Recently, the blockchain Ethereum is starting to gain widespread acceptance, many major companies such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon are already using it.
In terms of publicity, Ethereum is still behind its more famous cousin “Bitcoin”, but that should change in the near future. In fact, many people have postulated that a “flippening” may happen where Ethereum takes over Bitcoin as the cryptocurrency with the largest market cap.
In this blogpost, we list the real life applications and uses of Ethereum, using official sources as far as possible. That is, if Google is using Ethereum, we will try to point to the official Google website instead of a third party news site. Otherwise, we will only use very reliable third party sources such as Forbes, etc.
Amazon Ethereum Blockchain
This is very recent news, on Dec 21 2020. Amazon Managed Blockchain now supports Ethereum. With Amazon Managed Blockchain, AWS (Amazon Web Service) customers get secure networking, fast and reliable syncs to the Ethereum blockchain, durable elastic storage for ledger data, encryption at rest and transport, and secure access to the network via standard open-source Ethereum APIs.
Official Amazon Ethereum Blockchain news: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/12/amazon-managed-blockchain-supports-ethereum/
Google Cloud & Ethereum
Ethereum can inter-operate with Google Cloud’s enterprise cloud data warehouse (BigQuery) via oracle middleware (Chainlink). At a high level, Ethereum Dapps (i.e. smart contract applications) request data from Chainlink, which in turn retrieves data from a web service built with Google App Engine and BigQuery.
Official Google Cloud & Ethereum news:
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/building-hybrid-blockchain-cloud-applications-with-ethereum-and-google-cloud
Ethereum Blockchain as a Service on Microsoft Azure
Microsoft and ConsenSys (a blockchain software technology company) are partnering to offer Ethereum Blockchain as a Service (EBaaS) on Microsoft Azure so Enterprise clients and developers can have a single click cloud based blockchain developer environment. The initial offering contains two tools that allow for rapid development of SmartContract based applications: Ether.Camp – An integrated developer environment, and BlockApps – a private, semi-private Ethereum blockchain environment, that can deploy into the public Ethereum environment.
Official Microsoft Ethereum news:
https://azure.microsoft.com/es-es/blog/ethereum-blockchain-as-a-service-now-on-azure/
Visa Ethereum
Visa announced it is connecting its global payments network of 60 million merchants to the U.S. Dollar Coin (USDC) developed by Circle Internet Financial on the Ethereum blockchain.
Forbes news: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2020/12/02/visa-partners-with-ethereum-digital-dollar-startup-that-raised-271-million/?sh=5dc04f484b1f
Visa didn’t quite announce it on its official Visa website, but we can see that Visa is actively recruiting engineers with Ethereum and Solidity (the programming language on Ethereum) experience.
Visa is actively recruiting engineers with Ethereum experience:
We’re seeking a strong developer experienced with Ethereum and blockchain architecture to be a part of
team tasked with building distributed application. Our ideal candidate has built and released distributed
applications, has worked with the Ripple, R3, Ethereum and/or Bitcoin blockchain, and has experience with Solidity
Multiple Positions are available in Austin, TX and Foster City, CA locations
Source from Official Visa website: https://usa.visa.com/careers/job-details.jobid.743999664785893.deptid.934140.html
Ethereum JP Morgan
The Blockchain Center of Excellence at J.P. Morgan leads efforts for Distributed Ledger Technology applications, actively researching blockchain use cases to develop in-house technology and pilot solutions across lines of business within J.P. Morgan.
The program also manages strategic relationships and investments with key vendors and consortia, including Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA). The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is a member-led industry organization whose objective is to drive the use of Ethereum blockchain technology as an open-standard to empower all enterprises.
Official JP Morgan Ethereum news:
https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/technology/blockchain
Other Ethereum use cases
A full list of companies using (or interested in using) Ethereum can actually be seen on the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance website, under the members section. We can see that many big name companies are part of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, including:
- Accenture
- Baidu
- Dell (Boomi)
- Ernst & Young
- Intel
- PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
- Standard Chartered Bank
- VMware, Inc.
It is interesting to note that 2 of the “Big Four” accounting firms, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers are interested in Ethereum and smart contracts, which could potentially change the accounting industry.
According to Business Times Singapore, 80% of current accounting tasks will soon be done by machines, displacing humans in most junior finance roles.