Quorum is an open source blockchain protocol specially designed for use in a private blockchain network, where there is only a single member owning all the nodes, or, a consortium blockchain network, where multiple members each own a portion of the network. Quorum is derived from Ethereum by modifying the Geth client.
Some of the key features of Quorum include:
- Privacy via private transactions: members of a Quorum network can send private transactions that are addressed to a subset of nodes, such that the contents of the transaction are not exposed to non-privy members.
- Peer permissioning: a Quorum network can be configured to run in permissioned mode such that all nodes must be explicitly listed in an access control list enforced by all nodes. This prevents foreign nodes from tapping into the network and replicating blocks as is the case in permissionless networks.
- Flexible consensus: described in greater detail later in this post, Quorum supports Raft and Istanbul BFT as valid consensus options. Both support transaction finality (i.e. lack of chain forking) and offer shorter block intervals than proof-of-work.
Quorum Blockchain – Build with Quorum on Kaleido
https://www.kaleido.io/blockchain-platform/quorum
Quorum is an Open Source project founded by JP Morgan, providing an implementation of Ethereum tailored to Enterprise Blockchain networks. Kaleido contributes actively to the Quorum Open Source project, and has a depth of experience running and maintaining thousands of chains, including critical production workloads.
Maintained as a collaborative fork of the most popular public Ethereum client (go-ethereum or ‘geth’), Quorum provides a number of extensions enabled in Kaleido to meet the needs of Enterprise grade production networks.
How it works
Quorum is an open source blockchain protocol specially designed for use in a private blockchain network, where there is only a single member owning all the nodes, or, a consortium blockchain network, where multiple members each own a portion of the network. Quorum is derived from Ethereum by modifying the Geth client.
Some of the key features of Quorum include:
Private Transactions
In an Enterprise blockchain network it is common that some data cannot be shared with all participants. Quorum provides a model where encrypted data can be exchanged privately between participants, and stored privately in an enclave of only those participants allowed to see that data. The same Ethereum APIs and Smart Contract programming model is used to perform these private Blockchain transactions, as the transactions that are visible to all the participants.
A hash of the private data is written to the main ledger, recording the data that was sent. The private transaction manager component is called Tessera, and supersedes the previous transaction manager Constellation. Key new features include pluggable JDBC Database support, and the ability to externally sign and submit transactions. Tessera is provided as the default private transaction manager in all new Kaleido environments, and migration from Constellation to Tessera is automatic for all old environments.