In 2021, after six years of community building and expanding from two projects to 18 projects, to over 50 labs, 16 Special Interest and Working Groups, and over 200 members, Hyperledger became a Foundation.
This newfound identity arches over all of its projects, labs, regional chapters, and community groups. Hyperledger Foundation is now leading the collective effort to advance enterprise blockchain technology and fulfill its mission to foster and coordinate the premier open source enterprise blockchain community.
At Hyperledger Foundation, being open is core to what we do. We’re here to lead an open, global and welcoming enterprise blockchain ecosystem—a community where no contribution is seen as too small or insignificant. Our foundation comprises organizations, developers, executives, students, teachers, government leaders, and more. It’s supported by the Technical Steering Committee, various working groups, special interest groups, and Meetup communities all across the globe, now numbering more than 80,000 participants.
According to LFXInsights, there has been a 53% growth in the total commits in the last three years, and new code contributors increased by 37%. A total of 366 organizations from both large and small companies have made code commits since 2016. And the pace of activity among new community members is accelerating as commits by new contributors have increased by 286% in the last year.
Some of the largest and most important production enterprise blockchain projects today are built using Hyperledger technologies. They include:
Over 13 Central Bank Digital Currency production and pilots using multiple Hyperledger projects have been identified this year alone.
With this transition, Hyperledger Foundation also gained new leadership with the appointment of Daniela Barbosa as its new Executive Director. Barbosa is a seasoned veteran of the open source community with over 20 years of enterprise technology experience, including previously serving as Hyperledger’s Vice President of Worldwide Alliances, where she was responsible for the project’s community outreach and overall network growth.
According to research from Blockdata, Hyperledger Fabric is used by more of the top 100 public companies in the world than any other blockchain platform.
Hyperledger-based networks are used by some of the largest corporations around the world, including more than half of the companies on the Forbes Blockchain 50, a list of companies with revenue or a valuation of at least $1 billion that lead in employing distributed ledger technology.
As an ever-growing library of case studies shows, Hyperledger technologies are already transforming many market spaces, including supply chains, trade finance, and healthcare. Hyperledger technologies are used in everything from powering global trade networks and supply chains to fighting counterfeit drugs, banking “unbanked” populations, and ensuring sustainable manufacturing.
In addition, Hyperledger technologies are being applied to a number of new markets and business models. These include digital identity and payments, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), and NFTs like Damien Hirst’s The Currency project and DC Comics powered by Palm NFT with a near-zero carbon footprint using Hyperledger Besu.
Hyperledger technologies are being adopted to put individuals in charge of their own identity. People often need to verify their status, prove a birthdate, board a plane, comply with vaccine mandates, prove their education, or access money. Leveraging Hyperledger Aries and Hyperledger Indy, organizations worldwide are reshaping how digital information is managed and verified to increase online trust and privacy. These digital identity solutions create verified credentials that are effective, secure, accessible, and privacy-preserving.
Blockchain technology has already helped rewrite some of the rules for currencies and payments. Governments worldwide are now moving towards Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) or digital forms of their official currency. These will give central banks a more flexible, more secure form of their national currencies and lower the risks from alternative cryptocurrencies. Backed by a central bank, any CBDC, whether developed for wholesale or retail use, will be legal tender with the stability that regulation confers.
Governments are moving carefully, but many of the early projects are using Hyperledger platforms. The goals range from modernizing payment processes to removing barriers and costs associated with back-end settlement to boosting financial inclusion.
This fireside chat from Hyperledger Global Forum on CBDCs by experts from Accenture and DTTC offers a great overview of the benefits and different approaches to these new currencies and a look at the current landscape of CBDC research and experimentation across the globe.
These efforts are made possible by the hundreds of enterprises that support the Hyperledger Foundation. To learn how your organization can get involved, click here