The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has announced a slew of new members to join the working group that now sees a total of 116 members among its ranks.

Founded by 30 members originally in February 2016, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) is aimed at using open-source Ethereum tech for developing enterprise blockchain solutions. Original members include the likes of technology powerhouses Microsoft and Intel and banking giant JPMorgan.

Using the Solidity programming language and the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the Ethereum blockchain executes agreements powered by smart contracts on a public ledger. In its announcement, the EEA revealed its advent to developing hybrid infrastructures of both permissioned (private) and open (public) Ethereum networks.

For example, the EEA could integrate Quorum, a private Ethereum-based blockchain built by JP Morgan and Ethereum co-founder Jeff Wilcke, also an Ethereum core developer. An early presentation from September 2016 revealed Quorum’s capabilities to process hundreds of transactions per second with increased privacy, to be used by JPMorgan for a number of applications including international transfers.

In its announcement today, the EEA has announced a number of new members that brings the consortium closer to the 120+ member open-source Hyperledger Project, led by the Linux Foundation.

New members include a number of global heavyweights from different industries including financial services giant DTCC, Japan’s largest bank MUFG, ‘big four’ accounting giant Deloitte, Samsung SDS, the IT subsidiary of electronics manufacturer Samsung, one of India’s largest IT services firms Infosys, automaker Toyota, the San Francisco Stock Exchange, US pharma giant Merck and more.

“When we set out to build the first smart contract-driven public platform for buying and selling US small business financial securities, we knew we’d need a distributed ledger technology stack that was both enterprise-ready and scalable, yet flexible enough for us to modify its protocol when needed and according to our use cases,” stated Benjamin Lozano, CEO of the San Francisco Stock Exchange. “For this reason we chose Ethereum, which excels in all these categories.”

A number of Asian bitcoin- and blockchain-startups are also among the newly near-tripling member list. They include Tokyo-based Consensus Base, South Korea’s Coinplug, Chinese startup ConsenLabs and Samsung SDS, among others.

Julio Faura, EEA chairman who is also the head of blockchain R&D at Spanish banking giant Santander, which notably quit another blockchain consortium in R3 recently, said the enthusiasm surrounding the EEA is ‘remarkable’.

He added:

Our new members come from varying industries such as pharma, mobile, bakning, automotive, management consulting, and hardware as well as the startup community driving innovation. It’s great to see everyone come together to build the next generation of our economy on Ethereum blockchain solutions.

News of the increased interest in developing Ethereum-based applications in multiple industries accompanies soaring gains registered by Ethereum’s token currency ether (ETH). In a week, Ethereum has gone from trading at $92.43 to more than doubling in value. Ethereum crossed the $100 milestone last week. Over the weekend alone in the past two days, Ethereum price has gained over 50% and is now trading near $195.

The gains have pushed Ethereum back to #2 spot on the list of biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap, behind bitcoin. Ethereum’s market cap is now valued at $17.75 billion.

The complete list of new members and the accompanying announcement can be found here [PDF].

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