EY launches new blockchain solution to manage business contracts on Ethereum

EY’s OCM uses Ethereum for streamlined, secure contract execution.

EY has launched a new blockchain-based contract management tool, EY OpsChain Contract Manager (OCM), on the Ethereum public chain. The OCM is designed to help businesses execute complex agreements securely, efficiently, and at a lower cost, the company shared in a press release on Wednesday.

As noted, the OCM uses smart contracts on the Ethereum public blockchain to automate contract execution and enforce agreed-upon terms. It also uses zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to keep confidential data private.

With the new solution, EY aims to eliminate the challenge of managing business agreements across numerous operational and technological divisions within and outside organizations. Traditionally, managing complex contracts across different parties and systems can be slow, expensive, and error-prone.

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

According to the team, EY’s solution can integrate with existing enterprise systems via a standardized API, supporting a wide range of business contract types.

In other words, enterprises of all sizes can use OCM to manage various types of business contracts. Early adopters are currently testing the system with complex Power Purchasing Agreements that incorporate market prices and strike prices.

Paul Brody, EY Global Blockchain Leader, highlights the efficiency of contract automation. He stated:

“We’ve identified from past client work that contract automation can improve accuracy while cutting cycle times by more than 90%, and overall contract administration costs by nearly 40%. With our zero-knowledge privacy technology, we have industrialized this capability, and we can now get these benefits at a fraction of the up-front cost. Deploying on a public blockchain is not only cheaper, but also much more scalable, helping enable many-to-many integrations on an open platform with no one company having an unfair advantage by controlling the network.

The latest move follows EY’s debut of a beta version of Nightfall in September 2021 in collaboration with Polygon. Nightfall is a privacy protocol that employs an Optimistic Zero-Knowledge Roll-Up to facilitate private transactions on Ethereum.

Nightfall concentrates on enabling private transactions for enterprises on Ethereum, addressing concerns like network congestion and high transaction costs. Its primary use is safeguarding transaction privacy while benefiting from the public Ethereum blockchain’s security features.