Linux Foundation-Led Blockchain Project Grows to 30 Members

A distributed ledger effort being led by the Linux Foundation has revealed it now has 30 members, up from 20 when it was announced in December.

Formerly known as the Open Ledger Project, the Hyperledger Projecthttps://www.hyperledger.org/news/announcement/2016/02/hyperledger-project-announces-30-founding-members was first revealed in December as a cross-industry initiative boasting participants such as Cisco and IBM as well as blockchain industry startups such as Digital Asset Holdings and R3CEV.

New members include a diverse set of both established and new finance and technology companies such as ABN Amro, BNY Mellon, Calastone, CME Group, ConsenSys, Guardtime, Hitachi, IntellectEU, NEC, NTT Data, Red Hat and Symbiont.

In statements, Jim Zemlin, the technical director of The Linux Foundation, sought to frame the new participants as proof that there is demand for open standards in the distributed ledger industry, and that the Hyperledger Project is poised to help the technology connect to the enterprise market in a similar manner as Linux, the popular open-source operating system.

Zemlin said:

"Working on its own even the largest global corporation could not match the speed at which our new members are moving blockchain technology forward. Such a broad effort and investment is sure to have a great impact on our personal and professional lives."

So far, the Linux Foundation said it has received code contributions from Blockstream, IBM, Ripple and Digital Asset, the latter of which has released some details about the code it has made available.

Other community members, it said, are "contemplating contributions to the effort", which will then be reviewed by a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) that aims to promote transparent decision-making.

"This group will oversee the project’s technical direction and working groups as well as manage multiple contributions to the code base," the release said. "The TSC will be evaluating proposed contributions and go through an open community process to build out the initial and unified codebase.”

A separate governing board will manage the effort’s intellectual property, such as the Hyperledger branding, which was donated to the effort by Digital Asset after it was purchased in an acquisition early last year.

In addition, the Hyperledger Project has indicated it will seek to elect a board of directors to guide business decisions and marketing, for which nominations are now open.

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