Ernst & Young Introduces Blockchain-Based Contract Management Service

According to Blockworks, Ernst & Young (EY), one of the 'big four' accounting firms, has announced a new enterprise contract management service. This service will allow clients to place contracts on a public blockchain while maintaining the privacy of business information through zero-knowledge circuits. EY's OpsChain Contract Manager is marketed as running on Ethereum, but it currently operates on the Polygon proof-of-stake (PoS) platform. EY has been exploring the business implications of zk proofs since 2018. This announcement could represent another significant step towards the institutional use of public blockchains. This comes a month after BlackRock, an asset management giant, launched a tokenized fund on Ethereum. EY stated in a press release that the service would bring business agreements to Ethereum. However, Nightfall, the zero-knowledge rollup developed by EY to manage business contracts, actually operates on Polygon PoS, an independent blockchain. EY Blockchain intends to move Nightfall to the Ethereum mainnet and to a layer-3 in Nightfall’s next upgrade, according to Paul Brody, who has led EY’s blockchain arm since 2016. Brody also mentioned that Nightfall was developed on Ethereum and is deployed to Ethereum’s test network. However, EY’s industrial users have so far been attracted to Polygon due to its low transaction costs. Brody, who was partly responsible for building IBM’s first blockchain based on the alpha version of Ethereum, believes that the future of blockchain applications for big business lies on public blockchains like Ethereum. He explained that private blockchains do not provide actual privacy and can prevent rivals from collaborating due to the potential exposure of sensitive information. In addition to Nightfall, EY has also developed Starlight, a zero-knowledge compiler that privatizes existing smart contracts with hashing. With these tools, EY plans to enable businesses to execute contracts using Polygon’s smart contracts. Nightfall is only accessible to enterprises, and its use is priced by EY. Brody added that using a public blockchain reduces the deployment cost for enterprise purposes, as the underlying infrastructure is already in place.