Forty-eight companies have joined the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, including Hewlett-Packard spin-off HP Enterprise (HPE).

The list of new members is varied, drawn from the blockchain startup ecosystem as well as the IT, finance and academic worlds. Among the new members is the University of New South Wales, which this week unveiled a new consumer loyalty research initiative that sees it offering the cryptocurrency ether as a reward for purchases. In total, 200 firms are now taking part in the initiative.

It's perhaps unsurprising that HPE would throw its weight behind the EEA, given its recent moves around the technology. As previously reported, HPE worked with distributed ledger startup R3 to develop new solutions for its client base, and by August had already begun testing with some of its customers.

Markus Ogurek, HYPE's global financial services industry lead, said in a statement:

First revealed

in January, the EEA formally debuted in late February with the backing of major firms like JPMorgan Chase, British Petroleum (BP), Microsoft and a number of other established companies and blockchain startups.

Since then, it's attracted new members like Japanese teleccom KDDI, the government of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and Sberbank, Russia's largest banking firm.

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