What Is the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance?
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) is a new industry-supported, member-led standardization body whose purpose is to build and promote the adoption of the Enterprise Ethereum Specification. The EEA will develop open standards and specifications that enhance the privacy, security, and scalability of smart contracts, with a special focus on those relevant to IoT devices in order to ensure interoperability among devices in an open blockchain network. It was established to build, promote, and broadly support Ethereum-based technology best practices, open standards, and open-source reference architectures. EEA is helping to evolve Ethereum into an enterprise-grade technology that can power the next generation of applications.
It was announced in February 2017 with 30 founding members. The founding members of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance included Accenture, Banco Santander, BlockApps, BNY Mellon, CME Group, ConsenSys, IC3, Intel, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, and Nuco. The EEA is an industry-supported, not-for-profit one. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance now connects Fortune 500 enterprises, startups, academics, and technology vendors with Ethereum subject matter experts. Together, we will learn from and build upon the only smart contract supporting blockchain currently running in real-world production – Ethereum – to define enterprise-grade software capable of handling the most complex, highly demanding applications at the speed of business. This represents varied businesses from every region of the world, including technology, banking, government, healthcare, energy, pharmaceuticals, marketing, and insurance, with the total count of members now approaching 500.
As of July 2021, there are 109 associates and organizational members of EEA. Associate members are represented by the Blockchain Research Institute, Hyperledger, and SAE ITC. Social impact partners include the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition and the Decentralized Identity Foundation.
-Aaron Raycove