Although blockchain technology has been trending among enterprises as to what should be their next upgrade for quite some time now, there is one significant issue disregarding the distributed LEDGER of choice and that would be interoperability.
Interplanetary-scale companies clearly understand the benefits of implementing blockchain architecture into their workflow, and their main concern would be the fact most blockchains are not compatible with other blockchains.
What happens if a company uses a private blockchain such as R3’s Corda, but wants to communicate with an affiliate company that utilizes the public Ethereum blockchain?
Read More: Hedera Hashgraph Offers Blockchain Solution To Couponing Industry
That is a question many DLT experts struggle when trying to answer with confidence, and the reason is simple: each blockchain has its own set of rules, network, and nodes and therefore in order for two standalone blockchains to communicate it would require serious commitment from both ends to achieve an interoperability channel where information from both chains could be accessible for both parties.
Hyperledger, the Enterprise-grade blockchain powerhouse that utilizes a variety of in-house, as well as third party private and public blockchains such as the Ethereum, recently announced the addition of a new project under the leading blockchain consortium’s wing.
The project proposed and led by Accenture and Fujitsu was initially dubbed as “Blockchain Integration Framework”, before it officially released as Hyperledger Cactus, joining the Hyperledger arsenal, which includes Fabric, Besu, Sawtooth and other popular blockchain services.
“Hyperledger Cactus serves as an option for enterprises wanting to connect any DLT to other DLTs through a plugin. Cactus can be used on any permissioned DLT network where you have known identities or validators in an interoperability framework.” – Michael Klein, the head of blockchain at Accenture said in an interview with Cointelegraph.
In general, different businesses have different needs, with some relying on fast transaction times, while others require a lot of data storage etc. Creating an interoperability protocol that would allow blockchains to communicate with each other in a decentralized and transparent fashion is exactly what’s missing not only from businesses but from blockchain networks as well.
Read More: EY: Avoid Private Blockchains, Use Ethereum Instead
At the same time, this creates a potential for vertical collaboration instead of parallel competition, and different blockchains could support different roles in the broader industry.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to see Ethereum smart-contracts being recognized and utilized by the Bitcoin blockchain? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or feel free to hit me on Twitter.
So far, Hyperledger Cactus is cross-compatible with Hyperledger Besu, an IBM-version of Ethereum, R3’s popular private blockchain Corda, and the Ethereum-powered project Quorum, while future additions of new DLTs are most certain.
