ConsenSys has acquired Quorum, the enterprise-variant of the Ethereum blockchain developed by JP Morgan, in a deal that also sees the bank make a strategic investment in the software house.
Developed inhouse by JPMorgan using the Ethereum protocol, Quorum is designed to support any application requiring high speed and high throughput processing of private transactions within a permissioned group of known participants.
ConsenSys will now merge its existing protocol engineering roadmap with Quorum. All Enterprise Ethereum protocol technology at the firm will fall under the ConsenSys Quorum brand, and developers will have the option to choose their underlying technology stack.
Quorum will remain open source, says the firm, and become interoperable with ConsenSys’ other blockchain products.
Meanwhile, JP Morgan will be a customer of ConsenSys’ features and services deployed on Quorum as well as a strategic investor.
"The creation of Quorum was a first for JPMorgan, both in terms of developing its own blockchain protocol, and open sourcing software for the developer community," says Umar Farooq, global head, blockchain, JP Morgan. "We’re incredibly proud of the usage of Quorum over the past few years and are excited to have ConsenSys as a partner to take the vision forward."