A new Alliance to promote the uptake of Ethereum as the foundation for running smart contracts in Fortune 500 enterprises is set to host its inaugural meeting in New York next week.
The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance aims to connect Fortune 500 enterprises, startups, academics, and technology vendors with Ethereum subject matter experts "to define enterprise-grade software capable of handling the most complex, highly demanding applications".
Initially proposed in late 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocurrency researcher and programmer, Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform featuring smart contract functionality. It has grown increasingly popular among large corporates looking to deploy blockchain technology for a host of internal processes.
JP Morgan, CME Group, BNY Mellon and Banco Santander are understood to be among the big banks lending support to the initiative, which has also won the support of Microsoft, Red Hat and Cisco among others.
The Brooklyn NY meetup will demonstrate applications already in live production and discuss plans for the Alliance's future, including vision, technical roadmap and membership opportunities.