ConsenSys Acquires JPMorgan’s Quorum Blockchain Platform

The blockchain-oriented company Consensys acquires JPMorgan’s Quorum DLT platform according to the latest announcements that we have in our crypto news today.

The multinational bank JPMorgan Chase has entered into a new strategic partnership with the blockchain-based company ConsenSys and as a part of the deal, the company will acquire the bank’s enterprise blockchain platform Quorum. As it was reported by Reuters, the New York-based blockchain startup acquired Quorum and now plans to merge the enterprise protocol engineering roadmaps and its technology. Neither party disclosed the financial elements of the deal by ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin said that:

 “We have acquired the Quorum IP, JPMorgan has made a strategic investment, and there is a commercial arrangement to continue to support JPMorgan in their projects.”

Despite the acquisition, the Quorum team will remain at JPM and will assist during the transition next year according to the global head of blockchain Umar Farooq. He added that the team will resume working on other DLT projects once the transition is completed. Farooq asserted that platforms such as Quorum will thrive better in the hands of the software services organizations such as ConsenSys. The bank’s blockchain department built the Quorum project internally by using the Ethereum network. The bank now utilizes the platform to run the Interbank Information Network which is a payment system that includes more than 300 banks. Quorum will still operate the network and other bank projects even after the acquisition.

According to Reuters, both organizations were negotiating the deal since February 2019. ConsenSys described the Quorum platform as:  “an open-source protocol layer that serves as a foundation for businesses to build public or private Ethereum-based enterprise solutions.” The company also added that the platform is made up of four layers of open-source codebase “client software, private transaction management, external transaction signing, and additional tooling.”

Businesses can also deploy different institutional-grade product features that are provided by ConsenSys in order to enable payments, workflow optimization, tokenization, and document management. After the transition, the company plans to expand the enterprise Ethereum offerings with more features such as open-source codebases, production-grade services, and public enterprise solutions. Consensys referred to the acquisition as an “important step in the ecosystem’s commitment to enterprise adoption and development.”