Ethereum for enterprise

Ethereum can help many kinds of businesses, including large companies:

Increase trust and reduce the cost of coordination between business parties
Improve business network accountability and operational efficiency
Build new business models and value creation opportunities
Competitively future-proof their organization

Enterprise blockchain applications can be built on the public permissionless Ethereum Mainnet, or on private blockchains that are based on Ethereum technology. Find more information on private Enterprise Ethereum chains.

Public vs private Ethereum

There is only one public Ethereum Mainnet. Applications that are built on the Mainnet are able to interoperate, similarly to how applications built on the Internet can connect to each other, leveraging the full potential of decentralized blockchain.

Many businesses and consortia have deployed private, permissioned blockchains based on Ethereum technology, for specific applications.

Key differences

Blockchain Security/Immutability - A blockchain’s resistance to tampering is determined by its consensus algorithm. Ethereum Mainnet is secured by the interaction of thousands of independent nodes run by individuals and miners throughout the world. Private chains typically have a small number of nodes which are controlled by one or a few organizations; those nodes can be tightly controlled, but only a few must be compromised in order to rewrite the chain or commit fraudulent transactions.
Performance - Because private Enterprise Ethereum chains may use high performance nodes with special hardware requirements and different consensus algorithms such as proof-of-authority, they may achieve higher transaction throughput on the base layer (Layer 1). On Ethereum Mainnet, high throughput can be achieved with the use of Layer 2 scaling solutions.
Cost - The cost to operate a private chain is primarily reflected in labor to set up and manage the chain, and the servers to run it. While there is no cost to connect to Ethereum Mainnet, there is a gas cost for every transaction which must be paid for in Ether. Meta-transaction relayers can eliminate the need for end users and even enterprises to directly hold and use ether in their transactions. Some analyses(opens in a new tab) have shown that the total cost to operate an application may be lower on Mainnet than running a private chain.
Node Permissioning - Only authorized nodes can join private chains. Anybody can set up a node on Ethereum Mainnet.
Privacy - Access to data written to private chains can be controlled by restricting access to the network, and on a finer grained basis with access controls and private transactions. All data written to Mainnet Layer 1 is viewable by anyone, so sensitive information should be stored and transmitted off-chain, or else encrypted. Design patterns that facilitate this are emerging (e.g. Baseline, Nightfall), as well as Layer 2 solutions that can keep data compartmentalized and off of Layer 1.

Why build on Ethereum Mainnet

A key benefit of public blockchains to businesses is monopoly resistance. Using Ethereum Mainnet as a neutral referee to coordinate business transactions avoids putting your trust in another company, over which your competitors may gain control or influence, putting you at a disadvantage. On an open, permissionless, and decentralized platform that anyone can join, use, and contribute to, there is no central authority who may use their power to gain an advantage over you.

Enterprises have been experimenting with blockchain technology since around 2016, when the Hyperledger, Quorum, and Corda projects were launched. Initially the focus was largely on private permissioned enterprise blockchains, but starting in 2019 there was a shift in thinking about public vs private blockchains for business applications. EY’s Paul Brody has talked(opens in a new tab) about the benefits of building on public (vs. private) blockchains, which (depending on the application) may include stronger security/immutability, transparency, lower total cost of ownership, and the ability to interoperate with all of the other applications that are also on the Mainnet (network effects). Sharing a common frame of reference among businesses avoids the unnecessary creation of numerous isolated silos which cannot communicate and share or synchronize information with each other.

Another development which is shifting the focus toward public blockchains is Layer 2. Layer 2 is primarily a scalability technology category which makes high throughput applications possible on public chains. But Layer 2 solutions can also address some of the other challenges that have driven enterprise developers to choose private chains in the past(opens in a new tab).

Resources

Organizations

Some collaborative efforts to make Ethereum enterprise friendly have been made by different organizations

Enterprise Ethereum Alliance(opens in a new tab) - The EEA helps organizations to adopt and use Ethereum technology in their daily business operations. Its goal is accelerating business Ethereum through professional and commercial support, advocacy and research, standards development and ecosystem trust services.
Global Blockchain Business Council(opens in a new tab) - The GBBC is an industry association for the blockchain technology ecosystem. Through engaging policymakers and regulators, curating events and in-depth discussions, and driving research, GBBC is dedicated to further adoption of blockchain to create more secure, equitable, and functional societies.

Enterprise developer resources

Products and services

4EVERLAND(opens in a new tab) - provides APIs, RPC services and tools for hosting decentralized applications and enabling decentralized storage on Ethereum
Alchemy(opens in a new tab) - provides API services and tools for building and monitoring applications on Ethereum
Blast(opens in a new tab) - an API platform that provides RPC/WSS APIs for Ethereum Archive Mainnet and Testnets.
Blockapps(opens in a new tab) - implementation of the Enterprise Ethereum protocol, tooling and APIs that form the STRATO platform
Chainstack(opens in a new tab) - mainnet and testnet Ethereum infrastructure hosted in public & isolated customer clouds
ConsenSys(opens in a new tab) - provides a range of products and tools for building on Ethereum, as well as consulting and custom development services
Crossmint(opens in a new tab) Enterprise-grade web3 development platform to deploy smart contracts, enable credit-card and cross chain payments, and use APIs to create, distribute, sell, store, and edit NFTs.
Envision Blockchain(opens in a new tab) - provides enterprise focused consulting and development services specializing in Ethereum Mainnet
EY OpsChain(opens in a new tab) - provides a procurement workflow by issuing RFQ’s, contracts, purchase orders, and invoices across your network of trusted business partners
Hyperledger Besu(opens in a new tab) - an enterprise focused open-source Ethereum client developed under the Apache 2.0 license and written in Java
Infura(opens in a new tab) - scalable API access to the Ethereum and IPFS networks
Kaleido(opens in a new tab) - an enterprise-focused development platform that offers simplified blockchain and digital asset applications
NodeReal(opens in a new tab) - provides scalable blockchain infrastructure and API services provider for the Web3 ecosystem
Moralis(opens in a new tab) - enterprise grade APIs and Nodes with a SOC2 type 2 certification
Provide(opens in a new tab) - enterprise zero-knowledge middleware
QuickNode(opens in a new tab) - provides reliable and fast nodes with high-level APIs like NFT API, Token API, etc., while delivering a unified product suite and enterprise-grade solutions
Tenderly(opens in a new tab) - a Web3 development platform that provides debugging, observability, and infrastructure building blocks for developing, testing, monitoring, and operating smart contracts
Unibright(opens in a new tab) - a team of blockchain specialists, architects, developers and consultants with 20+ years of experience in business processes and integration
Zeeve(opens in a new tab) - provides a range of products and tools for building on Ethereum, also infrastructure and APIs for Enterprise Web3 applications.

Tooling and libraries

Baseline Project(opens in a new tab) - The Baseline Protocol is a set of tools and libraries that helps enterprises coordinate complex, multi-party business processes and workflows with privacy while keeping data in respective systems of record. The standard enables two or more state machines to achieve and maintain data consistency and workflow continuity by using a network as a common frame of reference.
Chainlens(opens in a new tab) - SaaS and on-prem blockchain data and analytics platform from Web3 Labs
Ernst & Young's 'Nightfall'(opens in a new tab) - an application for transferring ERC20, ERC721 and ERC1155 applications under Zero Knowledge, using an Optimistic Rollup
Truffle Suite(opens in a new tab) - blockchain development suite (Truffle, Ganache, Drizzle)

Scalability solutions

Layer 2 is a set of technologies or systems that run on top of Ethereum (Layer 1), inherit security properties from Layer 1, and provide greater transaction processing capacity (throughput), lower transaction fees (operating cost), and faster transaction confirmations than Layer 1. Layer 2 scaling solutions are secured by Layer 1, but they enable blockchain applications to handle many more users or actions or data than Layer 1 could accommodate. Many of them leverage recent advances in cryptography and zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs to maximize performance and security.

Building your application on top of a Layer 2 scalability solution can help address many of the concerns that have previously driven companies to build on private blockchains(opens in a new tab), yet retain the benefits of building on Mainnet.

Enterprise applications live on Ethereum Mainnet

Here are some of the enterprise applications that have been built on top of the public Ethereum Mainnet and L2s by and for traditional, non-blockchain based companies.

Payments

Brave Browser(opens in a new tab) - pays users for their attention to advertisements and users can pay publishers to support them, via the Basic Attention Token
City of Lugano, Switzerland(opens in a new tab) - payment of taxes and other municipal services
EthereumAds(opens in a new tab) - lets web site operators sell advertising space and get paid via Ethereum
hCaptcha(opens in a new tab) - Bot prevention CAPTCHA system which pays web site operators for the work done by users to label data for machine learning. Now deployed by Cloudflare
Opera MiniPay(opens in a new tab) - makes mobile payments more accessible and secure for people in Africa with a non-custodial wallet and leverages phone numbers for easy transactions
Roxpay(opens in a new tab) - automates pay-per-use asset invoicing and payments
SAP Digital Currency Hub(opens in a new tab) - cross border payments with stablecoins
Toku(opens in a new tab) - payroll, token grant administration, tax compliance, local employment, benefits & distributed HR solutions
Xerof(opens in a new tab) - facilitates fast and inexpensive international (cross-border) B2B payments

Finance

ABN AMRO(opens in a new tab) - with Tokeny, tokenized green bonds
Crowdz(opens in a new tab) - invoice/receivables financing and factoring platform
Mata Capital(opens in a new tab) - real estate investment tokenization
Obligate(opens in a new tab) - regulated and KYC'd on-chain bonds and commercial paper
Siemens(opens in a new tab) - bond issuance
Sila(opens in a new tab) - banking and ACH payments infrastructure-as-a-service, using a stablecoin
Societe Generale FORGE(opens in a new tab) - bond issuance
Taurus(opens in a new tab) - issues tokenized securities

Asset tokenization

AgroToken(opens in a new tab) - tokenizing and trading agricultural commodities
Bitbond(opens in a new tab) - improves the issuance, settlement and custody of financial assets with tokenization
Blocksquare(opens in a new tab) - tokenization infrastructure for real estate
Centrifuge(opens in a new tab) - tokenized receivables financing, debt, and assets
Clearmatics(opens in a new tab) - builds decentralised network platforms for the p2p exchange of tokenised value
dClimate(opens in a new tab) - decentralized climate information ecosystem
Fabrica(opens in a new tab) - a platform for digitizing real estate assets, enabling DeFi borrowing and property trading
Fasset(opens in a new tab) - a platform for supporting sustainable infrastructure
Nori(opens in a new tab) - open source market infrastructure to allow for carbon removal projects to measure and monetize their activity
Propy(opens in a new tab) - a platform to automate residential real estate transactions with smart contracts
RealT(opens in a new tab) - investors around the globe can buy into the US real estate market through fully-compliant, fractional, tokenized ownership
Rubey(opens in a new tab) - a platform that tokenizes high-end art to make it accessible to retail investors
Swarm(opens in a new tab) - a platform focused on the digitization and trading of real-world assets in a regulatory compliant manner
Thallo(opens in a new tab) - a platform to integrate digital carbon credits into business transactions
Tokenchampions(opens in a new tab) - tokenizes European football players' image rights

Notarization of data

ANSA(opens in a new tab) - Italian news agency fights fake news and enables readers to verify the origin of news stories by recording them on Mainnet
Breitling(opens in a new tab) - records provenance and repair history of watches on Ethereum
BRØK(opens in a new tab) - a cap tables platform for unlisted companies on the public, provided by The Norwegian Government
Certifaction(opens in a new tab) - legally valid eSignatures with by privacy-by-design
EthSign(opens in a new tab) - records signed electronic documents on the Ethereum blockchain
Stacktical(opens in a new tab) - enables the software development, digital issuance and digital signature of Service Level Agreements (SLA) with native escrowing capabilities
Verizon(opens in a new tab) - logs press releases on Ethereum to ensure corporate accountability and trust
WolfTown(opens in a new tab) - by MEF and Sage Management automates Service Level Agreement reporting between telecom carriers

Supply chain

Birra Peroni(opens in a new tab) mints NFTs for each new batch of beer, enabling greater visibility and efficiency across its supply chain
CargoX(opens in a new tab) - electronic bill of lading and document transfer provider for shipping
Circularize(opens in a new tab) - an end-to-end traceability solution for raw materials made into products
EY OpsChain Contract Manager(opens in a new tab) - enables companies to engage in a procurement workflow by issuing RFQ’s, contracts, purchase orders, and invoices across a network of business partners
Minespider(opens in a new tab) - supply chain tracking and provenance, and CO2 emissions tracking
Morpheus.network(opens in a new tab) - supply chain automation platform
StaTwig(opens in a new tab) - supply chain operations
TradeTrust(opens in a new tab) - verifies electronic Bills of Lading (eBLs) for international shipping
Transmute(opens in a new tab) - data exchange platform for global trade; supports Transactions with Decentralized Identity on Ethereum

Insurance

Arbol(opens in a new tab) - parmetric insurance to cover weather related risks
Etherisc(opens in a new tab) - decentralized insurance for a variety of risks
Nayms(opens in a new tab) - a digital space for the creation of insurance programs, the raising and trading of capital, the writing of risk, and the payment rails for premium and claim transactions, built with AON

Identity, credentials and certifications

BCdiploma(opens in a new tab) - digitizes and verifies diplomas, certificates, and micro-credentials
Hyland Credentials(opens in a new tab) - digital diplomas and other education credentials, licenses, and certificates
Palau Digital Residency Program(opens in a new tab) - offers global citizens the ability to have a legal Palau government-issued ID
Spherity(opens in a new tab) - offers digital identity management solutions to establish digital trust in ecosystems, focusing on decentralized identities and verifiable credentials
Zug Digital ID(opens in a new tab) - is a blockchain-based identity system in Switzerland, offering residents digital access to government services and supporting functionalities like e-bike borrowing and municipal voting

Entertainment, NFTs, and Loyalty

Adidas Virtual Gear(opens in a new tab) - a virtual gear NFT collection
The British Museum's Sandbox(opens in a new tab) - an NFT collection
Fruitlab(opens in a new tab) - a platform for gamers to earn from watching, sharing and playing online games
Nike Swoosh(opens in a new tab) - an NFT platform
Sothbebys Metaverse(opens in a new tab) - a digital art NFT marketplace by Sothebys

If you would like to add to this list, please see instructions for contributing.