Quorum (blockchain)

Quorum is distributed ledger and smart contract platform designed for enterprise applications. This platform can be customized according to specific business needs and provides support for transaction-level privacy as well as network-wide transparency.

Quorum is based on Ethereum and is a fork of go-ethereum. Unlike Ethereum which is open and permissionless, Quorum is a permissioned (i.e. private) network. In other words, the Quorum blockchain is a distributed ledger but it is not a decentralized network because node operators are all known parties, and it therefore does not use decentralized consensus mechanisms such as proof-of-work or proof-of-stake.

There are several performance advantages to operating permissioned networks versus permissionless ones. For example, Quorum uses raft-based consensus and Istanbul BFT (a consensus algorithm based on the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant Algorithm), which enable faster transaction speeds and higher throughput relative to decentralized blockchains.

Quorum is a project of JPMorgan Chase.