It giant Microsoft announced a new product based on the Azure platform, allowing companies to deploy their own blockchains on Ethereum.

The BaaS product called Ethereum on Azure allows to create Ethereum-based blockchain applications without the need for mining, since the solution uses the Proof-of-Authority rather than the Proof-of-Work algorithm.

"Rather than spending hours building out and configuring the infrastructure, we have automated these time-consuming pieces to allow you to focus on building out your scenarios and applications. You are only charged for the underlying infrastructure resources consumed, such as compute, storage, and networking," the description reads.

According to Microsoft, the PoA consensus algorithm is better suited for networks where the consensus validators are known and authorized, while the network does not require mining, and therefore is more efficient while still retaining Byzantine fault tolerance.

"At the heart of proof-of-authority is decentralized governance. The governance DApp is a set of pre-deployed smart contracts and a web application that are used to govern the authorities on the network. Authorities are broken up into Admin identities and Validator nodes. Admins have the power to delegate consensus participation to a set of Validator nodes. Admins also may vote other admins into or out of the network."

The solution allows businesses to create smart contracts using the WebAssembly (Wasm) toolset from Parity, with smart contracts being written in popular programming languages ​​such as C, C ++ and Rust.