Quorum Blockchain: What Replaced GoQuorum and How to Build Today

Quorum blockchain is the common name for permissioned Ethereum: networks that run Solidity contracts and standard Ethereum tools, but that only approved nodes can join. This guide explains what happened to GoQuorum, why new networks now use Hyperledger Besu, how privacy works after Tessera, and how to plan a network or a migration.

A Quorum network uses a fast Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus protocol instead of proof of stake. For a new project in 2026, Quorum development means building a permissioned Ethereum network on Besu.

A short history of the Quorum blockchain

• 2016: JPMorgan created Quorum as a fork of the Go Ethereum client that added private transactions and node permissioning for financial use.
• 2020: ConsenSys took over Quorum and renamed the client GoQuorum. It also maintained Hyperledger Besu, a Java Ethereum client that supports permissioned networks.
• June 2024: GoQuorum published its last release, v24.4.1.
• Today: The GoQuorum repository is archived, and its notice says Consensys no longer maintains or supports GoQuorum and does not recommend it for new projects. The Tessera privacy manager repository is archived too.

Besu is an open-source project under the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust. Its code moved to the besu-eth/besu repository in 2026, and its documentation is at docs.besu-eth.org. Besu 26.10.0 came out in October 2026.

When a vendor or an old article says "Quorum development", read it as enterprise Ethereum. Existing GoQuorum networks need a maintenance and migration plan, and new networks should not start on GoQuorum.

What Besu removed in 2025 and 2026

In September 2024 the Besu maintainers announced that Besu would drop several features that were slow or had fallen behind Ethereum. The changes reached releases in 2025 and 2026:

Designs that relied on Tessera or on-chain permissioning need a new approach before they move to a current Besu release.

Quorum blockchain building blocks today

Public explorers cannot see a private network, so the network needs its own explorer. The Quorum explorer guide compares the options.

Privacy on a Quorum network after Tessera

Private transactions were the original reason to choose Quorum. Tessera encrypted each private payload and sent it only to named participants, and only a hash went on the shared chain. The design had costs: private state could differ between nodes, and private contracts could not easily call public ones. With Tessera gone from Besu, teams use one of these designs:

• Separate small networks for groups that must not see each other's data.
• Off-chain documents with on-chain hashes or encrypted payloads. The chain proves that a document existed and did not change.
• Zero-knowledge proofs for facts that a party must prove without showing the data.
• Privacy frameworks at the application layer. Paladin, a Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust project, adds programmable privacy on top of EVM chains such as Besu.

If every transaction must stay private between its parties, compare Corda, which shares data only between the parties to a deal, or Hyperledger Fabric, which offers channels and private data collections.

How to plan a permissioned Ethereum network

1. Confirm that you need a shared ledger. If one organization controls all writes, a database with audit logs is simpler.
2. Define governance. Decide who runs validators, who approves new members, who can upgrade contracts and how disputes are settled. Put these rules in legal agreements as well as in code.
3. Choose the validator count and placement. QBFT needs at least four validators to tolerate one faulty validator, so spread validators across organizations and regions.
4. Design the privacy model from the options above.
5. Build and test the contracts to the same standard as on public Ethereum, including a smart contract audit.
6. Set up operations. Plan monitoring, key management with hardware security modules, backups, node upgrades and an explorer.

Migrating a GoQuorum network to Besu

1. List every feature the network uses: consensus type, private transactions, permissioning contracts and plugins.
2. Replace Raft or Clique consensus with QBFT, because Besu does not support Raft, and it no longer supports Clique.
3. Move private contracts and private state to one of the application-layer privacy designs.
4. Move on-chain permissioning to local allowlists.
5. Test the whole migration in a staging network with a copy of real state before you touch production.

Quorum development cost and effort

These figures are rough estimates under stated assumptions. Two engineers can set up a proof of concept with four Besu validators, QBFT and a few contracts in a few weeks. A production consortium network takes months, and most of that time goes into governance and operations: member onboarding, legal agreements, security review and round-the-clock support, costs that continue after the build. The guides to private blockchain development and enterprise blockchain solutions cover this model in more depth.

When a Quorum-style network fits

Permissioned Ethereum fits a consortium that wants Solidity and existing Ethereum skills, and it keeps the option to connect later to public Ethereum or to tokenized-asset platforms. Corda fits better when each transaction must be private by default, and Hyperledger Fabric fits better when groups need separate channels. Some institutions now compare running their own network with using a public layer 2 or a privacy-focused rollup.

Frequently asked questions