Blockchain software company ConsenSys announced the acquisition of Quorum, an enterprise-variant of the Ethereum blockchain developed by J.P. Morgan. With the addition of Quorum, ConsenSys now offers a full range of products, services, and support for Quorum, accelerating the availability of features and capabilities such as digital asset functionality and document management.
In addition to ConsenSys’ acquisition of the Quorum, J.P. Morgan made a strategic investment in ConsenSys to support its mission to help developers build next-generation networks and enable enterprises to launch more powerful financial infrastructure. Financial details were not disclosed but sources cited by The Block Crypto said that J.P. Morgan was looking to invest $20 million as part of a broader $50 million deal.
Since the launch of Quorum in 2016, ConsenSys and J.P. Morgan have collaborated to make Ethereum the platform of choice for enterprises building secure and customizable business networks at scale. “The creation of Quorum was a first for J.P. Morgan, both in terms of developing its own blockchain protocol, and open sourcing software for the developer community,” said Umar Farooq, global head of Blockchain at J.P. Morgan, in a statement.
ConsenSys will merge its existing protocol engineering roadmap with Quorum, leveraging the best of both codebases. All Enterprise Ethereum protocol technology at ConsenSys will fall under the ConsenSys Quorum brand, and developers will have the option to choose their underlying technology stack. Quorum will remain open source and become interoperable with ConsenSys’ other leading blockchain products, such as Codefi’s finance and commerce application suite. J.P. Morgan will be a customer of ConsenSys’ advanced features and services deployed on Quorum.