Thread by @mayazi

Thread on Big 4 Blockchain strategy & some enterprise ZKP snarks, as someone who has been shilling ZKPs to enterprise from the get-go when big 4 so called partners were questioning why the f the should care 1/
coindesk.com/ey-nightfall-e…

The @EYIntlTax announcements is big news as an auditing firm becomes a tech stack player, not just a consultant & integrator.
@pbrody has been at the forefront of ZKPs & blockchain for awhile, and has made a huge bet with Nightfall on several fronts:

* open source + copyright waiver - a novelty for an auditing firm, might end up being a huge liability risk as @prestonbryne chimed in.
* SAP ERP modules (licensing, supply chain), where a singular process is represented as ZKP ERC721 token 3/

* Using L1 Ethereum - EY being first to put enterprise blockchains directly on the public chain, could be the beginning of enterprise use cases utilizing ethereum as a verification layer for various proofs. (Been ranting about this for a while).

@EYIntlTax giving code away with no license doesn't resolve copyrights issues, ironic given they're tokenizing microsft licenses. legal minds have educated me that licensless publications don't absolve copyrights issues. Derivative work could be a risk for third-parties

the end-to-end use case standard is a big deal. this means that Microsoft + Ey + SAP have created a generic workflow from ERP-azure-token per modules. a play similar to what consensys had been working on in standards, which puts them in direct competition with them & R3

it should be clear that this EY is making a huge bet on new revenue streams. having a ZKP based standard positions them to be the leading firm auditing the enterprise implementations for ZKPs, after all even in zero-knowledge, garbage in is garbage out

EY thinks that auditing ZKPs will be a new business line for their auditing business, as Blockchains become a verification network for reconciling biz process data.

Now consider the historic competition - us blockchain people started talking to enterprise back in 2015, the big4 were a great communication channel , not only did they have the resources for cool graphics in their reports, but they were able to articulate use cases to corporates

Most big4 blcokcahin teams were on the sales sides, not counting their receptions & ads. Standouts were accenture (leading investments in DAH, & nuilding out the mutable tool Chameleon), deloitte with their blockchain lab, and EY taking it to the next level with this launch

keep in mind that most of these consulting arms might have built some POCs, but when their clients got serious they ended up joining enterprise consortias either R3, EEA, or hyperledger - that must have burnt for the execs, especially after Consenys bought the whole Deloiite lab

2.5 years ago when i did the rounds showing them zkps potential, most of these leading teams literally asked why they should care, Privacy or stack architecture wasn't their top priority, shilling billable clients was

oh...and sponsoring drinks every single blockcahin conference. Till this day @Saronimo are gratefull for @Deloitte investing in SETL, we've never understood their consensus bought that project has bought several bottles of wine. that's usable billables to shill

the fact the EY is now directly taking on R3, EEA & hyperledger consortias with Microsoft & SAP backing could be a game changer, if they manage to build their own integration tools.

OTOH this bet could backfire, the data verification layer might migrate to L@ on ethereum after the ZK rollouts, as well as the regulatory concerns of having uncensored miners (back to the pesky GDPR geek outs)

Keep in mind that the DAPP competition is heating up. Till now the choice was for the most part go EEA (given the huge eth community), Hyperledger or R3. New smart contract protocols with Dapps might end up getting real biz traction before any private blcokcahins hits production

Especially new protocols built by teams already familiar with enterprise needs, database integration, and dev requirements. That's why projects like @chromapolis are so fascinating. they designed a public chain built for enterprise data needs, to avoid all the middleware shilling

in case the press releases drowned out your attention spam - blockchain middleware is fancy talk to obfuscate the capital extraction service corporates, consultants & vcs see in blockchain tech. they call it "blcokcahin as a service"

It basically means pay them to be a bridge between data their business it, and the blockchain’s data structure that’s incompatible with the relational DBs they use