Accenture Tech Now Connects Corda, Fabric, DA and Quorum Blockchains

Enterprise blockchain customers might not need to worry any longer about having picked the wrong platform to build on, thanks to a new interoperability solution being unveiled by Accenture.

Revealed at the annual Sibos conference on Monday, the consulting giant has created an "Interoperability node" which it says can house the business logic of different blockchains - in other words, the rules which allow them to perform various tasks.

According to Accenture, the interoperability node can connect the four major enterprise platforms: Hyperledger Fabric; R3's Corda; Quorum, developed by global bank JPMorgan Chase; and Digital Asset.

David Treat, the global blockchain lead at Accenture, said the first bridging of blockchains was done between Hyperledger Fabric and Quorum, and then the same architecture was applied to connecting R3 Corda and DA. The interoperability node provides lines of communication between two or more distributed ledger technology platforms and includes embedded business logic that contains standards, policies and guidelines by which the different blockchain platforms have agreed to work together, he said.

"We built the first prototype of an interoperability node to sit in between Fabric and Quorum and got it to work. We have now built one that integrates Corda and DA," Treat told CoinDesk.

Driving demand for this sort of connector, Accenture is now seeing the first use cases which have been progressing on one platform where clients are interested in the ability to work with another ecosystem on a different platform.

"If one ecosystem's DLT platform runs significantly faster or differently than the other, then part of the logic in the interoperability node is to decide how to treat that."

Further, Treat said that the strict limits on data sharing on R3's Corda platform could still be harmonized with another blockchain where data is more widely broadcast.

"On our development pathway, we are exploring the ability to have multiple interoperability nodes to share and spread the load. And also a version that would not require a single interoperability node at all, but actually just simply be part of the smart contract logic that any node can run," he added.

"We made specific design choices when building Corda to ensure that applications built on our platform can interoperate without friction," Brown said.