Technology firm Microsoft has launched its Coco Framework to help solve the issues confronted by businesses that are adopting the Blockchain technology in their operations. The solution specifically aims to resolve the issues that appear when Blockchain is used in a consortium environment.
According to Microsoft Azure chief technology officer (CTO), Mark Russinovich, their solution can resolve the Blockchain issues in business applications because of its ‘trusted execution environment’ (TEE) that is secured by silicon.
“They trust the TEE to prevent outside tampering – so a transaction processed by one of them is simply broadcast and you use a normal quorum-based algorithm for achieving consensus like any kind of distributed system. You don't have to worry about hostile parties, because the network is fully trusted. That removes the need for complex proof of work mining and other complex algorithms, and that gives you throughput and latency that looks like what you would get out of any distributed database.”
Coco Framework network vs. Ethereum consortium network
According to Russinovich, one major difference of their Coco Framework from the Ethereum network is the use of the compute-intensive proofs of work protocol. He claims that Ethereum’s use of the proof of work concept significantly affects its productivity. This is further exacerbated by the smart contracts that need to refer to data that changes over time, such as currency rates.
Russinovich further explained that their Coco Framework’s TEE enables the creation of a trusted network between every player in a consortium Blockchain.
Adopters of the Coco framework
Russinovich also announced that there are already several users of the Coco Framework. Among them are Intel, Chase Bank, and the Ethereum network.
According to Russinovich, the Ethereum network delivered 1,500-1,600 transactions per second with latency between 100-200 milliseconds in a conducted test using the Ethereum ledger in Coco.