The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) is the leading enterprise Ethereum ecosystem in the cryptocurrency market. Throughout the last years, the EEA has been working with different companies and blockchain firms to drive Ethereum’s adoption.

The goal of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance is to offer training, resources and also valuable information related to Ethereum. Furthermore, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance members have different benefits. This guide will cover all the information you should have about the EEA and how it is working in order to increase Ethereum adoption around the world.

What is Ethereum?

It is not possible to know what the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is without knowing what Ethereum is. Ethereum is the second-largest blockchain network in the work and it is powered by the Ether (ETH) virtual currency.

At the same time, Ethereum became very useful for companies and developers to adopt and create new and intuitive solutions for users. Ethereum was not only used in the cryptocurrency market but also by governments and private companies.

Smart Contracts

Ethereum is known for being the first blockchain network offering developers the possibility to use smart contracts. A smart contract works as a set of instructions that get executed if some parameters are met.

These smart contracts have a wide range of use cases. They can be implemented for legal issues, to execute trades, to improve security and more. Additionally, many smart contracts require information from outside sources.

In order to get this information, smart contracts rely on oracles. Oracles provide information from sources outside a blockchain network. This information is very valuable because it allows smart contracts to be executed.

Decentralized Applications

Decentralized applications have also been one of the main solutions offered by Ethereum. The platform allows developers and companies to release their own decentralized apps (dApps). These dApps can be simple games, gambling platforms or even voting systems.

Some cities have already implemented and tested Ethereum-based voting systems. Many citizens can now trust a decentralized blockchain network rather than centralized voting systems.

Nevertheless, the most popular dApp was CryptoKitties. In 2017, Ethereum and crypto users were purchasing fantasy cats with different characteristics that were stored on the blockchain.

Decentralized Finance

Decentralized finance is now one of the hottest topics in the crypto market. Ethereum has created an entire ecosystem of decentralized solutions. These decentralized solutions aim at offering financial services to users of the network.

Rather than relying on a centralized third-party, Ethereum is enabling a new decentralized financial market. Nowadays, users can borrow money, lend their funds and also receive decentralized insurance, among other things.

Thus, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) is going to play a key role in the adoption of these solutions.

What is the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance?

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is currently working to customize Ethereum for different players interested in using blockchain technology. Some of the activities of the EEA include understanding enterprise requirements, build standard specifications that help adopt new solutions and promote the use of the public Ethereum blockchain.

The EEA was launched in February 2017, just before the bull market that saw Bitcoin reaching $20,000 for the first time and that allowed Ethereum (ETH) To surpass $1,400 for a short period of time in January 2018.

Through certification programs, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance wants to achieve global interoperability for the Ethereum network. This would allow them to fulfil their vision of a more collaborative world based on a new foundation of trust.

Basically, their mission is to help organizations (public and private) to adopt Ethereum technology. This can help them reduce their dependence on centralized solutions and start using a decentralized public blockchain.

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has also different social media site from where interested parties can get valuable information. They have a LinkedIn site, a Twitter account and a Facebook profile.

Additionally, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) seeks to expand the Ethereum blockchain for it to work as an efficient enterprise-grade technology. Some of the research projects are focused on privacy, confidentiality, scalability and also security.

EEA Members

The Ethereum Enterprise Alliance members include different organizations from different industries and sectors. At the time of writing this guide, there are more than 122 institutions that are working with the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. That means that they are part of it.

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has also established a password-protection Member Collaboration Site. This site allows participants to support the ongoing specification and use case development and refinement of projects.

At the same time, each member has contact information, a calendar, additional documents related to some proposals and more. In this way, the site allows them to collaborate on different proposals, create new specifications or edit previous projects. Everything can be achieved through confidential, transparent and secure tools.

Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Member Benefits

Being part of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has some clear benefits. For example, by joining the EEA, organizations will be in touch with some of the most advanced and influential organizations from all around the globe.

Thus, the EEA becomes a hub where experts, leaders and decision-makers gather to discuss some of the most advanced projects in the blockchain industry.

Furthermore, the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance members have the possibility to get access to some of the cutting-edge advancements in Enterprise Ethereum Blockchain technology. Moreover, by participating in the EEA, these companies and organizations are able to take part in shaping the future of new solutions and platforms.

As the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance claims, “collaboration is the name of the game.” The EEA claims that the collaborative clout of the EEA should not be overstated. There are over a hundred organizations that come from different industries and that are collaborating on some of the most unique projects related to blockchain technology.

It is worth taking into consideration that there are more than 3,000 contributors working on the EEA and they model complex assets and workflows across different public and private blockchains.

Some of the members of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance include Accenture, The Bank of New York Mellon, CipherTrace, De Cooperatieve Rabobank U.A., Ernst & Young, Finality International, FedEx Corporate Services, Inc., Galileo Platforms Limited, Hyperledger, Intel, JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A., Lition Technology AG, Marsh, Microsoft, National Credit Card Center of R.O.C., Ott Imobilien AG, Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Rutgers University, Sberbank of Russia, TrustWorks, Web3 Labs, and more.

EEA Projects

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is working on many different projects, reports, and initiatives with the goal to expand open standards for developing enterprise-ready and interoperable blockchain solutions.

EEA Ethereum Developer Tool Survey

The EEA Mainnet Working Group has created a new survey that solicited valuable information from enterprise developers that work on the Ethereum network. More specifically, they were interested in gathering data related to applications.

This survey helps the EEA and its members understand market trends, organization needs and which solutions companies search the most in blockchain technology.

Through the EEA Ethereum Developer Tool Survey, members were able to understand suggestions for improvements to the development tool ecosystem. Additionally, two of the challenges that were mentioned included fees and scalability.

Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Challenges

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is facing some challenges that must certainly be addressed. These challenges are mostly related to the cryptocurrency market. Although the market continues growing and expanding there are some technical and regulatory aspects that should be evaluated by the EEA.

Some of these challenges make reference to cryptocurrency regulations, blockchain technology limitations and also interoperability. It might not be so easy for companies to start using blockchain technology if these issues are not carefully analyzed.

Another thing that is worth taking into consideration is related to network security. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and its members must be 100% sure the systems they are using are secure. During the last years, data leaks have affected a large number of firms and governments.

Thus, the new systems implemented by EEA members must be free from bugs and other possible issues that could be exploited by hackers and attackers.

Cryptocurrency Regulations

Cryptocurrency and blockchain regulations are some of the hottest topics in the crypto market. It is certainly important to know that digital assets lack clear regulations in most developed countries.

Although the EEA does not push for the adoption of the Ethereum digital asset, it is clearly something that must be taken into consideration. Ethereum and many of the services offered by the network (including dApps and other private projects) require members to use specific tokens. Thus, this could raise some challenges in terms of operability.

However, one of the solutions implemented by some of the companies is to run private blockchain networks with proprietary tokens. This reduces the negative impact of not having clear regulations for digital assets or blockchain technology.

Some countries are already trying to offer better and clear regulations for market participants. The goal is to attract new companies and businesses. Nevertheless, the market is far from having clear regulations. Thus, many companies prefer to stay away from these new technologies and solutions.

Network Congestion and Transaction Fees

The Ethereum network has been facing some issues in terms of congestion and fees. Every single time that a transaction is processed using this blockchain, it is necessary to pay for gas fees. Gas fees grow when the network is not able to handle the number of transactions requested by different parties.

At the moment, the Ethereum network can only handle 30 transactions per second (TPS). This is much less than traditional financial systems and solutions. VISA, for example, is now able to process over 60,000 transactions per second. This is clearly massive in terms of performance.

Nevertheless, it is worth taking into consideration that Ethereum is decentralized compared to VISA. The benefits of decentralization cannot be achieved by companies such as VISA or Mastercard. Thus, Ethereum offers a way to break away from centralized financial services providers.

Despite being able to process close to 30 TPS, this is much larger than the number of TPS that the Bitcoin (BTC) network is capable of handling. Bitcoin can only process between 3 and 7 TPS.

Ethereum is now working in order to offer Enterprise Ethereum Alliance members the possibility to have better performance. Many of the clients require the network to be able to handle, perhaps, hundreds of transactions per second, which is something that is not possible now.

Ethereum is now moving towards Ethereum 2.0. That means that the network is expected to move from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network. PoS consensus algorithms are much more efficient in terms of how many transactions they can process.

If Ethereum 2.0 is released, many of the scalability issues that are challenging the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance could simply disappear.

Interoperability

Interoperability is another challenge that the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has to face. Ethereum is one of the many different blockchain networks currently available in the market. The main issue is that most of these blockchain networks are not interoperable.

If an Ethereum Enterprise Alliance member decides to release a product or service on top of the Ethereum blockchain, it might not be possible to offer the same solutions on other blockchain networks. If a company wants to reach scale and become more efficient, it might have to directly use other blockchain networks rather than Ethereum.

Despite that, Ethereum remains the most adopted, used and decentralized smart contract blockchain network currently available in the market. Other solutions are currently being developed that might eventually be clear competitors to Ethereum. Nevertheless, most of the other blockchain networks are centralized.

It is also worth pointing out that some projects are trying to increase blockchain interoperability. Nevertheless, these blockchain interoperability solutions that are currently being developed might not be ready to be released to the market.

In terms of blockchain innovation, Ethereum 2.0 could add many of the features needed by Enterprise Ethereum Alliance members. Although the ETH 2.0 project is not ready, it could be released just a few years from now. The EEA could find it much easier to expand its values and reach its goal if ETH 2.0 is ready for mass usage.