# Baseline Writeup for Next Billions ERP

## What is Baseline?
Baseline is a library of tools for private synchronization of complex business logic with many participants. Critically, Baseline uses ZK to allow coordination to be done confidentially and without putting sensitive operational information in shared databases. This is done by settling ZKP's on a blockchain, which is referred to as a "Consensus Controlled State Machine".

Baseline is 100% open source, governed by [Oasis Open](https://www.oasis-open.org/) under the [Ethereum Oasis Open Project](https://github.com/ethereum-oasis-op) (formerly known as Ethereum Enterprise Alliance Community Projects). The founding participants are Consensys, Ernst Young (EY), and Microsoft.

## BRI 3
[Linked here](https://github.com/ethereum-oasis-op/baseline/tree/main/examples/bri-3)

BRI 3 is a reference implementation demonstrating how the infrastructure is used to
1. Create a purchase order
2. Recieve purchase order
3. Create invoice
4. Sign invoice
5. Recognize fulfillment of order
6. Recognize receipt of goods
7. Match purchase order, receipt, and invoice (3 way matching)
8. Release funds to vendor

The BRI is primarily focused on driving decentralized & private economic engagement, rather than some of the other benefits considered for blockchains in ERP's (mainly track and trace like with [Hyperledger](https://www.hyperledger.org/case-studies/walmart-case-study)). The reference implementation is highly generalized and would require fitting to specific usecases.

To my knowledge there has not been any research done over MPC or other analytics tooling. There has been previous research done in SAP and Excel integrations.

## Further Reading
* [Docs](https://docs.baseline-protocol.org)
* [GitHub](https://github.com/ethereum-oasis-op/baseline)
* ["Master Enablement Deck"](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/18WA9w0eZGrr5YQI2jctcf1UMVtLUG2j4Efin93XLH_U/edit?usp=sharing)
* ["Baseline Overview Blog" (good starting point)](https://www.baseline-protocol.org/blog/the-baseics/)
* [Latest Baseline Reference Implementation](https://github.com/ethereum-oasis-op/baseline/tree/main/examples/bri-3)

## Practical Implementation
The vast majority of ZK/ Blockchain ERP usecases will likely need a few things:
* The ability to bolt onto existing ERP systems
* Incredibly low cost settlement - potentially necessitating an L3 or state channels that eventually settle onchain with L2's security guarantees
* Privacy from counterparties (or unrelated third parties on public blockchains) that may attempt to surveil business operations to determine pressure points in competitors
* This is likely why Hyperledger failed to gain adoption - companies would run nodes in a PoA network, and the PoA nodes could see sensitive data from other parties.
* (Depending on locality) transactions in fiat currencies
* Certain countries in Asia and Africa are dealing in USDT in Tron. If figuring out the first and last mile on the fiat problem is too daunting, it would make sense to tailor efforts towards supply chains already seeking the use of USDT over their local currencies

I am by no means the quintessential authority on this, but the costs of adoption need to be near minimal. ERP users already run complex docker containers in the background and are amenable to complex workflows if they can be abstracted away to a button press. The solution needs to A: not introduce friction into the existing workflow and B: provide the larger company as a whole with decreased settlement times, decreased cost/ time of track and trace, decreased compliance and reconciliation cost, etc.