EY launches new blockchain solution to manage business contracts on Ethereum

EY has launched a new blockchain-based contract management tool – EY OpsChain Contract Manager (OCM) on the Ethereum public chain. OCM is designed to help enterprises execute complex protocols safely, efficiently and cost-effectively, the company said in a press release Wednesday.

As mentioned earlier, OCM uses smart contracts on the Ethereum public blockchain to automatically execute contracts and enforce agreed-upon terms. It also uses Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) to ensure the privacy of confidential information.

With the new solution, EY aims to eliminate the challenge of managing business agreements across numerous operational and technology functions within and outside the organization. Traditionally, managing complex contracts across disparate parties and systems can be slow, costly and error-prone.

The company pointed out that by leveraging EY OCM, the company can synchronize data with business partners and uniformly enforce key business terms, such as standardized pricing and volume discounts. The solution is expected to create a secure and transparent environment for all parties involved.

According to the team, EY’s solution can be integrated with existing enterprise systems through standardized APIs and supports a wide range of business contract types.

That said, businesses of all sizes can use OCM to manage various types of business contracts. Early adopters are currently testing the system using complex power purchase agreements containing market prices and strike prices.

Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at EY, emphasized the efficiency of contract automation. He said:

“We have found from past client work that contract automation can improve accuracy while reducing cycle time by more than 90% and reducing overall contract management costs by nearly 40%. With our zero-knowledge privacy technology, we have made this possible Industrializing capabilities, we can now reap these benefits at a fraction of the upfront cost. Deploying on a public blockchain is not only cheaper, but also more scalable, enabling many-to-many integration on an open platform. , no company gains an unfair advantage by controlling the network.

Prior to this, EY and Polygon first launched a beta version of Nightfall in September 2021. Nightfall is a privacy protocol that uses optimistic zero-knowledge summarization to facilitate private transactions on Ethereum.

Nightfall focuses on providing private transactions for businesses on Ethereum, solving problems such as network congestion and high transaction costs. Its main purpose is to protect transaction privacy while benefiting from the security features of the public Ethereum blockchain.