Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Opens Regional Office in China; Forms “Token Task Force”

Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), a member-led industry organization focusing on the use of the Ethereum blockchain technology in enterprise, has opened a regional office in China. The new office will provide local support to China EEA members, leveraging the organization’s standards, working groups, and resources to help them achieve business results, the organization said on Wednesday.

Formed in 2017, the EEA is an organization dedicated to promoting the use of Ethereum for industry use. It aims “to develop open, blockchain specifications that drive harmonization and interoperability for businesses and consumers worldwide.”

The EEA now counts more than 385 member companies and over 1,650 individual members. Board members include Microsoft, Accenture, ConsenSys, CME Group, Santander and JP Morgan.

The launch of the China office is part of the EEA’s ongoing efforts to open more offices around the globe as it pushes to accelerate the global adoption of its standards and associated certification programs in the business world. Others of the EEA’s regional offices in Asia include Japan and South Korea.

Dr. Weijia Zhang, Wanchain’s vice president of engineering, has been appointed as the EEA regional head in China. Zhang will be responsible for supporting the advancement and adoption of EEA’s standards by taking part in local hackathons, workshops, training sessions, and conferences.

“For each office, we identify an accomplished individual who is passionate about blockchain for the benefit of everyone,” said EEA executive director Ron Resnick. “Zhang’s blockchain expertise and leadership will help to accelerate blockchain adoption in China and support activities of EEA’s growing member base.”

Zhang has extensive research and development, and engineering experience in blockchain, cognitive sciences, computational fluid dynamics, software modeling, computer technologies, and industrial standards. He has published over thirty research and technical papers and has over twenty patents, granted and pending, in computer and digital technology. For more than a decade, Zhang served as a principal software engineer at Dell.

“There has never been a more challenging and exciting time to be in blockchain technology,” said Zhang. “The progress we are seeing across the industry is very promising, and the EEA’s leadership around blockchain standardization and adoption are paramount. I look forward to working with the EEA in China to aid in bringing value to enterprises by utilizing EEA standards, working groups, and resources.”

In addition to the launch of the EEA regional office in China, the organization has unveiled plans to form a “token task force” this year, Resnick told CoinDesk earlier this week. The group will work on a specification for fungible ERC-20 and non-fungible ERC-721 tokens that run on top of Ethereum and private blockchains built on it.

“We want to create a token specification standard for enterprise tokenization so basically [assets] can be managed in a much better way with more assurance than what’s happening today,” Resnick said.