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Category

Governance

Jan 12
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Announcing the 2023 Hyperledger Technical Oversight Committee

By Hyperledger Blog, Governance

As we turned the page to 2023, the developer community and Hyperledger Foundation Governing Board selected this year’s Technical Oversight Committee (TOC). Recent updates to the Hyperledger Foundation charter renamed the committee providing governance to the Hyperledger technical communities. The transition of Technical Steering Committee (TSC) to TOC reflects Hyperledger Foundation’s shift to a full umbrella project.

The name change was accompanied by some adjustments to the election process as well. The TOC is now composed of 11 members with all maintainers (or similar technical role in a supported project) who have been active in the past year eligible to vote for their choice among TOC nominees. The top six vote getters become TOC voting members. To ensure diversity and relevant expertise on the TOC, the Governing Board selects the additional five voting members of the TOC from among the TOC Nominees. Once the TOC is selected, its members elect a chair and vice chair.

The 2023 TOC named Tracy Kuhrt of Accenture as chair. She served as chair in the last term of the TSC as well. Arun SM of Walmart Global Tech was named vice chair. He is the first person from an end user contributing company to take a technical governance leadership role.

Read on for Tracy’s and Arun’s takes on the role of the TOC, the year ahead, what technologies they are excited about and the value they see in being part of the Hyperledger community. 

What are the key responsibilities of the TOC? Of the TOC leaders?

Tracy: The Hyperledger Foundation charter documents the stated responsibilities of the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC). In addition, the TOC has documented the expectations for the TOC members, chair, and vice chair at: https://toc.hyperledger.org/toc-responsibilities.html. In short, the TOC is responsible for oversight of the Hyperledger Foundation technical communities, including approving new proposals for project lifecycle changes, establishing community norms, workflows, or policies that are not within the scope of any single project, and resolving technical matters that affect multiple projects.

Arun: First off, all content and views solely are my own and do not represent any of my employers. Now for my take: In addition to all the points Tracy covered, this is the time to remind ourselves of the recent commitment from the Hyperledger Foundation to the community through charter changes. Hyperledger Foundation hosts a wide range of technical projects related to blockchain technology and multiparty systems. The charter changes give freedom to an ever-growing suite of projects and those who want to bring in their projects to the foundation. While TOC guides and prepares new projects to thrive in open-source, each of these projects are free to then set up a governance charter around them that best supports the project’s growth.

What are your priorities for the TOC in 2023?

Tracy: From my TOC nomination statement,

Communities are stronger when:

·  Everyone is welcome and people feel like they belong.
·  There is a diverse set of opinions.
·  We push each other out of our comfort zones.
·  We listen and learn from others (be those others in the community or outside of the community).
·  We have shared goals.

As the TOC chair, I want to be sure that the TOC is bringing their diverse voices to the conversations that we have and that we respectfully listen to each other to develop shared goals for what the TOC will be focused on in 2023 with the intent of making the Hyperledger community stronger.

Arun: My 2023’s priorities will be to bridge the voices of sister open-source community groups and encourage projects that will accelerate the technology adoption. Anything we do, I will see to it there is respect for individuals, empowerment for those who build and encouragement for new contributors.

________

Hear more from Tracy and Arun in these conversation from Hyperledger Global Forum:

________

What are some of the challenges you see in the coming year?

Tracy: There are a couple of items that came up in the last Governing Board meeting that will be topics of discussion that the TOC will need to revisit. The first is related to formalizing and documenting security practices. The TOC kicked off a security task force in December 2021. This work must continue to ensure that projects within the Hyperledger Foundation enact consistent security practices. The TOC will be instrumental in formalizing these security practices. I invite members of the Hyperledger community with a security background to bring their voices to the conversation.

The second item that was discussed with the Governing Board is how we best represent the health and status of the projects within the Hyperledger Foundation. Today our project lifecycle is one in which projects only move forward through the different stages. In past TOCs, we have talked about whether this should change and whether we should instead represent the state of a project with some form of badging to allow people to be able to quickly determine the health and status of a project. This conversation has probably happened at least once every term that I have served on the TOC. As such, I would expect that we will have this discussion again hopefully with a resolution that satisfies both the projects and the Governing Board.

Arun: All the points Tracy made as well as a few more: The year 2022 was remarkable and saw extremes at both ends. High value investments poured into the technology at the same time established business setups closed due to their working models. As with any emerging technologies, there’s a lot of noise that still needs to diminish. Only then can the true potential of the technology be seen. Academia collaboration is key to increasing awareness and bringing in the necessary research in open areas. This is an area we can look into for potential collaboration opportunities. Educating the technologists, providing them with all the information necessary to make decisions, adding best practices and security checks, curating the documentation and content for individual roles, and following standard release practices all play a key role.

What emerging technologies or trends are you excited about or see as new opportunities for growing the Hyperledger ecosystem?

Tracy:  As a Hyperledger Lab Steward, I am among the first to see some of the interesting things that the community is thinking about and developing. Almost a third of our top-level projects started in Hyperledger Labs (Ursa, Cacti, Bevel, FireFly, and Solang), and I expect that we will see more in the future. Some areas that I have heard discussed as possible areas to grow the Hyperledger ecosystem include centralized ledgers, zero knowledge, and data segregation. If you have any code that you would like to contribute to the Hyperledger Foundation, please consider creating a project proposal or lab proposal.

Arun: Opportunities are plentiful within the Hyperledger ecosystem. There’s a lot we can do on multiple fronts from core technology research to leading the standards bodies and creating additional tools for easier adoption of these new technologies. There have been several tooling project proposals in the labs recently. I am personally looking forward to the collaboration that is possible across projects within The Linux Foundation umbrella, especially tapping into the expertise in CNCF . 

In addition, the identity ecosystem has found its sweet spot in Hyperledger Foundation. The mass adoption of blockchain technology is influenced by confidentiality and scalability. It is a matter of time before proposals like the Perun lab become  mainstream. There’s also space for rollup technologies. If you’re someone looking for ideas to start working on, consider developing a debugging framework. There’s a lot of potential in verification/validation.

In your experience, what is the value of being part of the Hyperledger community?

Tracy:  I have been part of the Hyperledger Community since 2015 – first as a user of Hyperledger Fabric, followed by a stint with the Linux Foundation as a Hyperledger community architect, to my current leadership roles as a Hyperledger Lab Steward, TOC member, and the TOC chair. During this time, the thing that I value most are the relationships that I have formed with other members of the community. I have learnt a lot from the interactions that I have had with each of them, including being mentored on my first code contribution, working with other community members to develop better solutions and best practices, increasing my knowledge on decentralized identity, and understanding what other people are interested in and working on within the enterprise blockchain space.

Arun: It is difficult to quantify or compare the value of being part of the Hyperledger community. The Linux Foundation has one of the best open-source processes, standards and governance. That’s of extra importance when it comes to the Hyperledger Foundation as the problem statements that the community here solves are not simple. Adding zero-trust and decentralization to the distributed computing domain is an uphill task. As you can imagine, the people we meet in everyday interactions are the finest in their domain. What more can one expect than having a group of all finest people in one place. There’s a lot to learn from everyone, be it a new contributor or an experienced maintainer of the project. I have gratitude towards all of the developers, architects, and leaders I met in the community. The energy in the community is unparalleled. It makes us strive to do more and be better than yesterday.

Here’s the full list of the 2023 Hyperledger Foundation TOC:

  • Arnaud J Le Hors, IBM
  • Arun S M (vice chair), Walmart Global Tech
  • Bobbi Muscara, Ledger Academy
  • David Enyeart, IBM
  • Jim Zhang, Kaleido
  • Marcus Brandenburger, IBM*
  • Peter Somogyvari, Accenture
  • Stephen Curran, Cloud Compass Computing*
  • Timo Glastra, Animo Solutions*
  • Tracy Kuhrt (chair), Accenture
  • Venkatraman Ramakrishna, IBM*

* New committee members

The TOC meets weekly and all are welcomed to join the conversations. To get the details on TOC calls and communication channels, go here:
https://wiki.hyperledger.org/display/TSC/Technical+Oversight+Committee+Home

Oct 18
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Hyperledger Foundation Charter Updates: Looking to 2023 and Beyond

By Hyperledger Blog, Governance

Looking ahead to 2023 and beyond, the Hyperledger Foundation Governing Board, working with our technical community and staff, recently updated the Hyperledger Foundation charter to support our ever growing and evolving ecosystem. The charter spells out the governance for Hyperledger Foundation, which is now home to 15 projects, more than 50 labs, 13 working and special interest groups and seven regional chapters. These new updates were made as a follow-up to our change from a project to a foundation with an umbrella of projects to create the opportunity for more autonomy for technical projects and enable further growth for the community and the ecosystem. 

The key changes fall into two related categories:

New Governance options for technical projects

New and existing Hyperledger projects may now opt to have their own technical governance charter. The updated charter spells out that the scope of Hyperledger Foundation includes supporting various open technical projects including open source software, open standards / specifications, open data and other open projects. These projects can either be overseen by the Technical Oversight Committee of the Hyperledger Foundation (and be known as a “TOC Project”) or establish their own technical oversight pursuant to a technical charter specific to the project (and be known as a “Supported Project”).

_______________
Why is this an important feature to an umbrella project like the Hyperledger Foundation? 
Some projects want their own formal governance and, with the foundation’s umbrella format, it makes sense to create a path for projects to formalize how to govern themselves. This may be an  appealing path to both new code projects and open source projects that exist elsewhere but are interested in bringing their code and community to the world’s largest open global ecosystem for enterprise-grade blockchain technologies. 
_______________

Transition from a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) to a Technical Oversight Committee (TOC)

Reflecting the shift to a full umbrella project, the revised charter not only renames the technical governance body but also clarifies its responsibilities. The structure and elections for the TOC are also updated. Going forward, the TOC will comprise  eleven individuals who are active within the scope of Hyperledger Foundation and have nominated themselves for the TOC.

During the annual elections, which kick off this week, all maintainers (or similar technical role in a supported project) who have been active in the past year will elect six individuals from among the TOC Nominees to serve as TOC voting members.

To ensure diversity and relevant expertise on the TOC, the Governing Board annually will appoint the remaining five voting members of the TOC from among the TOC Nominees. Once the TOC is selected, its members will elect a chair.

_______________
What’s the role of the TOC in a project’s life cycle?
The TOC approves the creation of all technical projects, guides them through their life cycles, and makes sure they follow best open development and security practices. The day-to-day technical direction and roadmaps of each project are determined by its maintainers and the project’s own community.
______________

As we enter our 7th year under the Linux Foundation project umbrella, these changes and enhancements to our governance model is a reflection of where Hyperledger technology and our community are today. We look forward to working with our active and growing community to meet the needs of the developers and the companies and governments that rely on Hyperledger projects.

Oct 12
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LACChain introduces permissioned public blockchain ecosystem built on Hyperledger Besu to Latin America

By Hyperledger Blog, Governance, Hyperledger Besu

Read the full case study here.

Permissionless public blockchains are accessible to anyone, but they’re often unsuitable for heavily regulated institutions, like banks or public-sector initiatives. Permissioned private blockchains offer what permissionless public ones lack, but they also cost a lot to develop and maintain, making them hard to scale. Yet blockchain remains the ideal solution for many use cases.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) struggled to find the balance by using different networks for different projects. But this variety came with other issues, like compliance, technical support, and accountability. These challenges prevented IDB’s pilot projects from expanding into enterprise-level projects.  

IDB Lab is the innovation laboratory for IDB. It set about finding solutions to the problems of regulatory compliance, support, and governance. As it looked into the problem, IDB Lab noticed similar struggles throughout Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Organizations were looking for an alternative to permissionless public and private blockchain networks to deploy their solutions.

Permissioned public networks—combining the benefits of the other blockchains without their drawbacks—seemed like the answer. Successful networks already existed in the EU, and IDB Lab thought it could develop one for LAC. In March 2019, with support from a global alliance for developing blockchain in Latin America and the Caribbean, IDB Labs funded a project to create LACChain, a permissioned public blockchain infrastructure in an effort to build a scalable and sustainable network for the LAC region…and beyond.

Now, LACChain, which is built using Hyperledger Besu as an enterprise Ethereum client, has become the world’s largest public permissioned network with 15 countries participating in the ecosystem. It has over 190 nodes and supports more than 60 projects, including 40 that impact financial and social inclusion. And there is a strategy for long-term orchestration of the network via the not-for-profit LACNet.

The Hyperledger Foundation team worked with LACChain on a case study that details the goals and approach for creating the network. The behind the scenes look at launching LACChain also delves into the technology and governance planning behind the project as well as results to date and plans for growth for this network.

Read the full case study here.

May 18
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Staff Corner: Welcome to the new Hyperledger Foundation Governing Board chair, Accenture’s David Treat

By Daniela Barbosa, Executive Director at Hyperledger Foundation and General Manager, Blockchain, Healthcare and Identity for the Linux Foundation Blog, Governance, Hyperledger Foundation Staff Corner

Governance is crucial to enterprise-grade open source software development and to the mission of Hyperledger Foundation. While our community-elected Technical Steering Committee (TSC) is responsible for coordinating the technical direction of the Hyperledger Foundation and our project maintainers of the projects themselves, our Governing Board is the body that leads the foundation’s strategy, operations and marketing. Our Governing Board representatives are  charged with ensuring transparency across our community, stability across our ecosystem and financial viability for our foundation. They also play an incredibly important role in helping us plan for the future in a fast evolving market.

Since its founding in 2016, Hyperledger Foundation has had two extremely committed and innovative Governing Board Chairs, Blythe Masters, former CEO of Digital Asset, who steered Hyperledger through its launch and early growth, and Robert Palatnick, Managing Director and Global Head of Technology Research and Innovation at DTCC, who served in this annually elected chair role since January 2019. Rob oversaw an exciting growth period for the foundation while shepherding us through a global pandemic. Now, it is my pleasure to welcome the next leader, David Treat, Senior Managing Director, Global Metaverse Continuum Business Group & Blockchain Lead at Accenture.

David Treat, Senior Managing Director, Global Metaverse Continuum Business Group & Blockchain Lead at Accenture and the newly appointed chair of the Hyperledger Foundation Governing Board

David was a natural choice to be elected as the next chair of Hyperledger Foundation. He has been a member of the Governing Board since day one and is not only a leader in our community but across the industry. He is an active board member of a number of groups, including the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, Global Blockchain Business Council and ID2020 Alliance, and is a member of the World Economic Forum C4IR Global Blockchain Council, a program advisor for the Chamber of Digital Commerce, and co-chair of the New York Fintech Innovation Lab.

He has been a driving force in Accenture’s commitments to Hyperledger Foundation, which ranges from being a leading sponsor of Hyperledger Global Forum and of Diversity, Civility and Inclusion efforts at the annual event to providing extensive technical and marketing leadership to ongoing and extensive code contributions. As a company, Accenture is a top five code committer and has contributed development resources to launching and maintaining Hyperledger Bevel and Hyperledger Cactus.

I personally look forward to partnering with David in building out new projects and communities that will advance identity, interoperability and the coming wave of blockchain-enabled innovation. We share a commitment to decentralization and enabling greater individual user transparency control and power. Working alongside with our board and our global community, it will be our joint mission to ensure that Hyperledger plays a key role in building not just the open source technologies for the new internet of ownership but also the market for Web3 and beyond.

“I have deep respect and appreciation for Blythe Masters and Rob Palatnick’s leadership of the Hyperledger Foundation Governing Board as well for all Governing Board members working to build the Hyperledger ecosystem and this market over the past six from early code concepts to a mature enterprise software landscape.  Our community has established a critical foundation for the future.  I look forward to serving and supporting the entire Hyperledger community as Board Chair as we continue to accelerate and deliver on the potential of distributed ledger technology to redefine the infrastructure that supports commerce, currency, communications, and identity particularly as the Metaverse Innovation wave advances. While it will take a lot of work to build open, shared and interoperable platforms, the Hyperledger community and leadership are charging ahead to deliver on this vision.” – David Treat, Senior Managing Director, Global Metaverse & Blockchain Lead at Accenture and the newly appointed chair of the Hyperledger Foundation Governing Board

Please join me in welcoming and congratulating David Treat as our new Hyperledger Foundation Governing Board chair! Click to tweet: Congratulations to @Accenture’s @DBTreat, new Governing Board chair for @Hyperledger Foundation

Feb 16
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Hyperledger Community Chat is Moving to Discord

By Hyperledger Blog, Governance

We are excited to announce that the Hyperledger community will be moving its chat channel to Discord from RocketChat. 

What is Discord and what are the benefits?

Discord is an easy to use chat platform. Discord lets communities communicate directly via voice, video, or text, and join servers where larger communities can interact together. Discord has topic-based text channels that give an organized way to talk about all the things you love. Discord really fits the needs of Hyperledger’s diverse community to communicate in channels and also connect to other communities on Discord.

If you’re new to Discord, you can learn about its features here.

How do you join Hyperledger’s Discord?

  1. Go to https://discord.com/invite/hyperledger
  2. Click Accept Invite!
  3. You’re In! Feel free to explore channels

Why are we moving to Discord?

Hyperledger Foundation set up a Task Force to investigate options for a better chat channel experience for the Hyperledger community. After interviewing and getting feedback from community members, the Task Force determined that Discord as a tool that met the needs of the community. The Hyperledger community was also generally enthusiastic about the user experience Discord provided. The Task Force then proposed moving to Discord to the Technical Steering Committee, who approved the proposal.

What is the timeline for this migration:

  • February – March 2022: Join Discord! All communities will be directed to begin their chat channels and start using Hyperledger’s Discord 
  • March 31, 2022: RocketChat will be archived

Questions or Issues?
Reach out to community-architects@hyperledger.org

Copyright © 2022 The Linux Foundation®. All rights reserved. Hyperledger Foundation, Hyperledger, and the other Hyperledger Foundation trademarks are trademarks of The Linux Foundation. For a list of Hyperledger Foundation trademarks, please see our Trademark Usage page. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

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