JPMorgan Overhauls Its Quorum Blockchain Network With the Help of Microsoft

The transition of JPMorgan’s Quorum network brings easy user-interface and faster deployment of solutions on the Quorum network for businesses. 

In a major technology overhaul, JPMorgan “reboots” its private Quorum blockchain network built on the Ethereum blockchain. JPM’s head of Quorum and crypto-assets strategy, Oli Harris confirms that the overhaul was implemented by technologists across Singapore, London, and the U.S. Furthermore, the banking giant also acknowledges working with Microsoft on this project.

Over the last six months, the blockchain engineers worked to shift Quorum’s privacy layer from Haskell-based Constellation to Java-based Tessera. The new design features easy user-interface and faster deployment of solutions on the Quorum network for businesses.

As part of its partnership with Microsoft, JPMorgan will focus on developing business applications for the new tech. On the other hand, Microsoft will look after “the heavy lifting” to boost the blockchain network. Besides, the two companies are also working on streamlining node development. This broadening of the platform’s performance will enhance Quorum network’s usability beyond banking solutions.

Speaking to CoinDesk on this matter, Harris said:

“I would think of this as a stepping stone to a potential spin-out. It’s open source software, available on Github and maintained by JPMorgan on behalf of everyone using Quorum. The more users of Quorum, the better it is for everyone, because we can help with standardization and creating even more robust tech suite”.

Besides, Quorum will also serve as a multi-cloud platform and thus could be deployed on either of the private, public or hybrid cloud networks. “This is all about network effects. We see Quorum as this evolving technology suite and are extremely lucky to have one leg in public Ethereum and also one leg in large enterprises, now powered by JPMorgan and Microsoft in a coherent way,” said Harris. Furthermore, he thinks that private and public blockchain network will be interoperable in the future.

Quorum Hosts Some Interesting Projects

JPMorgan is aggressively pushing ahead its blockchain drive by introducing new developments to its Quorum network. The network is host to a number of interesting projects like tracking of luxury goods for conglomerate LVMH, hosting an energy commodity trading platform Vakt, hosting provenance tracking system Aura, hosting JPMorgan’s upcoming native cryptocurrency JPM Coin, etc.

Furthermore, the Quorum network hosts over 200 global banks to facilitate instant banking solutions powered by blockchain. however, some experts have raised concerns over the collision of the bank’s internal projects and other applications on Quorum.

Harris said that a major role of his job at JPMorgan is “to look at this whole ecosystem holistically”. Besides, he needs to identify projects running on the Quorum that could intermingle with each other. Speaking about the use of its native crypto token, Harris said:

“If you think through JPM Coin as the ability to tokenize fiat currency, with the support and all the discipline and rigor and legal and compliance behind one of the world’s largest banks, I think you can see us using JPM Coin in certain use cases”.

Harris also cited an example of the debt insurance platform Dromaius. He said:

“I think Dromaius is a good one. So if you are doing delivery versus payment, i.e. you issue the debt on the blockchain and then you also exchange the cash on the same chain, then you are just getting further benefits of the blockchain technology, because you can actually do things on the same chain, and you don’t need to settle the asset in the traditional rails.”

He noted that a similar concept is applicable to exchange one currency with another on the same chain.

Just like the JPMorgan, several tech giants like Google, Amazon, and others are working on creating solutions by combining elements of blockchain and cloud computing.