PegaSys Officially Joins Consensys' Core Product Suite
DISCLAIMER: As of September 2019, the Ethereum client formerly known as Pantheon was submitted to the Hyperledger Project of the Linux foundation, and is now known as Hyperledger Besu. In October 2020 PegaSys was renamed to Quorum.
ConsenSys doubles down on core Ethereum infrastructure as the Ethereum blockchain client gains momentum with both enterprises and open source developers
ConsenSys is a global blockchain company, which provides market-leading blockchain infrastructure, development tools, enterprise applications, and education, in addition to actively investing in blockchain startups.
PegaSys builds enterprise-grade Ethereum products. We’re on a mission to enable Enterprises to use Ethereum, either on private or public chains.
Venture studios, like our venture arm ConsenSys Labs, traditionally incubate and accelerate companies until they are mature enough to eventually raise external funding. Then, the company becomes an independent entity and“spins out” into the world. ConsenSys, through ConsenSys Labs, has done this successfully a number of times with Trustology, Truffle and 3Box, to name just a few.
Today, we’re announcing something a little bit different. Rather than spin out, PegaSys is spinning in to ConsenSys. We have been fully acquired by our parent company to help anchor ConsenSys’ core suite of software. Along with Infura, Alethio, and Codefi, we are building and will continue to build core Ethereum infrastructure, as well as developer tools and applications to create a comprehensive blockchain offering. We’re incredibly excited for the next phase of our journey and to continue to contribute to and align with the goals of ConsenSys and ConsenSys’ core suite of software.
The decision to cement our place in ConsenSys was a natural move for a few reasons. First, success and innovation at the protocol layer, particularly our work on Ethereum 2.0, are critical to the success of all ConsenSys projects and the ecosystem in general. ConsenSys is doubling down on its core infrastructure and Ethereum 2.0 work, and PegaSys is the ideal team to do just that. At PegaSys, we share these goals and look forward to continuing to grow our efforts to support the broader Ethereum Roadmap.
Second, we deeply believe the total is greater than the sum of the parts. By joining with Infura, Alethio, Codefi and other projects that constitute the ConsenSys platform, we’ll be able to unlock new value for developers, enterprises and customers alike – for Layer 2 and private, permissioned networks as well as users of the Ethereum mainnet. Together, we will be able to provide the best software platform for enterprises and developers. Our scale and expertise allows us to be more flexible on how we offer value to users, the business models we can pursue, and the integrations across the stack. Over the coming months, we expect a number of exciting announcements based around our collaborations across the ConsenSys product suite.
About PegaSys
In the summer of 2017, ConsenSys leadership decided to incubate and invest in PegaSys, a new, cutting edge Protocol Engineering Team. Since then, with ConsenSys support, investment and guidance, we have grown from 2 people to 70 of the world’s leading engineers and researchers in blockchain.
Over the past two years, our accomplishments have been broad. In October 2018, we open-sourced Pantheon, our Apache 2.0-licensed, java-based mainnet compatible Ethereum client. In February 2019, we rolled out a series of Enterprise Ethereum configurations in Pantheon, making it easy to deploy permissioned chains. Eight months later, Pantheon was contributed to Hyperledger (part of the Linux Foundation) as Hyperledger Besu, becoming the first public chain codebase in Hyperledger.
In parallel, we have been significant contributors to Ethereum 2.0, where we’ve made contributions to the roadmap and specifications, conducted ongoing R&D for key topics, and have built Artemis, an Eth 2.0 beacon chain client. Along the way, we have contributed to the Enterprise Ethereum specification and released a series of innovations on sidechains, custom consensus algorithms and other research topics. On top of all these technology contributions, we now work with dozens of partners and customers deploying production grade systems on Hyperledger Besu. Just last month, we rolled out PegaSys Plus, a commercial distribution of Hyperledger Besu.
We would like to thank ConsenSys for being great partners and investors, and for the ongoing support of PegaSys and our mission to enable enterprises to use both public and private Ethereum.
PegaSys is a thought leader in the Enterprise Ethereum space. Want to join the team? Check out our list of open roles.
This blog post was written by PegaSys Co-Founder and Program Director, Daniel Heyman, alongside Joseph Lubin and Jeremy Millar, with editorial help from Avery Erwin, Kara Miley and Gina Rubino.
