Enterprise Ethereum Alliance adds an Indian Government to 150+ Members

An Indian state government and payments giant Mastercard are among 34 new additions to the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), which now sees over 150 members – making it the world’s largest blockchain consortium.
Founded by an initial 30 members in February 2016, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) is a working group of companies, organizations and Ethereum development startups aiming to leverage open-source Ethereum technology for enterprise blockchain solutions.

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In May, the EEA added 86 new members to the original founding members to see its membership ranks swell to 116, a number closer to the open-source Hyperledger Project led by the Linux Foundation.
With its latest announcement, the EEA is laying claim to being the ‘world’s largest open-source blockchain initiative’ with a number of noteworthy new members from a number of sectors across banking, healthcare, energy and pharma. A standout, however, is the government of Andhra Pradesh, a southern Indian state known for its technology-forward agenda.
J A Chowdary, the special chief secretary and IT advisor to the state’s chief minister underlined the government’s participation as an embrace of blockchain technology. “There is no doubt that blockchain technology is set to be the biggest disruptor not only in the financial world, but also a number of online and offline sectors,” the official stated.
He added:
We are keen on integrating blockchain technology into governance and look forward to our collaboration with Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and provide market access to community.
Other new members include the technology giant Cisco, Russian blockchain startup QIWI, the Technical University of Munich in Germany, among several others.
The government of Andhra Pradesh has previously entered a FinTech partnership with Singapore’s Central Bank with the advancement of digital payments and the development of blockchain technology firmly on the agenda. The state is home to the city of Vishakapatnam, a coastal city that is quickly becoming a FinTech hub with the likes of Visa and Reuters moving in to launch operations.  In a pioneering move, the state of Andhra Pradesh is also planning to shift its database of 103 million ration cards to a blockchain in the coming months.
Julio Faura, chairman of the board at the EEA added:
The technological breadth, depth and variety of organizations coming together under the auspices of EEA to create and drive enterprise Ethereum standards bodes well for the future development of the next-generation Ethereum ecosystem.