ConsenSys

 
Consensys logo

Consensus Systems, better known as ConsenSys, is a blockchain software technology company founded by Joseph Lubin. ConsenSys is a global formation of technologists and entrepreneurs building the infrastructure, applications, and practices that enable a decentralized world.

Contents

Company

Joseph Lubin founded ConsenSys in early 2015 as a software foundry to develop decentralized software services and applications that operate on the Ethereum blockchain.

ConsenSys employed 68 persons worldwide, about half of them in Brooklyn, New York City. ConsenSys is developing a variety of applications which operate on the global distributed computing platform.[1] The office is located in an old industrial building in Bushwick, Brooklyn and was described by The New York Times as “essentially one large room, with all the messy trademarks of a start-up operation, including white boards on the walls and computer parts lying around.”

The company’s focus is on facilitating the empowerment of people and enabling decentralized governance through the development of software tools that devolve power from the traditional “command and control hierarchies inappropriate for a networked world.”[2]

Consensys Ventures

Based in Brooklyn the company Consensus has launched a venture capital division that will specialize in the financing of blockchain-related startups. According to the publication, the size of the Consensys capital Ventures is $50 million Fund will invest in blockchain projects at an early stage of their life cycle.

It also became known that the managing partner of the Fund will be Kavita Gupta, who has experience in organizations such as McKinsey consulting company, the world Bank and the international Finance Corporation. “I firmly believe in a 100 year old mission of blockchain and decentralized technology that will completely change the social order. I am very glad that we will be able to provide venture capital to companies that follow this mission,” she said.

Projects

Welcome to ConsenSys and Ethereum

As a dedicated venture studio, ConsenSys is actively involved in numerous projects and initiatives.

  • BTC Relay uses the smart contract functionality in Ethereum to allow people to verify Bitcoin transactions from Ethereum’s Blockchain.[3]
  • Ether.camp which is an Ethereum blockchain explorer.[4]
  • Blockapps Strato which is a partnership with Microsoft Azure to build industry-specific blockchain applications.[5]
  • TransActive Grid is a joint venture with LO3 Energy which proposes to allow peer-to-peer electricity sales
  • Ujo Music. Imogen Heap used the technology to release her single Tiny Human.
  • uPort is an Ethereum blockchain-based identity management system.[6]
  • Deloitte and ConsenSys are announced plans in 2016 to create a digital bank called Project ConsenSys.
  • The company is working with John Hancock Insurance on their LOFT project.
  • DAOWars is a project where human players design autonomous agents to outfight and outwit other agents created by competitors.
  • GroupGnosis is a platform for prediction markets
  • EtherSign is a cryptographic tool for managing and signing documents
  • Blockstack Labs is a project withMicrosoft to address human rights issues by creating identity systems on the blockchain.
  • INFURA provides a scalable, standards-based, globally distributed cluster and API endpoint for Ethereum, IPFS, and other emerging decentralization infrastructure.

External links

ConsenSys Official website
@ConsenSysllc on Twitter

See Also on BitcoinWiki

References

  1. Can Ethereum Restore Online Freedom and Transform the Internet?
  2. ConsenSys is still a tiny company. Its grand experiment may or may not succeed. But its story provides a glimpse into radical changes in corporate architecture that may help unleash innovation and harness the power of human capital for not just wealth creation but prosperity. Blockchain technology is enabling new forms of economic organization and new portfolios of value. There are distributed models of the firm emerging—ownership, structure, operations, rewards, and governance—that go far beyond enhancing innovation, employee motivation, and collective action. They may be the long-awaited precondition for a more prosperous and inclusive economy.
  3. ConsenSys Announces the Release of BTC Relay, Interconnecting Ethereum With Bitcoin
  4. Microsoft’s Azure Blockchain As a Service Program Gains Momentum
  5. The Morning Download: Microsoft Offers Blockchain Over Its Azure Cloud
  6. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/microsoft-building-open-blockchain-based-identity-system-with-blockstack-consensys-1464968713