Professional services firm, Ernst and Young, on April 16 released a new tool for its corporate clients with the purpose of helping them use the Ethereum blockchain. The tool will focus on private transactions make use of zk-SNARKs. More details will be published on GitHub in May.
The news is significant, given that some of Ernst and Young’s biggest clients include Amazon, Apple, Google, and Snapchat.
The tool, codenamed Nightfall, has been in development for a year and saw the participation of 200 blockchain developers, and focused on a variety of particular use cases, including the supply chain, food tracking and finance.
Ernst and Young’s global innovation leader for blockchain, Paul Brody, said that the decision was not a light one,
A year of coding work. This is a million dollars worth of stuff we’re giving away.
Brody also stressed the importance of accessibility, saying,
We want to maximize adoption and community involvement, we want people to adopt it, and adapt it, and improve it. If we retain ownership, people may not invest that much time and energy in something they might not control. The cleanest way to make everybody use it is just to give it away with no strings attached.
Nightfall will run on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, which is already home to some blockchain efforts.
Ernst and Young Has Eyes on the Blockchain
Although all members of the “big four” – EY, PwC, KPMG, and Deloitte – are looking into blockchain technology, EY seems particularly earnest in the use of blockchain. The firm had previously released a crypto tax tool for enterprises.
Meanwhile, Ethereum will no doubt receive a boost from the development, and Brody himself has said that Ethereum is the way to go,
That’s a kind of developer momentum that makes me believe that, imperfect or not, unless they really screw up, ethereum is the choice.
