The Baseline Protocol is a standard designed to enable parties to synchronize complex, multiparty, business princesses using privacy-preserving technologies.

The Baseline Protocol open-source project was conceived as an enterprise solution pattern and a standard for privacy-preserving multiparty business process automation between parties that might not fully trust one another–this is termed "multiparty zero trust under zero knowledge". The Baseline Protocol has inspired other standards such as the Metro Ethernet Forums 114 standard (telecommunications industry) and Polygon Nightfall (an enterprise Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution).

Within the context of Ethereum and Web3, the Baseline Protocol can be perceived as an enterprise-ready L2 scaling protocol. It manages business process states and their zero-knowledge proofs of correctness, which are verified and anchored on an EVM-compatible L1 chain.

The Baseline Protocol currently has two reference implementations (BRI-1 and BRI-3). For full standards compliance, two or more reference implementations must show that they meet the standard’s interoperability requirements. This means they must demonstrate business process automation bridging between two reference implementations representing two distinct business ecosystems.

Grant funding will support the development of a demonstration where at least two reference implementations interoperate with one another. This will showcase how business process automation can bridge two or more distinct ecosystems (one for each reference implementations) with little or no trust assumptions. The reference implementations employ a Zero Trust framework using Self-Sovereign Identities based W3C Decentralized Identifiers, anchored on Ethereum coupled with zero knowledge proofs, in particular zk-snarks. These preserve the privacy of business-sensitive data as it passes through a multiparty business process, while simultaneously verifying the correctness of business process execution on the anchoring EVM-compatible L1 chain.

Roadmap:

The Baseline Protocol 2023 Roadmap aims to advance the draft standard to a ratified project specification, as an Oasis standard. The Baseline Protocol grant funds will be used to support the 2023 Roadmap items which focuses on interoperability of two Baseline Protocol Implementations (BPIs) demonstrated on a business use case that literally occurs hundreds of thousands of times daily worldwide. This use case typically has limited data privacy and lacks proof of correctness: verification of the banking data of an enterprise’s customer with the respective customer’s bank.

The innovative approach introduced by the Baseline Protocol to this global use case ensures that banking data verification can occur under zero knowledge. This means that actual banking data does not need to be shared between the enterprise and the customer’s bank, while being able to prove that both parties executed the business process correctly. While not a classic Web3 use case, banking data synchronization is such a prevalent business process globally. An Ethereum-based method that both enhances and de-risks this use case could meaningfully drive the adoption of Ethereum by enterprises. This would be achieved through the use of multiple dedicated, enterprise-ready L2 solutions that incorporate the Baseline Protocol methodology.

The Baseline Protocol’s Technical Steering Committee has outlined the high priorities for advancing the standard in 2023, which include the following:

Technical

1. Complete Baseline Reference Implementation 3 (BRI-3), which follows a simple and vendor-agnostic approach to enable the subsequent roadmap items, (read more here).
2. Conduct a demonstration of interoperability for Baseline Protocol Implementations (BPIs) for a simple use case to produce results of standard interoperability.
3. Develop an SDK of out-of-the-box tools for BRI-3 for developers to create a BPI.

Outreach

1. Conduct a BPI roadshow through a series of in-person and virtual events to demonstrate BPIs.
2. Host an interoperability event for BPI interop demonstration.

We aim to raise up to $100,000 in grant funding to support the work and enable traditional enterprises to synchronize their workflows using Web3 technologies.

Resources:

• Github Repo with implementations, examples, documentation, and more.
• Website with resources, blogs, and information on the open source project operations.

Reports/blogs:

• The BASEics- Baseline Architecture Simplified for Everyone
• The zkEVM: A Natural Execution Framework for Enterprise Baseline Applications
• Digital Business at a Crossroads
• How the Baseline Protocol Can Secure the Edge of Networks
• The Baseline Standard Across Industries: The Case of Mobility
• Global Supply Chain Coordination via Baseline Protocol & The Consensus Controlled State Machine
• Enterprise Ethereum Alliance- New Baseline Protocol Reference Implementation Hits Milestone
• Proving Secrets Without Exposing Them
• Adrift In An Ocean Of Data
• Baseline: The Developer Experience
• Baseline Fraud out of Invoice Financing