Hyperledger Turns Five

Releases 2020 Annual Report Detailing State of the Community and the Greenhouse

SAN FRANCISCO (December 17, 2020) – Today, Hyperledger, an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies, turns five. Hyperledger launched on December 17, 2015, supported by 21 founding members. It now closes 2020 as a community of over 200 members with 16 named projects, 20 labs projects, five regional chapters and 20 Hyperledger Certified Service Providers (HCSPs). 

The Linux Foundation project has been marking the anniversary with the Five Years of Hyperledger panel series (#5yearsofHyperledger) featuring a mix of industry voices discussing the past, present and future impact of distributed ledger technologies. During the event, panelists have covered a range of topics from the future of money to the next five year of enterprise blockchain. The series wraps up today with a virtual networking event organized around key themes that will shape the next five years of enterprise blockchain.

Hyperledger also released its 2020 Annual Report, which is a wide-ranging look at project updates and milestones, community engagement, events, international growth, and training and certification. Highlights of the year include:

– The releases of Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 and Hyperledger Fabric 2.2 LTS
– Hyperledger Besu’s graduation to active status
– The launch of Hyperledger Cactus, which graduated from Hyperledger Labs
– Record member participation in Member Summit
– Swift, worldwide uptake of virtual meet-ups with more than 180 events in 81 countries 

“In the last five years, we’ve seen an entire ecosystem coalesce around the mission of advancing blockchain for business and, as a community, have built the multiple platforms and tools that are at the center of critical systems around the world,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director, Hyperledger. “Hyperledger’s role is to champion both development and deployment of these technologies, and every day we see the impact our work is having. This is a great opportunity to look back at the specific achievements of the last year and our overall accomplishments. We arrive at this milestone with the same focus on community building and blockchain’s potential that started us on this journey in 2015.”

We would like to thank our members for their involvement and support over the years and for their enthusiasm for our work and this milestone:

“As a founding member of Hyperledger, Accenture is incredibly proud to participate in the celebration of this milestone. The importance of bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders, from developers, enterprise leaders, policy makers and academics, to work shoulder to shoulder to make Hyperledger’s vision of blockchain for business a reality, cannot be understated,” said David Treat, senior managing director, Global Blockchain and Multiparty Systems Lead, Accenture. “These collaborative efforts have paved the way for the accelerated adoption of blockchain technology, reshaped business models and illustrated how technology can be deployed for positive social impact that benefits all. We look forward to continuing to drive the success and growth of Hyperledger technologies to help clients achieve greater business value.”

“Over the past five years, Hyperledger has helped redefine blockchain platform identity from being solely cryptocurrency to a platform that enables organizations to solve problems in collaborative, innovative ways. Chainyard has been very fortunate to be part of the journey since the early days of Hyperledger and has been able to contribute with Trust Your Supplier and other enterprise solutions,” said Isaac Kunkel of Chainyard. “The rewards for being part of the Hyperledger community are great and can be realized simply by being engaged in one or more of the many groups the community convenes.” 

“As a founding member of the organization, DTCC continues to believe that open source is critical to the broad acceptance of distributed ledger technology,” stated Rob Palatnick, Managing Director and Global Head of Technology Research and Innovation at DTCC and Chair of the Hyperledger Governing Board. “Hyperledger has become the primary open source community working on enterprise strength DLT platforms. We look forward to our continued involvement in this important organization, and in supporting future projects for the open source community in the years to come.” 

“It is a great pleasure to be a part of the 5th anniversary of Hyperledger,” said Toshiya Cho, Senior Evangelist / Managing Director, Hitachi, Ltd. “Hyperledger plays an integral part in Hitachi’s Blockchain-related business. Hitachi introduced Hitachi Blockchain Service for Hyperledger Fabric in 2018, and we have successfully conducted various PoCs and implemented production systems in multiple industries including finance, manufacturing, and healthcare. At the same time, as a founding Premier Member, Hitachi has contributed to the quality enhancement of Hyperledger frameworks and tools because Hitachi strongly believes that further growth of Hyperledger will lead to wider use of enterprise blockchain, which is essential to accelerate social innovation. Hitachi will be definitely happy and eager to provide continuing support to Hyperledger and the open source community.” 

“There is a saying that ‘time flies when you’re having fun.’ Given that it has been five years since we launched Hyperledger, I must say I agree,” said Christopher Ferris, IBM Fellow and CTO for Open Technology, Hyperledger Governing Board member, and original Chair of the Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee. “IBM has been, and remains, committed to the Hyperledger mission to develop open source blockchain technology suitable for use in the enterprise. Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation have delivered on that promise, serving as host to some of the most important and widely adopted enterprise blockchain technology projects, such as Hyperledger Fabric.” 

“In the past five years we have seen the ecosystem evolve beyond proof-of-concepts into industrialized production grade software solutions supporting critical business processes and significant value transfer,” said Christine Moy, Global Head of Liink, Onyx by J.P. Morgan, and Hyperledger Governing Board Member. “Hyperledger has been a key part of this technology’s advancement, by driving software development and deployment through a unified, but diverse, open source community. Onyx by J.P. Morgan is proud to be part of the Hyperledger community and will continue to support the progress of open source technology.”

“There’s a famous African proverb that goes like this: ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,’” said Jeroen van Megchelen, CTO at Ledger Leopard. “We at Ledger Leopard are happy to be a part of Hyperledger’s 5th anniversary. Together we’re confident that we can change the world. Looking forward to more successful years!” 

“We have been working with the Hyperledger community closely since its inception five year ago and we’re proud to see that enterprise blockchain technology has advanced significantly. Oracle has leveraged the technology in its products and services which has resulted in so many incredible blockchain projects for our customers, such as olive oil provenance, verifying diamonds, maritime shipping, bank e-KYC profiles and watchlists, tracking cobalt processing and CO2 emissions for electric vehicle batteries, and most recently COVID-19 test results reporting,” said Frank Xiong, group vice president, Oracle Blockchain Product Development. “We look forward to ongoing collaboration with the Hyperledger community to help advance the technology in a variety of areas, including interoperability, performance, security and others for many years to come.”

“Tencent Cloud, as the leading global cloud service provider, active member of Hyperledger and a Hyperledger Certified Service Provider (HCSP), is very happy to witness the growth of the Hyperledger community and the 5-year anniversary,” said Powell Li, General Manager of Tencent Cloud Blockchain. “Tencent Cloud is one of the earliest organisations to provide a  Hyperledger Fabric-based commercial BaaS platform in China. Tencent is positioned as a ‘digital assistant,’ providing tools, enhancing connections and building ecosystems. We regard blockchain as one of the most critical technologies to serve industry transformation and upgrading, especially in the areas of supply chain finance, electronic data certificate, data element circulation, and electronic bills. We sincerely congratulate Hyperledger’s 5th anniversary birthday and look forward to a bright future for the Hyperledger community!” 

About Hyperledger

Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration including leaders in finance, banking, healthcare, supply chains, manufacturing and technology. Hyperledger hosts many enterprise blockchain technology projects including distributed ledger frameworks, smart contract engines, client libraries, graphical interfaces, utility libraries and sample applications. All Hyperledger code is built publicly and available under the Apache license. The Linux Foundation hosts Hyperledger under the foundation. To learn more, visit: https://www.hyperledger.org/.