The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) has defined standards for permissioned Ethereum deployments — after several years, its influence is now visible
The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) was formed to help organizations adopt and integrate Ethereum into their everyday operations, fostering a cooperative environment built on trust. With the ongoing development of Ethereum 2.0, the EEA’s influence on enterprise adoption and technical direction is increasingly clear.
Boasting more than 200 member organizations, the EEA supports Ethereum’s evolution into an enterprise-grade platform by coordinating research and development across multiple domains with active community participation.
The standards organization focuses on producing open blockchain specifications that enhance interoperability for businesses and developers building applications and systems on Ethereum.
Collaboration fuels innovation
The EEA was launched in February 2017 with Julio Faura as its chairman.
At the time, Faura — who led blockchain initiatives at Grupo Santander — explained the motivation behind the alliance:
“A few of us just got together to try to make the technology a little bit more suitable for enterprise uses. We were all doing our rudimentary attempts to use the technology. But it wasn’t conceived for enterprise use – rather for trustless and public use – and was very far from being ready.”
By collaborating with other organizations interested in enterprise blockchain, the alliance set out to break down the legacy of siloed databases that impeded digital systems from communicating, scaling, and coordinating effectively across development teams.
Decentralization preserves choice for businesses and users
Through promoting standards and cooperative development, the EEA seeks to avoid the concentration of control that has affected other technologies when essential tools are owned by a single entity.
The hybrid outcome of Ethereum’s inherent decentralization and the EEA’s collaborative efforts helps prevent any single company from exerting control that could introduce strategic risk to other participants.
The early criticism of blockchain’s decentralization mirrors initial resistance to open source software, when many organizations were reluctant to adopt community-driven projects.
Today, open source is widely embraced by companies and users alike. With the EEA’s work to standardize and support enterprise use cases, blockchain technology appears to be following a similar path toward broad commercial acceptance.