Top 9 Blockchain

Platforms to Consider in
2023 | TechTarget
Interest in blockchain platforms has been growing
significantly as a way to streamline supply chains,
improve traceability, simplify trade and improve
financial transactions. A lot of this interest started with
the speculative frenzy surrounding Bitcoin, which is
based on an older blockchain platform that faces
challenges with energy
consumption and speed.

Modern blockchain platforms have been developed to

help overcome these limitations and provide practical
value for other business uses and applications. "We are
seeing multiple enterprises adopt blockchain platforms
for some of their application needs," said Suseel Menon,
senior analyst at Everest Group, an IT advisory firm.

Menon has seen the most interest in areas that

require
multiparty cooperation or data exchange. Blockchain
applications in supply chain tracking, trade finance,
digital assets and identity management are going beyond
the pilot stage. Menon has also seen a fair bit of activity
in using blockchain platforms for building certain
functions of ERP, such as vendor management and
supply chain management (SCM).

Alex-Paul Manders, partner and ISG BlockChainNow

Lead at Information Services Group, an IT advisory
firm, said the evolution of
blockchain platforms to date
has promoted heightened awareness of decentralized
finance, or DeFi, for driving new business models that
pose significant threats to traditional banking, finance
and supply chain finance.

Alex-Paul Manders

Manders predicted that blockchain platforms could

disrupt legacy supply chain businesses and technology
processes. For example, U.S. requirements for
pharmaceutical companies to track and trace products
and materials call for a new approach for supply chain
participants to share and transact data more efficiently
and with more transparency than previously required.
Blockchain technology could be the answer.

According to Menon, the top three blockchain

frameworks for these use cases are R3 Corda,
Hyperledger and Ethereum, with EOSIO and
ConsenSys
Quorum gaining ground.

Here are nine of the top blockchain platforms to consider.

1. Ethereum

Introduced in 2013, Ethereum is one of the oldest and

most established blockchain platforms. It provides a truly
decentralized blockchain that is comparable to the
Bitcoin blockchain network. Manders said its key
strength is that it
enables true decentralization with
support for smart contracts. Its key weaknesses include
slow processing times and higher transaction processing
costs compared to other platforms. Besides its role as a
blockchain platform that underpins enterprise
applications, it has its own cryptocurrency called ether.

Suseel Menon

The Ethereum platform is seeing widespread adoption by

technologists who build decentralized applications, or
dApps, on the Ethereum network. For example, there are
numerous platforms and exchanges for non-fungible
tokens (NFTs) -- a type of digital asset that can be
exchanged on a blockchain. It has a mature ecosystem of
tools for writing smart contracts using the Solidity
programming environment, which runs on the Ethereum
Virtual Machine. However, alternative blockchain
networks can process transactions much faster at
potentially lower cost than Ethereum, though many
observers expect this to change after Ethereum adopts a
more efficient security mechanism.

It also has an active developer community orchestrated

by the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which has more
than 250 members, including Intel, JPMorgan and
Microsoft.

The Ethereum community has also migrated from a

proof of work (PoW) consensus mechanism to proof of
stake
(PoS), which is more energy-friendly. The
migration required an elaborate process to spin up a
separate, new type of blockchain called a Beacon Chain
that has been merged into the existing main Ethereum
blockchain. The Ethereum Foundation estimated this
reduces energy use by 99.95% compared to the
older
approach.

The community is now working on a sharding

mechanism that will expand the capacity to store data,
scale throughout and cut network fees. It is expected to
begin rolling out in phases in 2023 and to be fully
supported in 2024.
 There are many things to consider when choosing
a blockchain platform, including performance and
cost.

2. IBM Blockchain

IBM Blockchain is a private, decentralized blockchain

network
that has been the most successful with enterprise
clients who are less risk-averse, Manders said. He has
seen the biggest opportunities in using it to link into
enterprise cloud and legacy technologies more
seamlessly than is possible in other decentralized
networks.
The IBM Blockchain developer tool was designed to be
flexible, functional and customizable. IBM has also
invested in creating a user-friendly interface to simplify
critical tasks, such as setting up, testing and rapidly
deploying smart contracts.

Rakesh Mohan

Rakesh Mohan, IBM director of development for

blockchain solutions, said the company has seen
significant progress in financial services and banking, as
well as supply chain. Some examples of successful
blockchain apps include
IBM Food Trust, which has
completed more than 18 million transactions representing
more than 17,000 products, and Blockchain Community
Initiative in Thailand, which supports services such as
payment obligations and enterprise auctions for 22 Thai
banks.

3. Hyperledger Fabric

Hyperledger Fabric is a set of tools that helps create

blockchain applications. Championed by the Linux
Foundation, it was built
from the ground up with
enterprise distributed ledger uses in mind. It has a rich
ecosystem of components that can be plugged into a
modular architecture. It works well in closed blockchain
deployments, which can improve security and speed. It
also supports an open smart
contract model that can
support various data models, such as account and unspent
transaction output (UTXO) models. 

Hyperledger Fabric can also improve data privacy by

isolating transactions in channels or enabling the sharing
of private data on a need-to-know basis in private data
collections. It also enables high-speed transactions with
low latency of
finality and confirmation, according to its
proponents.

Arnaud Le Hors, senior technical staff member of

blockchain, edge computing and web open technologies
at IBM, said the latest developments add support for an
organization to join a channel without copying the whole
history of the ledger. This enables a quicker startup
process with less storage required. There is an active and
diverse
community around Hyperledger Fabric that is
working on adding more features related to consensus
algorithms, additional privacy options for GDPR
compliance and operational improvements.

4. Hyperledger Sawtooth

Another open source blockchain initiative hosted by

Hyperledger and the Linux
Foundation, Hyperledger
Sawtooth uses a novel consensus mechanism called proof
of elapsed time that can integrate with hardware-based
security technologies to enable "trusted execution
environments" of program code to run in secure
enclaves, which are protected areas of computer memory.

Shawn Amundson

Shawn Amundson, principal consultant at Bitwise IO,

said the most common
applications are for developing
supply chain systems and customizing Sawtooth for
specific purposes, such as novel consensus algorithms.

Work has started on a Sawtooth library that will enable

developers of custom distributed ledgers to pick and
choose which pieces of Sawtooth they use in their
application. At the same time, Sawtooth is adopting
Splinter for networking, which will provide dynamic
private circuits (groups of nodes); Hyperledger Transact
for transaction processing, which
will extend smart
contract capabilities; and Augrim for consensus, which
will expand the number of supported algorithms.

5. R3 Corda
There is some debate whether R3 Corda is technically a
blockchain or an alternative type of distributed ledger. It
uses a novel consensus mechanism in which transactions
are cryptographically linked but does not periodically
batch multiple transactions into a block. Even the
official
Corda site describes it as "both a blockchain and not a
blockchain." One of the key benefits of this approach is
that all transactions are processed in real time, which can
improve performance compared to other types of
blockchains.

The R3 consortium has a strong following in the

financial industry, since Corda provides an attractive
approach for financial transactions and smart contracts
with strong
security. Leading proponents include Bank of
America, HSBC, Intel and Microsoft. It supports tools
that automate business logic that can execute across
company boundaries. The group has also recently
launched a technical preview of Corda Payments, which
simplifies the process for building distributed payment
capabilities into apps.

Manders said Corda has a strong chance of becoming the

de facto network of insurance-related transaction
processing. However, it faces competition from other
federated blockchain networks that can process
transactions faster and cheaper.
 What is a Smart Contract and What is it Used For?

6. Tezos

In
development since 2014, Tezos is an older platform
that supports decentralized applications, smart contracts
and novel financial instruments, such as NFTs, which can
be thought of as a modern variation on trading cards that
are tied to digital assets. The platform supports a
dynamically upgradable protocol and modular software
clients that enable it to adapt to new uses. The Tezos
community has been upgrading the platform at a rapid
clip, with recent enhancements that have improved
performance
and increased the size limit on smart
contracts. It has also developed tools to help automate the
process of weaving NFTs into enterprise supply chains.

7. EOSIO
The EOSIO blockchain platform was first launched as an
open source project in 2018. It's optimized for
developing decentralized applications and
smart
contracts. It uses a complex consensus mechanism based
on PoS that provides better performance than older
mechanisms, such as Ethereum, according to its
proponents. It also includes support for a governance
feature for voting on changes to the platform.

Key strengths include fast transactions and advanced

account permission features for deploying applications.
Over 400 applications have been developed on the
platform, including identity management, SCM and
gaming. The community also
provides various tools for
customizing blockchain implementations for various
decentralized use cases in SCM, healthcare and DeFi.

8. Stellar

Stellar is a newer blockchain platform optimized for

various kinds of DeFi applications. It uses Stellar
Consensus Protocol, which purportedly can speed the
time required to process and finalize transactions on a
public blockchain network. It also includes security
mechanisms for shutting out bad or questionable actors
in a financial transaction. It has been adopted by several
companies for international trade and exchanging money
across borders. Examples of applications built on the
Stellar blockchain include MoneyGram for money
transfer, Circle for payments and treasury infrastructure,
and Flutterwave for integrating payment processing into
enterprise applications.

9.
ConsenSys Quorum

Quorum is a customized version of Ethereum developed

by financial services company JPMorgan. It takes
advantage of the core work on the Ethereum blockchain
platform and repackages it into a hardened environment
suitable for banks. It has been optimized to support high-
speed transactions between institutions, such as banks
and insurance companies on a private network. It also
adds various privacy enhancements to Ethereum to
improve support for regulations such as GDPR in
Europe
and CCPA in California.

ConsenSys bought the Quorum platform's intellectual

property assets from JPMorgan in late 2021 and
integrated these into its own work to create the
ConsenSys Quorum open source protocol layer.
ConsenSys has positioned this offering as a way for
enterprises to accelerate development of enterprise
applications that complement other Ethereum-based
tools. The firm provides development services for the
combined platform to enterprise customers, including
JPMorgan and South African Reserve Bank. In July
2022, it launched the Quorum Blockchain Service on
Microsoft Azure as a fully managed service to help
simplify enterprise deployments.

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