Amazon's Arrival and 4 Other Enterprise Blockchain Trends From Consensus 2019

The intermingling of public and private ledgers emerged as a key narrative in enterprise blockchain discussions at CoinDesk's Consensus 2019 conference.

At the three-day event, which wrapped up Wednesday, heavyweight companies and infrastructure providers alike could be seen plotting a spectrum of blockchain strategies.

So-called "Blockchain-as-a-Service" was front and center this year, with Amazon Web Services taking to the stage at Consensus for the first time to talk about its new Managed Blockchain Service, which deploys Hyperledger Fabric with public ethereum soon to be added.

AWS was also there to talk about its Quantum Ledger Database, a centrally administered immutable data ledger, which Gartner predicts could eat up a sizeable chunk of the enterprise blockchain space.

Rahul Pathak, general manager of AWS Managed Blockchain Services, chose not to speculate on whether Gartner's claims might be accurate, but he did confirm the rumor that QLDB started life not as an alternative to permissioned chains, but rather as an internally developed tool with Amazon's vast retail business.

ConsenSys-backed Kaleido was offering an array of new enterprise blockchain tools with its new B2B tech stack, part of the firm's Blockchain Business Cloud - delivering pushbutton asset tokenization and trading, easy integration and hybrid deployment for blockchain networks.

Joining the conversation, Wayne Vaughan, CEO of Tierion, which is building the world's first global proof engine, said his company was about to announce that it would be using its Chainpoint application to anchor Hyperledger to the bitcoin blockchain.

Blockchain is a team sport, as they like to say in the enterprise space.

DTCC was early to embrace the power blockchain could bring to the fragmented, reconciliation-heavy, post-trade environment.

"Securities will be registered on the blockchain, which is already happening in some jurisdictions. Central bank money will be issued in token form, and then we will have DVP. OK, so that might seem far off, but what are you doing now to not be disintermediated?".