ConsenSys-Backed Truffle Is Taking Its Dev Tools Beyond Just Ethereum

The company behind a popular suite of tools for ethereum developers is expanding to three new blockchain networks.

Truffle CEO and founder Tim Coulter will announce Friday at the startup’s TruffleCon event in Seattle that additional tooling would be built for Hyperledger Fabric, Tezos and R3’s Corda.

“Last year at TruffleCon, we celebrated 1 million downloads,” said Wesley McVay, Truffle’s vice president and head of global strategic partnerships. “I said the next million downloads are going to be focused around enterprise. This year at TruffleCon, we are announcing two incredible enterprise integrations and one really amazing open-source public integration.”

Both Hyperledger Fabric and the Corda network are marketed as enterprise-focused, permissioned blockchains. Developers for these platforms are backed by large enterprise organizations such as IBM and SBI.

Tezos, on the other hand, is a public blockchain network that at one point amassed a total token supply value of over $1 billion. It too has been used and developed upon by major companies including Brazil’s fifth-largest bank, BTG Pactual.

With the expansion of Truffle developer tools to these blockchain networks, Hyperledger Executive Director Brian Behlendorf see these formerly divided technical communities being able to better cooperate and work across chains.

"This integration marks another step towards compatibility and interoperability in blockchain and smart contract development," said Behlendorf in a press statement. “We believe the Truffle integration will bring even more energy and ideas from the Ethereum developer community into Hyperledger."

Interoperability is also a stated goal of Truffle’s as it looks to grow beyond the 3.4 million downloads it has clocked to date. The ConsenSys-backed company was recently spun out of the Brooklyn-based venture studio, though it continues to receive support from ConsenSys. An internal ConsenSys document from early 2019 pointed to Truffle as one of the firm’s standout successes.

“We’re called Truffle and we have all this chocolate branding because we want the experience for developers to be as delightful as eating a chocolate truffle,” Coulter said, adding:

“Truffle’s the start of the development experience. You start building with Truffle, then build your application and deploy it to whatever platform you want. … This multi-chain future I’m talking about has a lot of people working to have the many protocols themselves integrate with one another.”

Truffle's Wes McVay (left) and Tim Coulter (right) speak at TruffleCon 2018 (photo via ConsenSys)