{"id":2723,"date":"2018-12-17T23:23:50","date_gmt":"2018-12-17T17:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/navveenbalani.dev\/?p=2723"},"modified":"2019-12-18T17:29:58","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T11:59:58","slug":"extensions-to-ethereum-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/navveenbalani.dev\/index.php\/articles\/extensions-to-ethereum-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"Extensions to Ethereum platform"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the earlier article, we have been talking about the permissionless open source Ethereum platform (available at https:\/\/ethereum.org\/). Let\u2019s refer to this as a Base Ethereum platform. The base Ethereum platform is good for public related use cases where every node can participate in a transaction. However, there are other scenarios which fall outside the public-permissionless kind of   use cases and therefore may require extending the Ethereum platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand this, take the example of applying the base Ethereum\nplatform in an enterprise use case, like a complex trade finance application,\nwhich comprises of a consortium of banks, traders, sellers, government agencies\nand shipment vendors. For such a use case, only authorized entity\/nodes are\nrequired to work together to realize a business goal. This is an example of a\npermissioned blockchain, where only known nodes\/entity can join the network and\nhave the ability to commit the transactions. Now, to arrive at a consensus in a\npermissioned blockchain, you probably need a different consensus algorithm,\nwhere a group of nodes\/entity, which is accountable, provides endorsement and\nconsensus for that transaction. For example, a trade finance blockchain network\nmay authorize an importer bank and a buyer as endorsers of the trade terms. It\nmeans the terms cannot be deemed legal without their digital signatures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another aspect of the enterprise use case is the turnaround time. The\ntime required to propose and commit the transaction should be very fast for\nsuch enterprise-level use cases. The concept of mining and solving complex\nmathematical equations doesn\u2019t make much sense for the permissioned network, as\nit\u2019s a network of known entities. Each of these entities in the permissioned\nnetwork has a specific role to play and collectively work towards realizing a\nbusiness goal through provenance and strong policy based consensus. For the\ntrade finance use case, the business goal could be end-to-end visibility,\naccountability, secured trade, digitization, document confidentiality,\nautomation via smart contracts and time to settlement from months to day(s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another aspect of enterprise use case is the ledger visibility. As\nthere are transactions flowing throughout the network, it becomes imperative\nthat the data is visible only between interested entities part of the business\nnetwork. A simple example could be for instance, discounted product rates and\nterms in the trade document should not be accessible to a shipment vendor.\nThere might be further requirements from regulations and audit side. So in\nshort, there is a need to define a private transaction channels where only\nmembers within the channel has access to the data or ledger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There might be many specific requirements that need to be addressed\nfor various other use cases, which would require modifications to the base\nEthereum platform or the Ethereum specification. There are many implementations\navailable, which has extended the base Ethereum platform to provide enterprise\nspecific  capability. The following are\nsome of the extensions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n