Governance Archives – Hyperledger Foundation

Mar 15

Helping A Community Grow By Pruning Inactive Projects

By Ry Jones and David Boswell, Community Architects Blog, Governance, Hyperledger Avalon, Hyperledger Burrow, Hyperledger Explorer, Hyperledger Foundation Staff Corner, Hyperledger Quilt

It may sound counterintuitive, but removing projects from an open source community is a critical part of helping that community grow. All projects have a life cycle, and it is natural, even for highly successful projects, to have development slow down or for user adoption to peak and then decline. Life cycle planning happens inside of companies that produce proprietary software and should be part of open source community management plans as well.

There are advantages that come from monitoring the status of projects and taking steps to wind down a project when projects become inactive. For example, it lowers the barrier to entry for people with innovative ideas. These ideas may or may not work out, and there should be no stigma around trying something that might fail. The alternative is to only accept new ideas that you feel are guaranteed to work out and that have enough resources dedicated to keep a project going indefinitely. That approach will limit what new projects can get started in your community. As Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin has said about projects becoming inactive: “It’s a good reminder, though, that if we are not losing sometimes, we are not making enough bets and pushing hard enough.”

Removing inactive projects also helps create clear pathways to connect potential users and contributors to the projects that are active. In the early days of open source, people coming into a community had an easier time navigating their way to projects where they can add value.

As open source development has become accepted in more and more industries, the landscape has become more complex. The Octoverse 2022 report states that there were a staggering 52 million new open source projects started by developers on GitHub last year alone. Sorting through this amount of code can be an overwhelming experience that can be eased by archiving those projects that are no longer under development.

There is also little downside to winding down a project because the code is still available and can be reactivated if people choose to do so. Ending a project can even prompt people who were using a project to become contributors. For people using open source code, it may seem like your contribution isn’t needed when maintainers are doing development and creating regular releases. However, if development stops on a project you rely on, it can be a good reminder that open source communities are driven by people with an interest in and a need for a project. We’ve seen this happen with Hyperledger Explorer. When the original maintainers had a shift in priorities that took them away from the project, it was archived because no one else stepped in to keep it going. As soon as it was wound down, we heard several people say “Hey, I was using that,” which gave us a chance to talk with them about how they could restart and contribute to the project.

How Pruning Happens At The Hyperledger Foundation

Hyperledger Foundation is hosted by the Linux Foundation where pruning inactive projects is considered a best practice. For instance, CNCF has archived projects before, stating that the process of reviewing project activity and winding down inactive projects is a sign of a healthy open source community. In this post, we will look in more detail about how the process happens in the Hyperledger community, but the process will be fairly similar with small differences for other communities.

Hyperledger’s Technical Oversight Committee is in charge of making decisions about each step of the lifecycle of a project – including starting a new project as well as deciding to end of life projects.

TOC members need data to make their decisions so they ask all projects to submit quarterly reports about the status of their work. In cases where maintainers mention plans to end development in their report, it can lead to a straightforward discussion between TOC members and project maintainers where they decide to wind down a project. If a project becomes inactive and there is no one to submit a report, that is also a clear signal that a project may be inactive. TOC members have tools to investigate project status, including LFX Insights, Orbit and a tool to show the last commit on the default branch.

Before 2022, the TOC had decided just once to end-of-life a project when they archived Hyperledger Composer in April 2020. As the Hyperledger Foundation has matured and more new projects have been started, we’ve also seen an increase in archiving projects. In 2022, Hyperledger moved four projects to end-of-life status: Hyperledger Avalon, Hyperledger Burrow, Hyperledger Explorer and Hyperledger Quilt.

If you have been using any of these projects or are interested in the code, please feel free to take a look and reach out to us (email to: community-architects@) if you’re interested in restarting development. For instance, Hyperledger Explorer has been restarted as the blockchain-explorer lab, and people are looking into how to restart development to shape the direction of the code to meet their needs. If you’re interested in connecting with people to discuss next steps with blockchain-explorer feel free to join the #blockchain-explorer channel on Hyperledger’s Discord server.

When we archive a project, it gets much less attention than when a new project launches, so we hope this post has given more attention to the projects that have been moved to end-of-life status and explains the decision making process behind these changes.

Mar 01

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Welcome to the new Hyperledger Foundation Marketing Committee leaders

By Hyperledger Blog, Governance

Codified in the Hyperledger Foundation Charter, the Hyperledger Foundation Marketing Committee is a driving force in the work we do building the enterprise blockchain market. It’s a members-only group that is led by a nominated and elected chair and vice chair.

This year, we welcome a new chair: Helen Garneau, CMO of Indicio. Helen served as vice chair previously. Our new vice chair is Maryam Mahjoub, CMO of Simba Chain. As the leaders of the marketing committee, Helen and Maryam will guide messaging and marketing strategy for Hyperledger Foundation and work to maximize growth opportunities for members of all sizes. To foster an active community of marketing and business leaders, the monthly Marketing Committee call, held the first Tuesday of each month, will transition to the Business Development call.

This shift in focus for the monthly call is just one of the signs of Helen’s and Maryam’s new leadership. We asked them to share some of their thoughts on this committee, their roles and the market in general. Read on for their answers:

What is the marketing committee? Who should be part of it?

Helen: The Hyperledger Foundation Marketing Committee is essentially a working group for enterprise marketers from across the Hyperledger Foundation membership. Participation primarily consists of being part of the marketing email alias, where members can share news and learn about marketing updates and opportunities, and a monthly meeting for representatives from each member company to have the opportunity to learn more about the communications strategy and get a peek into the marketing and PR efforts of the Hyperledger Foundation. Members walk away with tips, content, and opportunities to incorporate into their own marketing strategies and campaigns.

The real magic of the Marketing Committee is when members participate and use the opportunity to announce the projects, products, and events they are involved in. This meeting, and the associated email list, is a place for connection among the members of the Hyperledger Foundation. Don’t feel limited to having someone in a traditional marketing role attend the meeting or follow the emails. I encourage members to make sure they have someone from their team participate, read the emails from other members, and take notes from the meeting. This could be from the CEO’s office, the business development team, PR, events, or comms teams. All are welcome!

The collective mindshare of the Hyperledger Marketing committee is probably one of the most valuable PR and Marketing resources in all of enterprise blockchain!

Maryam: The Marketing Committee has helped me understand what are the opportunities within the foundation for marketing to other organizations interested in blockchain technology. It’s also provided the opportunity to discuss the unique challenges we face in the space with my counterparts at other organizations. Anyone who wants to gain more insights on how to market their brand to other members or in general would benefit from participating.

What are some of your top priorities for 2023?

Helen: If you haven’t picked up on it already, my goal this year is to entice more Hyperledger Foundation members to interact with the marketing committee. It is my honor to Chair the Hyperledger Marketing committee. I’ve participated in this group for nearly five years. Starting out, I didn’t really understand how to communicate the open source advancements and projects that our team was engaged in, but it was this group that really opened my eyes to the ways that I as a marketer can add value to my company and how to communicate about our participation in the open source projects. I hope to bring more markers and business development representatives into the fold of the regular happenings of the Marketing Committee.

I’d love to see more members sharing news, attending calls, and leveraging the plethora of marketing opportunities that the Foundation offers. The speaker’s board, use cases, vendor listing, event participation, monthly content themes, and inclusion in press releases are just a few of the benefits included in member benefits for dues paying members.

Along with seeing more existing members leveraging their membership benefits, I also look forward to onboarding more marketers to our newly renamed monthly Business Development meeting. The Hyperledger Foundation is bringing on new members every month, and I’d love to provide ways for their marketing representative to become aware of the benefits, resources, and tools so they can make a smooth transition into the Marketing Committee.

Maryam: As a marketer, my goal is to garner more awareness and understanding of SIMBA Chain. However, collectively, we still have a long journey ahead in the adoption of blockchain technology. So a major goal is to focus on providing education of the capabilities (and limitations) of blockchain in various industries – helping garner more interest from innovation teams and more understanding from web2 companies who are curious about blockchain but don’t know where to start. I’m also excited about working with other blockchain companies – discovering how we can work together to grow our customer base, how our technologies can align for a better solution, and so on.

What, in your experience, can organizations gain from tapping into Hyperledger Foundation marketing and business development activities?

Helen: Companies and organizations that are already dues paying members of the Hyperledger Foundation have the opportunity to tap into a wealth of collective industry knowledge across one of the largest and most active communities at the Linux Foundation and hear from the leaders in enterprise blockchain. There is no other equivalent to what the Hyperledger Foundation Marketing Committee offers. Every single member of the Hyperledger Foundation has the opportunity to become further informed about enterprise blockchain market traction, campaign and communications lessons learned, and tap into opportunities for further collaboration.

Maryam: Hyperledger Foundation offers access to a group of organizations actively building (or looking to build) on the blockchain. This audience is very hard to find elsewhere. Most events, media and audiences are heavily geared towards crypto, and not business solutions. With tools like the newsletter, webinars, case studies and in person events, there is a lot for marketers to take advantage of, and various ways to get key conversations going.

What are some of the opportunities you see on the horizon? Challenges?

Helen: The Hyperledger community is doing a fantastic job defining enterprise blockchain and promoting the benefits of using distributed ledger technologies for a wide variety of real business challenges and opportunities. We’ve been writing, speaking, and educating the market about Hyperledger projects. Now is the time to promote and highlight the awesome deployments and projects from Hyperledger Members! Case studies are a fantastic resource to put some “legs” under the story behind the work that is being done in the community. I expect we’ll see more high-profile news coming out of our community very soon.

The challenge comes in getting members, most of which are moving a mile a minute, to take time to include Hyperledger in their promotion or launch plans. This community is primed to connect and engage with one another. I hope to encourage and see more cross-company collaboration and see more connections being made between vendor companies in the space.

Maryam: The negative media on NFTs and crypto has been hard on the entire industry. The current market slow down has also put a lot of innovation projects on hold. Realistically, blockchain is still at the innovation stage, slowly creeping into early adoption. We have a long road ahead until we reach the chasm. I think one critical piece most of us have not yet resolved is “what headache are we curing.” The more explicit we can be about that, the more we will make blockchain not just desirable but a necessity.

We also need to reduce the barriers to entry before we see any real leaps in the space. How do we introduce a complex technology and its wide array of benefits without being overwhelmingly technical or complicated? How do we highlight the possibilities of our solutions, without real world use cases to back them up?

I think we all recognize the opportunities blockchain provides. To foster them, we need to resolve these challenges.

How do people get involved?

Helen: The easiest way to engage with the Hyperledger Foundation Marketing Committee is to sign up on the email list and get the monthly meetings in your calendar. Reach out to Benjamin Thomas and the Marketing and PR email aliases with any news, announcements, or questions. We’ll be happy to answer any questions or help promote your wins across the enterprise blockchain community!

Maryam: In the prisoner’s dilemma, the best outcome is when both parties cooperate. This applies here as well. We are a community – we thrive with cooperation and collaboration. I would love to hear from others what they are missing in their go to market strategy or what they are looking to achieve in 2023. I have no doubt one person’s feedback will resonate with the majority of us. So together we can work to address them and improve activities for everyone. I think open dialogue, networking and leveraging the marketing activities set in place by Hyperledger Foundation will help us all move the needle.

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The monthly, members-only Business Development call is the first Tuesday of every month at 11:00 am ET/8:00 am PT. There is also a monthly call for Marketing Committee members in Asia Pac. It is the second Tuesday of the month at 11:30am India ST/2pm HKT Singapore/3pm JST. For more details, go here.

To sign up for the marketing committee email list, please contact the Hyperledger Foundation marketing team. If you aren’t a Hyperledger Foundation member, talk to us about joining so you can be part of this grow-focused community. Email our membership team here.

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?

Go to https://discord.com/invite/hyperledger
Click Accept Invite!
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