enterprise blockchain platforms are cheaper, as the transaction verification consumes much less processing power as compared to public blockchain networks. Since the enterprise blockchains have fewer nodes, the consensus mechanism is much faster and facilitates better scalability.
An article published at Accubits blog (see below) explains the penetration of the smart contracts in FinTech. The adoption of blockchain in the financial sector is predicted to be the next big step in shape-shifting the industry, making it more efficient and transparent.
Why should you use an Enterprise Blockchain Platform?
Enterprise blockchain platform offers an easier way to adopt blockchain and transform your business. Rather than starting from scratch, these platforms enable you to securely implement your business processes with blockchain transactions. More than reducing the go-to-market time, blockchain platforms facilitate great flexibility and interoperability of multiple blockchain ledgers.
Community Support and Skill availability
Prominent enterprise blockchain platforms already have a vibrant community supporting their development. An active community of users, contributors, developers, etc is essential for improving the platform based on the changing business requirements and technology updates.
Modular Architecture
Most of the blockchain platforms support modular architecture so that users can plug-in modules or condenses as and when they need it. Modular architecture enables the user to add new functions or custom third-party integrations very quickly.
Pre-assembled codes
Many blockchain platforms already have a set of pre-assembled codes that are optimized for common business processes, such as CRM transactions or user management, etc. Pre-assembled codes can save users from re-inventing the wheel, saving time and money.
Features to look out for in an Enterprise Blockchain Platform
Scalability
This is perhaps the most important feature to look out for while choosing a blockchain platform for your business. If your business is transaction-intensive, you need a platform that is highly scalable. Otherwise, choosing a highly scalable platform for a business with fewer transactions can turn out to be a leak that drains money out of the business.
Security
Examine whether the platform’s code is peer-review tested multiple times. Make sure the platform has a successful history for launching applications that match your business requirements.
Network type
Depending on your business’s needs you may choose a public or private blockchain. Anyone can join and participate in the public blockchain. The best-known example is the Bitcoin network. In a private blockchain, a user needs to get permission from the network creator to participate in the network.
Enterprise Blockchain Platforms: Our recommendations
The frameworks listed below have their own features, merits, and demerits. We can’t say if one platform is better than the other. The fitness of the platform needs to be analyzed based on the nature of the business and its requirements.
- Hyperledger
Hyperledger is an open-source enterprise blockchain platform focused on the development of cross-industry blockchain application solutions. Linux foundation introduced Hyperledger in December 2015. It improves the performance and reliability of a business network.
Features of Hyperledger includes:
— modular in-built architecture
— easy data retrieval
— designed for permissioned blockchain
— better connectivity with assistive technologies
— easy business governance
— easy re-use of the basic building blocks in the blockchain framework
— better community support
The different Hyperledger framework includes:
— Hyperledger Burrow
— Hyperledger Fabric
— Hyperledger Iroha
— Hyperledger Sawtooth
— Hyperledger Indy
— Hyperledger Grid
The major application areas involve finance, banking, insurance, IoT, supply chain, food tracking solutions, airline, smart energy management and manufacturing. Till day, Hyperledger has more than 430 organizations as its members from Airbus to VMware. Overall it has more than 50 projects with 4.2 million lines of code. Overall, there are a total of 13,523 premium membership users in Hyperledger. These users range from IBM to Wanda FFNA Technology Group. In 2017, the Royal Bank of Canada started using the Hyperledger platform for carrying out US-Canada inter-bank payment settlements.
- Ethereum
An open-source enterprise blockchain platform focused on the development of smart contracts, sophisticated legal and financial applications. Ethereum revolves around the creation of business markets, data storage platforms, distributed ledgers, and much more.
Features of Ethereum includes:
— immutable nature
— corruption-free and tamper-proof
— decentralized and secure
— Zero downtime
— compared to Bitcoin, transaction costs are considerably low
— faster mining when compared to Bitcoin
The major application areas involve supply chain, cryptocurrency exchanges, crypto wallets and much more.
The Ethereum network has processed a total of 635 million transactions to date. At present, the Ethereum blockchain network has over 63 million unique addresses in its network. As per the market cap, about 98% of the top-ranked 100 crypto-tokens are built using the Ethereum blockchain platform. At present, there are over 5430 dApps across the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem.
- Ripple
An open-source enterprise blockchain platform enabled to manage and handle support tokens involving cryptocurrency, commodities, or other goods valued with crypto tokens. It provides a secure and reliable way to handle international financial transactions without any third-party payments.
Features of Ripple includes:
— improved settlement infrastructure technology
— distributed database for information storing
— no charges involved in payment transactions
— greater control over the entire system compared to blockchain
— faster payment notifications
— the easier distributed authentication procedure
The major application areas involve cryptocurrencies, crypto exchanges, bank payment transactions and much more. Many companies ranging from UBS to Standard Chartered use the Ripple framework. By means of market capitalization, it is the second-largest cryptocurrency. As per recent data, the total market cap of ripple is at $20 billion. Numerous banks are experimenting on the platform to improve transaction time and reduce the costs involved in international payments.
- Multichain
Multichain enterprise blockchain platform focuses on the creation of private blockchains within an organization. The main purpose of the created private blockchain network is to perform secure and controlled financial transactions.
Features of Multichain includes:
— rapid deployment
— unlimited asset management
— better time stamping and encryptions
— flexible security module
— developer friendly modules
The setting up of the blockchain happens with a simple API and command-line interface. Multichain blockchain provides improved management of permitted users through expanding the handshake process between the blockchain modes. The major application areas involve banking solutions, supply chain management solutions, digital asset management and much more.
- R3 Corda
An open-source blockchain platform focussed around Apache II license. The main purpose revolves around handling complex financial transactions where the transferred data need to be absolutely secure. It uses a common system that makes any functionality implemented into it fully compatible with the network participants.
Features of Open Blockchain includes:
— seamless and secure data transactions
— rapid application deployment
— better interoperability
— suitable for custom enterprise applications regardless of the company size
— improved compatibility
The major application areas involve management of digital assets across the financial sector, supply chain management, insurance holder records handling and much more.
- Open Blockchain
An open-source distributed enterprise blockchain platform focuses on the creation and managing of digital assets. Here the administrator or controller of each asset has its own set of rules implemented in it.
Features of Open Blockchain includes:
— the setup time is considerably low (within seconds)
— it functions based on a set of rules
— each value exchange happens based on these rules
— every transaction involves a digital signature
— it uses a partitioned consensus algorithm
— it has more than one shared distributed ledger
— each issuer of assets has there own set of rules on the asset network
The major application areas involve securities, stocks, bonds, software licensing, loyalty points, private transactions, customized consensus protocols and much more. It helps manufacturers with easy sharing of production log records including OEM and other regulators. It greatly helps to prevent product recalls.
Companies that have recently adopted Enterprise Blockchain into their business
Before we have a look at the companies that have recently adopted blockchain solutions. Let’s discuss some fascinating facts on the blockchain.
- 95% of the European and North American banks are currently exploring blockchain solutions
- Blockchain Enterprise platforms reduce 45% of the bank’s infrastructure costs
- Blockchain technology has distributed a total of $500–650 billion in business transactions
- Around 94% of government organizations are planning to invest in blockchain technology
- 65% of gamers have already traded game-related items using blockchain technology
- 70% of the healthcare data applications would have blockchain implemented in them by 2025
- Many major companies have invested over $900 Million in IoT related blockchain projects
Here’s a list of a few major companies who have adopted blockchain into their business:
- FedEx — FedEx is one of the world’s largest global delivery management company. They handle around $250–400 billion cargo every year. FedEx along with DHL Express and UPS was one of the first global delivery management companies to adopt the Hyperledgr enterprise blockchain platform into their business. The standardized Hyperledger blockchain platform has made seamless information flow and tracking between the shipper and the government much easier.
- Walmart — Walmart is one of the world’s largest multinational retail corporation. Walmart along with 9 other food production companies adopted blockchain for tracking global food supply through their supply chain network. Blockchain-enabled their business to frequently monitor food movement through the customer touchpoints. This has allowed them to reduce food recalls, limit customer complaints, maintain food quality & provide better delivery options to customers.
- Bank of America — Bank of America is one of the largest American multinational investment banks in the USA. They adopted the Ripple Enterprise blockchain platform to handle cross-border international payments. It has even allowed them to considerably reduce the transaction costs involved in the cross border payments.
- Mastercard — Mastercard Incorporated is one of the leading multinational financial services firms headquartered in Newyork, USA. They have developed a similar version of Bitcoin for certain banks and merchants in exchange for goods and services. Mastercard is the second fortune 500 company to start accepting blockchain payments. Their prime motive was to focus on the reduction of costs involved in cross border payments and bank transfers.
- KIK — KIK is one of the biggest online messaging platforms with over 400 million active users. KIK managed to raise $150 million in investment capital by means of ICO. They have introduced their own crypto token called Kin to perform transactions within the platform. Transactions done through KIK unique network has zero transaction fee. As per records, Kin is an ERC-20 Ethereum platform based crypto-currency. Later they shifted to a less popular enterprise blockchain platform called Stellar. This shift was due to the technical limitations that existed in the Ethereum platform network.
- Overstock — Overstock is one of the largest American retailers that sell both premium and used goods through its online marketplace. Overstock became one of the first major retailers to accept Bitcoin as a means of payment for their goods. They achieve over $150,000 in Bitcoin ie; worth 800 orders within the first 22 hours. This showed a 5% increase in total sales per day ($3.5 million).
Conclusion
Enterprise blockchain platforms enable businesses to easily adopt blockchain technology and extend their business process to be more efficient through blockchain transactions. More than reducing the go-to-market time, blockchain platforms facilitate great flexibility and interoperability of multiple blockchain ledgers.
The above enterprise application-level analysis was done to improve the usability of enterprise blockchain platforms in the business.
