Bitfury Integrates Java, Allows for Private Chain Anchoring to Public Networks

Mining firm and blockchain software service company Bitfury wants to expedite blockchain development for traditional enterprise and business. Working toward this goal, the company announced today that it’s introducing Java binding for its blockchain service, Exonum. The soon-to-be-available binding comes with a software development kit that will allow developers to build private chains on Exonum that can be anchored to public blockchains, the press release notes.

In computer science, binding allows a library of data written in one coding language to interact with libraries written in another coding language. For Exonum, which is written in Rust, it means that developers can now build on the network using Java. Ultimately, this will allow Java developers to create private blockchains on top of Exonum’s framework.

Java binding will provide businesses, enterprises and other organizations with the tools they need to tailor private blockchain networks to fit their needs. If they so choose, enterprises can anchor these private chains to a public chain’s mainnet, giving them the privacy and versatility of a permissioned network with the transparency and reliability of a permissionless one.

The Java binding feature also enables developers to integrate third-party applications with Exonum’s blockchain.

With Java binding and its contingent software development kit, Exonum’s head Gleb Palienko hopes that the two additions to Exonum’s suite of offerings should attract more coders to its network.

“Java binding is meant to make it easier for enterprises and businesses to implement blockchain applications,” Palienko told Bitcoin Magazine. “Java has the largest developer community and is the de-facto standard for large enterprises, while Rust is not as widely used, so this move will generally make Exonum more accessible to more people. Getting the Java develop[er] community on board is a big step toward making Exonum the most developer-friendly framework.”

With Java enabled, Exonum users can now launch smart contracts, Palienko added. The Exonum head expects that this initial step will clear the way for Bitfury’s blockchain to bind with the Java Virtual Machine’s auxiliary programming languages, as well.

“No other languages are supported at this time, but in the future, Java binding may support other JVM-languages, such as Kotlin, Groovy, Clojure or Scala. However, Java binding is only the first step. We hope to make blockchain application development accessible to all developers, regardless of the language they are familiar with.”

Exonum’s Java binding comes a month after Amazon launched its own blockchain-as-a-web-service, Kaleido. Like Exonum, Kaleido allows enterprises to set up their own private blockchains while also giving them the option to synchronize it with a public chain. Developed with assistance from Ethereum incubator ConsenSys, Kaleido can be anchored to Ethereum’s network.

Unlike, Kaleido, however, Palienko stressed that Exonum can be anchored to any public chain, be it Ethereum, Bitcoin or any other.

There’s no concrete date for Exonum’s Java binding 1.0 release, but Palienko indicated that it’s not too far off and that the Bitfury team plans “to give an update on this soon.”