Microsoft Corp. today announced the release of Coco Framework, an open-source system for building large scale, confidential blockchain networks that meet enterprise standards.

With the Coco Framework, enterprise developers can quickly roll out distributed ledger technology at scale that can provide tamper-proof history, distributed governance and enhanced confidentiality.

Blockchains, consensus built distributed cryptographic ledgers, have been sought after in recent years by industries that require high confidentiality and accuracy when recording and reporting transactions such as financial institutions and supply chain companies. To meet these demands blockchain providers have created platforms such as IBM Corp.’s Hyperledger Project,  PricewaterhouseCooper’s Vulcan and R3CEV LLC’s Corda.

The Coco Framework, short for “confidential consortium,” is blockchain protocol-agnostic and is compatible with most current blockchains and is designed to extend their capabilities by adding key enterprise needs. To do this, Coco takes advantage of trusted execution environments such as Intel SGX – a processor-level instruction set allowing for permissioned memory use — and Windows Virtual Secure Mode. In addition, Coco uses distributed systems cryptography to enhance security and privacy for ledger entries in an enterprise environment.

“Coco presents an alternative approach to ledger construction,” said Mark Russinovich, chief technology officer at Microsoft Azure (pictured), “giving enterprises the scalability, distributed governance and enhanced confidentiality they need without sacrificing the inherent security and immutability they expect.”

To meet these needs, Coco will provide throughput and latency approaching database speeds, network policy management through distributed governance and support nondeterministic transactions. The framework is also designed to allow enterprise developers to create business-specific confidentiality models that take into account multiple assets, partners, viewers and transaction models.

Because Coco is not a blockchain ledger itself, but a framework that builds out an existing blockchain technology, it can be used to extend the capabilities of any given blockchain. As an example, Russinovich demonstrated how Coco could be implemented on top of the Ethereum blockchain and use smart contracts in order to allow a retailer to set up purchase orders through distributors and vendors, while also retaining confidentiality of that order so that only those distributors assigned could see the contract.

For performance improvements, Russinovich compared running a large number of transactions through the Coco Framework (using Ethereum) and the Ethereum network by itself. In his demonstration, transactions through Coco could manage in excess of 1,600 transactions per second at a latency of 125 milliseconds. Ethereum could only manage around 15 transactions per second at a latency of 56,520 milliseconds, or almost a minute.

Although Coco’s internal framework allows for much better performance internally and is secured by protected environments, it still takes advantage of the underlying blockchain it runs atop to provide transactional historical security. The Coco Framework routes for speed and processing time to keep the enterprise network moving smoothly, but the underlying blockchain still embeds its own cryptographic indelibility making the ledger itself tamperproof.

“I believe Coco can only benefit from the diverse and talented open source communities that are driving blockchain innovation today,” Russinovich said, speaking to Microsoft’s intent to follow an open-source approach to Coco’s development and release. “While Coco started as a collaboration between Azure and Microsoft Research, it has benefitted from the input of dozens of customers and partners already. Opening up Coco is a way to scale development far beyond the reach and imagination of our initial working group, and our intent is to contribute the source code to the community in early 2018.”

Microsoft has already announced plans to partner with early adopters of the Coco Framework, including Bank consortium R3CEV LLC’s blockchain Corda, Intel Corp.’s blockchain Sawtooth and J.P. Morgan Chase and Co.’s blockchain Quorum.

The Coco Framework is still in its early phases and Microsoft intends to release the application provider interface and development code on a GitHub repository in 2018. Further details on the framework and its intended audience are available in the Coco Framework Whitepaper.

Image: Microsoft