Consensys, the Ethereum software company founded by Joseph Lubin, unveiled a product on Nov. 2 that aims to let financial institutions transact across separately run private ledgers without moving assets onto a bridge or a shared chain.
The offering, called Sovereign Network Interoperability, was announced at DevCon in Mumbai. Consensys is pitching it to banks, custodians, asset managers and financial market infrastructures. The company argues that institutions now prefer to keep their own ledgers for privacy, regulatory and control reasons, which leaves their trading partners spread across other networks and makes every new link more complex to build and run.
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How It Works
Under the Consensys design, an institution states the transaction it wants, which approved counterparties are involved and what settlement terms apply. The software then chooses a path among the eligible routes, runs the coordination between ledgers and monitors the deal until it settles.
Consensys listed four uses at launch: posting collateral to a clearing house, settling a tokenized securityon one ledger against cash on another, handling both legs of a foreign-exchangetrade between banks, and letting corporate treasurers shift spare cash in and out of tokenized money market fundsat any hour.
Assets never leave their home ledgers, according to the company. Instead, activity across ledgers is checked with cryptography, which Consensys says removes the need for extra trusted middlemen. The core is its Cross Ledger Interoperability Protocol (CLIP), which draws on the firm's zero-knowledge-proof research. Consensys said the stack will also support the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ)standard and the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC)protocol. Connections to Ethereum-compatible networks are already available , according to the product's Q&A, with Cantonnext in line.
"Institutions need to reach new and existing counterparties without sacrificing privacy, while keeping control of their infrastructure," Consensys President and Chief Business Officer David Cunningham said in the announcement. He added that the result is "a simpler path to each new connection, with verifiable outcomes and clear accountability for keeping the full stack working for years to come."
Support and Deployment
Consensys said it will handle compatibility testing, security patches, upgrades, monitoring and incident response, and will recheck connections when a participating network changes. Institutions can run the product in-house, through a market infrastructure provider, or as a service managed by Consensys.
The announcement named no customers. Consensys said pricing depends on what an institution takes on, covering setup and integration, recurring maintenance and support, managed operations and transaction-based charges, but gave no figures. Interested institutions were directed to a contact page. Consensys also maintains Besu, an open-source Ethereum client that the company says many institutional ledgers run on.
Related Listen: 'Trust Me, Bro': Why Canton Is No More Private Than JPMorgan Is Private
