Mastercard, Cisco and Scotiabank have added their weight to the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance as part of a wave of 34 new members signing up for the project to promote the uptake of Ethereum as the foundation for running smart contracts in Fortune 500 enterprises.
The EEA aims to connect Fortune 500 enterprises, startups, academics, and technology vendors with Ethereum subject matter experts "to define enterprise-grade software capable of handling the most complex, highly demanding applications".
Initially proposed in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocurrency researcher and programmer, Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform featuring smart contract functionality. It has grown increasingly popular among large corporates looking to deploy blockchain technology for a host of internal processes.
JP Morgan, CME Group, BNY Mellon and Banco Santander were among the big banks lending support to the initiative at its launch in February. Three months on and the coalition now counts 150 members from across the corporate spectrum and lays claim to being the world’s largest open-source blockchain initiative.
Mastercard and Scotiabank will join a host of other financial services organisations already onboarded, including The DTCC, Alpha Point, Broadridge, Rabobank, ING, Mitsubishi UFJ, National Bank of Canada, San Francisco Stock Exchange, State Street Emerging Technologies Center, Taishin Financial Holdings and the Taiwan Fintech Association among others.
“EEA’s rapid growth in membership mirrors the accelerating acceptance and deployment of Ethereum blockchain solutions in the global marketplace,” says Julio Faura, chairman of the board, EEA. “The technological breadth, depth and variety of organizations coming together under the auspices of EEA to create and drive enterprise Ethereum standards bodes well for the future development of the next-generation Ethereum ecosystem.”