I am excited to announce that Hyperledger is now Hyperledger Foundation. As our ecosystem and community grow, we need a clear identity for our organization that arches over all our projects, labs, regional chapters, working groups, special interest groups and overall collective effort to advance enterprise blockchain technology. The Hyperledger Foundation brand offers that clarity. It also positions us to fulfill our newly updated mission to foster and coordinate the premiere open source enterprise blockchain community.
I’m sharing this news in the first of a new series, Hyperledger Foundation Staff Corner. Our team members will be rotating through here with their take on a variety of topics. Today, I am offering mine on what the Hyperledger Foundation brand means to me. And it boils down to three words: Open. Global. Trusted.
These words surfaced as major attributes respondents associated with Hyperledger via the Brand Awareness Study conducted earlier this year by Linux Foundation Research. When I thought deeply about our mission, why we exist and why we matter, I honestly couldn’t think of three better words to describe the Hyperledger Foundation. They have become our brand tenets.
We are open.
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. A neutral, even playing field for all—where everyone can be innovative without worrying about politics or competition.
Without open source, we would not have been able to facilitate the development of the industry’s best enterprise blockchain technologies and tools. Beyond the code, we take transparency seriously at both the Hyperledger and Linux Foundations. Hyperledger Foundation’s open, collaborative approach ensures the transparency and infrastructure needed to ensure a thriving and stable ecosystem around open source enterprise blockchain projects. You join Hyperledger Foundation with the intention of helping to foster a new way of conducting business—one that places trust and transparency at the forefront—that is ultimately better for everyone involved and even better for the world.
We are global.
Hyperledger is so much more than the sum of its projects and code. Yes, the code is a crucial component, and I cannot thank Brian Behlendorf, the former Executive Director, enough for his work in code development across this vast community. But this community is so much more: It’s made up of organizations, developers, executives, students, teachers, mothers, fathers, liberals, conservatives. It’s supported by the Technical Steering Committee, various working groups, special interest groups and Meetup communities all across the globe. It’s a community of communities. One that I’ve been lucky enough to witness firsthand grow, evolve, and transform over the last four years. One that I get the pleasure of taking to the next chapter – creating and defining new markets.
We are trusted.
Trust is the deciding factor in whether a society can function. Without trust, the system fails. Blockchain technologies are enabling a new era of trusted collaboration that is fundamentally transforming business transactions across new and existing markets. Hyperledger technologies are increasingly at play in true enterprise multiparty systems that are redefining information sharing and transactions for many leading organizations. In fact, more than half of the companies on the Forbes Blockchain 50, including companies like Baidu, DTTC, Oracle, Samsung, Swisscom, Telefonica, Visa and Walmart, use or have built solutions powered by Hyperledger Foundation technologies.
Why Hyperledger Foundation.
Response to the brand survey by Linux Foundation Research showed that we need a clearer line between Hyperledger as an organization and the individual Hyperledger projects. More than half responded that we should add Foundation to our name. This community input was the critical final impetus to convene a task force to update our mission as well as rebrand as Hyperledger Foundation.
My staff and I have seen the hard work that all of the individual parts and players have dedicated to this Foundation. They’ve volunteered their time and there is no greater asset than time. I’m a big believer that there is a right time and place for everything. This is the right time, this is the right place, to make this move and rebrand as a Foundation.
Hyperledger Foundation is an important and meaningful step in our evolution. I hope you join us for the ride. Learn about Hyperledger Foundation membership and all the other ways you can get involved.