J.P. Morgan

Basics

• AKA JPMorgan Chase
• From Forbes Blockchain 50 (2-2-2021):

"Has signed up 425 banks, including Deutsche Bank and Mexico’s Banorte, to use its Liink blockchain network to speed up interbank transactions. The technology will eventually help banks issue fewer paper checks and move more transactions online."

Quorum

• Is launching Quorum, a smart contracts 'permissioned' blockchain to tokenize assets starting with gold bars. Quorum is built off of the Ethereum codebase with some added privacy features like Zero-Knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKS). Is open source
• From Forbes Blockchain 50 (Apr 16, 2019):

"The nation’s largest bank is one of the creators of Quorum, a restricted version of the Ethereum blockchain built especially for enterprises looking to move tasks performed by back-office middlemen to the distributed ledger. It recently announced JPM Coin, an early-stage project to enable real-time institution-to-institution payments. Full profile"

Merger with Consensys

• Is in merger negotiations (11-2-2020) with Consensys for it's Quorum:

"Referring to it as the JPMorgan “marquee blockchain unit,” a potential Quorum “merger with ConsenSys was chosen as the best path forward as both organizations work with Ethereum and have been involved in joint initiatives in the past.” Indeed, Quorum operates on Ethereum, and the largest US bank reportedly “has been considering spinning off Quorum for around two years, evaluating options including setting up an open-source foundation, creating a new startup or merging it with another company.

Merging Quorum’s more than two-dozen staff members would be in line with its open-source ethos, and at least one person close to the talks apparently confirmed any deal with ConsenSys would maintain the Quorum brand and its open-source operations. While not formalized, a merger could see a public launch later this year, sources hinted, “but financial terms are still unclear.”"

Update (25-8-2020): ConsenSys acquired Quorum.

Tech

• Architected and developed around the Go Ethereum client by Jeff Wilcke and his team
• In May 2019, they added to Quorum an implementation of the Zether confidential payments protocol.

Companies that will use/build on Quorum

• Ant Financial
• Broadbridge (19-2-2020)
• BMW (19-2-2020)
• BP
• Citi (19-2-2020)
• Comcast
• General Electric (19-2-2020)
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise
• HTC
• ING
• J.P. Morgan (of course)
• Microsoft
• Project Khoka. In a consortium with seven commercial banks, the South African Reserve Bank conducted a proof-of-concept trial with Quorum, an enterprise-grade implementation of Ethereum, to process the typical daily volume of payments with full confidentiality and finality in less than two hours. Adhara, a ConsenSys venture, is building a multi-currency liquidity management and international payments platform to optimize banks’ capital deployment, manage risk, and leverage liquidity effectively and globally.
• SAP
• StateFarm
• UBS

Team

• Architected and developed around the Go Ethereum client by Jeff Wilcke and his team
• Samer Falah; Executive Director, Quorum Engineering (Also on the board at EEA)

JPM Coin

• Will launch it's own token.

Onyx

• From their website (24-4-2023):

"Formed in 2020, Onyx has pioneered the world’s first bank-led blockchain platform for the exchange of value, information and digital assets."

Main Links

• Part of the EEA
• Part of Hyperledger
• Partner with Truffle

Money Links

• Has funded the Ethereum Foundation.
• ConsenSys announced (19-4-2021) a $65m fundraising round from JPMorgan, UBS, Mastercard and Filecoin’s ProtocolLabs.

Current employees

• Key leader: Christine Moy, blockchain lead
• Key leader: Umar Farooq, CEO of Onyx (2021)

Former employees

• Blythe Masters a former JP Morgan executive, now Digital Asset Holdings CEO
• Some people from ParaFi Capital have a background (6-7-2020) from this bank.
• Amber Baldet; used to oversee Quorum

Other Links

• Emmanuel Abiodun had engineering experience at HSBC and J.P.Morgan; now a advisor to SONM and co-founder of Servicefy — an app allowing users to keep service and maintenance record for their vehicle.
• Calastone processes mutual fund trades for over 1,700 financial companies, including JPMorganAsset Management
• Was a founding member of R3 but left after at first R3 promised 90% stake to the banks, for getting 200mil funding. Then in 4-2017 they turned around and said it would be 60% plus a monthly fee for 150mil funding.
• From The Defiant (3-11-2022):

"On Nov. 1, the New York-based lender’s Onyx unit executed trades in a new project launched in Singapore. Along with DBS Bank, and SBI Digital Asset Holdings, Onyx conducted live foreign exchange swaps of tokenized Japanese Yen (JPY) and Singapore Dollars (SGD). In addition, transactions involving tokenized Singapore government securities bonds and Japanese government bonds were simulated, according to a release. The pilot program is part of Project Guardian, an initiative backed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Asian city-state’s central bank. The project aims to explore DeFi applications in wholesale funding markets.

Project Guardian deployed on Polygon to minimize transaction costs. As it rolls out, Project Guardian plans to work with other blockchain networks, according to Ty Lobban, who works on Web3 products at Onyx."