Microsoft introduces Coco's blockchain technology

It is intended to facilitate the use of blockchain in regulated industries. Coco combines a Trusted Execution Environment with existing blockchain protocols. The framework also supports all common blockchain protocols.
Microsoft has introduced a new technology for enterprise blockchain networks. The Coco Framework - Coco stands for the Confidential Consortium - is intended to help existing blockchain protocols meet the requirements of companies for performance, trustworthiness and corporate governance.
Blockchain is the basis for the crypt diet Bitcoin. Basically, it is a kind of decentralized database that stores not only transactions and data, but also their entire history. This method protects the database against manipulation, but also limits its use in companies that are subject to strict compliance rules.

Mark Russinovich, CTO of Microsoft Azure, describes the Coco Framework in a blog entry as an open source system that enables large trustworthy blockchain networks that meet all key business requirements. Coco creates trustworthy groups within the network in which all nodes and participants in the network are explicitly defined and controlled. This gives the company "the scalability, governance, and trustworthiness they need without sacrificing the inherent security and unchangeability they expect."

Coco uses existing blockchain protocols and combines them with security functions like a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) like Intel SGX and Windows Virtual Secure Mode, distributed systems and cryptography. In addition, Microsoft can use Coco with any operating system and hypervisor that supports a compatible TEE.
Furthermore, Coco is not tightly linked to Microsoft Azure. Customers can use Coco Framework nodes in their own data centers or the cloud of other vendors. Ten Distributed Ledgers are already supported, including R3 Corda, Intel Hyperledger Sawtooth, JP Morgan Quorum and Ethereum.

"We believe that Blockchain will change the whole industry," said Russinovich. "We are working with customers and partners to help them deal with them more easily." We plan to provide Coco's source code to the open source community at the beginning of 2018