Hyperledger Global Forum Archives – Hyperledger Foundation

Oct 14

Staff Corner: Thanking community members for their contributions

By Ry Jones and David Boswell, Community Architects Blog, Hyperledger Foundation Staff Corner, Hyperledger Global Forum

Our community is strong and growing thanks to hundreds of community leaders around the world. We recently got back from Hyperledger Global Forum 2022 in Dublin where the strength of our community was displayed in force. While we were there, we had the opportunity to recognize our community members in a number of fun (and hopefully meaningful) ways.

This year, on the main stage, we announced the winners of our annual Community Recognition Awards:

This year’s honorees were:

Daniel Szegö, DLT Advisor, CBDC Think Tank Budapest – Recognised for hosting the most meetups of any organizer this year and doing events in three languages, In addition, he also actively brings community members together around Hyperledger Fabric and Kubernetes projects
Josh Kneubuhl, IBM Research, IBM – Recognized for his cross project and lab collaboration with the Hyperledger Fabric community.
Arun S M, Staff Software Engineer, Walmart Global Tech India – Recognized for his active role in welcoming new community members on Discord and as one of the leaders of the Hyperledger India Chapter.
Char Howland, Software Engineer, Indicio – Recognized for her active role in the Hyperledger Aries/Identity community, including running the identity implementers calls and welcoming new members to that growing community.
Nicko Guyer, Senior Full Stack Engineer, Kaleido – Recognized for being very active on Discord and Github and very good at onboarding new people into the Hyperledger FireFly community.
Andrew Whitehead, Senior Software Architect, Portage CyberTech – Recognized for being an active Hyperledger Aries contributor who helps with onboarding new people and does a lot of work on security.
Antoine Toulme, Senior Engineering Manager, Splunk – Recognized for being extremely responsive on the Hyperledger Besu channels as well as contributing workshops and more.
Marcos Sarres, Director Executivo, GoLedger – Recognized as a co-lead our Hyperledger Brazil Chapter and organizer of many very well received meetups for the community this year.
Vipin Bharathan, Principal Consultant, dlt.nyc – Recognized for running the Identity WG, serving as the Chair of our Financial Services SIG and doing so much to welcome others into our community.
Peter Somogyvari, Software Product Architecture Manager, Accenture – Recognized for always making the time to onboard and help new community members, taking on multiple mentees through our mentorship program and so much more.

Hyperledger Foundation Executive Governing Board Chair David Treat, Executive Director Daniela Barbosa and Senior Director of Community Architects David Boswell join Community Recognition Awards recipients Marcos Sarres of GoLedger, Arun S M of Walmart Global Tech India, Vipin Bharathan of dlt.nyc, Nicko Guyer of Kaleido and Josh Kneubuhl of IBM on stage at Hyperledger Global Forum 2022 in Dublin.

Daniela Barbosa presents Community Recognition Awards to Accenute’s Peter Somogyvari and Splunk’s Antoine Toulme

Throughout the event, we were also handing out small pieces of swag to thank the community members who were there. Taking the time to travel to the event and spend multiple days meeting and talking with others is an important contribution attendees were making to the health of the Hyperledger community. We wanted to recognize them for their time, effort and commitment.

One of the items we were giving out were Hyperledger coins that said “Community Code Collaboration Contribution” on the back and had 2022 on the front. Since the event this year was being held in Dublin, we designed the coins to have the two color look of a 2 euro coin.

We started making coins to thank community members – an idea long championed by our current TOC Chair, Tracy Kuhrt – in 2021. People seemed to like them so we wanted to do it again this year. It also seems fun to have an ongoing series of coins that change each year that people can collect to show how long they’ve been active in the community. We don’t know what a 2023 coin would look like yet, so feel free to send us suggestions.

For special occasions, we’ve also engraved the coins for some of the technical leaders in the community. Check out this video of a coin being engraved by a laser for Danno Ferrin, our TOC Vice Chair:

There are many other ways to recognize people for the contributions they make – one of Ry’s personal favorites is a comment in the NTPd source code. At the Hyperledger Foundation, we’ve also issued badges, given poker chips for events and other contributions, published Developer Showcase blog posts and have made stickers and shirts.

Different ways to recognize people will be relevant for different people. Some people may want a coin or shirt and others may not. We’re interested to hear what sort of recognition is important to you so we can make sure what we do is meaningful. Please send us your thoughts (email community-architects@hyperledger.org). And, if you’d like to earn a coin, a token, a badge or anything else, get involved in the community, and we’ll be happy to thank you for your contributions.

Sep 13

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Hyperledger Global Forum Provides Launch Point for Development and Deployment News from Across Expanding Ecosystem

By Hyperledger Announcements, Hyperledger Global Forum

Announcements Include Launch of Hyperledger Solang, Release of Hyperledger FireFly 1.1, Details on Hyperledger Besu Ethereum Client Incentive Program, Introduction of Free Self-Sovereign Identity Training Course

SAN FRANCISCO and DUBLIN, (September 13, 2022) – Hyperledger Foundation, the open, global ecosystem for enterprise blockchain technologies, today announced news from across its diverse and expanding ecosystem at Hyperledger Global Forum 2022 (#HyperledgerForum, HGF). From launches and releases on the Hyperledger project front to new products, partnership, deployments and innovations from Hyperledger Members, there is a surround sound of developments being unveiled at this week’s event.

The opening keynote today addresses one of the biggest developments on the horizon. The talk, Hyperledger Besu and the Upcoming Merge, will feature Tim Beiko of the Ethereum Foundation and Hart Montgomery, CTO of the Hyperledger Foundation.

Other keynotes taking place today include:

Blockchain as a Public Good: How Public Infrastructure Networks are Driving Adoption and Making an Impact across Europe and Latin America – Juan Jiménez Zaballos, Alastria; Ilan Melendez Lugo, LACChain / LACNet; Hilary Carter, Linux Foundation
ESG with a Bit of Help from Indy – Dr. Andreas Kind, Vice President Cybersecurity & Trust, Siemens AG
Decentralized Identity: Where We Are and Where We Going – Heather Dahl, CEO, Indicio; Kaliya Young, Identity Expert, Identity Woman; Marie Wallace, Distinguished Engineer, IBM; Drummond Reed, Director of Trust Services, Avast

Free live streaming of keynotes is available here.

“The energy and excitement of the global Hyperledger community is on full display here at Hyperledger Global Forum,” said Daniela Barbosa, Executive Director, Hyperledger Foundation, and General Manager Blockchain, Healthcare and Identity at the Linux Foundation. “From demos and workshops to keynotes and case studies, there is endless evidence of the scope and scale of what we are building together and the growing market impact of this collective work. And, as this line-up of news from across the community shows, we are just getting started. The innovation and adoption will only accelerate from here.”

Project and Ecosystem News

New Project: Hyperledger Solang

The Hyperledger Technical Steering committee approved a new project, Hyperledger Solang, which is a compiler for Solidity source code and targets different blockchains. The Solidity programming language is the most popular language for smart contracts, and there is clear interest from many blockchains to have support for it. Although some blockchains emulate an EVM environment to maintain compatibility with Solidity built with Solc, they then cannot access features that are missing from Ethereum. Hyperledger Solan offers the ability to compile Solidity to the native execution environment, opening up access to new features and creating many possibilities for innovation in the Solidity language.

Currently, Hyperledger Solang supports Solana and Polkadot (Substrate).

Hyperledger FireFly 1.1 Release

A new Hyperledger FireFly release, version 1.1, includes new functionality that makes it possible for FireFly users to deploy multiple blockchain applications connecting to multiple chains from a single console. The FireFly Supernode now supports two operation modes: Web3 Gateway and Consortium. Web3 Gateway mode configures the FireFly Supernode to connect to a number of chains with transaction orchestration and state indexing. A revamped and expanded connector framework now includes EVMconnect, a robust connector for simple connection management to public blockchains with templates available for Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimism, BNB Chain, and more. Consortium mode activates a number of capabilities for FireFly nodes to connect in a B2B network and exchange data through off-chain and on-chain rails. FireFly also now supports multi-tenancy through the use of namespaces. These new features enable enterprises to accelerate their web3 adoption.

Creation of Hyperledger Cacti

In a Hyperledger first, the community has decided to merge two systems (architectures as well as code bases). Hyperledger Cactus and Weaver, a Hyperledger Lab, will come together to be Hyperledger Cacti, a multi-faceted interoperability platform that will draw on the cutting-edge technical features of Cactus and Weaver and provide a clear path forward for users of both technologies.

Hyperledger Besu Client Incentive Program Kicks Off

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has opted to include Hyperledger Besu in the Execution Layer Client Incentive Program (ELCIP) to foster the community development of enterprise-grade blockchain software. The program, which kicks off with the Merge, will provide execution-layer client teams with locked ETH in the form of live validators to be released according to certain milestones, including post-merge performance and progress towards enabling withdrawals from the beacon chain.

Hyperledger Besu is one of the top three most popular Ethereum execution clients according to Ethernode. EF is making this strategic investment to engage the Hyperledger Besu community in ensuring a diversity of clients and overall health of the network.

“The diverse community is what makes Ethereum special, empowering from builders in underserved or emerging economies to leading enterprises and beyond,” said Aya Miyaguchi, Executive Director at Ethereum Foundation. “Similarly a diverse client distribution helps keep Ethereum distributed and healthy, and I applaud the Hyperledger Besu team for their Execution Layer work for Ethereum, and wish you all a great Global Forum this year.”

New, Free “Getting Started with Self-Sovereign Identity” Course

To make it easier for enterprises to implement Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) to put their users at the center of their digital identity, Linux Foundation Training & Certification has released a new online training course, Getting Started with Self-Sovereign Identity (LFS178x). The free, six-to-seven hour course is geared to business and government decision makers looking to get started with SSI on a solid foundation. The course provides a 360 degree overview of its evolutionary journey, key concepts, standards, technological building blocks, use cases, real-world examples and implementation considerations.

Hyperledger Foundation is also hosting an In-depth Member Webinar with Indicio on “Scaling verifiable digital credentials using open source technology” on October 5.

Hyperledger Member News

BTP – announced the general availability of its blockchain-backed, domain-agnostic provenance solution Chronicle. Organizations across industries can now take advantage of Chronicle’s capabilities, and keep immutable provenance records that capture the origin and life journey of their physical and digital assets, including ownership history. By recording it on a distributed ledger, provenance information becomes more trustworthy, and its management is more efficient. Chronicle is available with Hyperledger Sawtooth as its default backing ledger, with support for other industry-leading distributed ledgers in the pipeline. Read the full press release here.

BTP – upgraded its blockchain management platform Sextant, by adding support for the distributed ledger software Hyperledger Fabric 2.0. Fabric is now joining Hyperledger Besu and Hyperledger Sawtooth, which the company’s clients have already been using in production. Sextant’s makeover also includes a marketplace for deployments that will allow users to easily select the option that best suits their needs and use case requirements. Chronicle on Sawtooth will now appear as a new deployment option – in this marketplace – that clients can choose. Read the full press release here.

Espeo Blockchain – recently connected Microsoft Sharepoint technology with a transparent and immutable layer of Hyperledger Fabric for HLB, which is a global network of independent advisory and accounting firms. The new blockchain backend is a game changer in terms of transparency. It’s because only verified, approved and standardized data points will be added to the blockchain ledger. At the same time, users still work with the same Microsoft UI they are used to. That enables member firms to access and verify referral and project data in real-time. It also eliminates the need for a siloed process of reconciliation, which makes settlements far simpler and more reliable. More information is available at https://espeoblockchain.com/.

Indicio – recently announced the launch of Indicio Proven™, a complete, open source solution for authenticating and sharing high value data in a privacy-preserving way using verifiable digital credentials. Built on Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Ursa, Hyperledger Indy, AnonCreds, and DIDComm, Proven is designed to make implementing and using these open source codebases simple, providing users with a fully-owned solution that’s easy to integrate with existing systems, to innovate on, and to scale. Proven uses the Indicio Network (TempNet, TestNet, DemoNet, MainNet), a professionally maintained, enterprise grade Hyperledger Indy-based network for the exchange of verifiable credentials. Learn more at Indicio.tech.

IoBuilders – has coordinated, designed and implemented a digital bond platform as partner of the Spanish Stock exchange BME. Using the platform, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), with the help of BBVA, issued a two year $10 million blockchain-based bond, the first Spanish bond to be listed on a regulated market. The platform uses a private network based on Hyperledger Besu Ethereum client, where the bond and the money are tokenized, and overall security and cash payment are settled. Read more about it here.

Kaleido – has introduced support for enterprise App Chains, an exciting technology allowing the creation of highly scalable, application-specific chains that can connect to the Web3 ecosystem via bridges or rollups. The first App Chain framework to be supported on the Kaleido Platform is Polygon Edge, and we have formed a partnership with Polygon to accelerate enterprise web3 adoption. Kaleido is also pleased to announce that Hyperledger FireFly version 1.1 is now supported on Kaleido’s Blockchain Business Cloud. With the new functionality in FireFly, users will be able to manage multiple blockchain use cases from a single console and connect with leading public blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimism, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Moonbeam, Fantom and more.

The National FinTech Center at Morgan State University –announced The 3rd Annual National HBCU Blockchain and FinTech Conference. This conference is The Center’s premier event for connecting with university leaders, faculty, and students discussing today’s challenges and opportunities, and shaping the future of FinTech education and research. On November 06-08, 2022 in Orlando, FL, The National FinTech Center will provide a forum for the faculty, students, and administrators in the FinTech Center’s HBCU Network to hear and discuss the findings of sponsored research, outcomes of sponsored innovative blockchain projects at various HBCUs, FinTech workshops, and HBCU Presidents’ Summit: Digital Transformation, Research, and Education at HBCUs. Click here for more information. Any questions, please contact tyneissa.walters@morgan.edu.

SIMBA Chain – recently released SIMBA Blocks, a Smart-Contract as a Service platform. Blocks allows users to build on private, public and hybrid chains, including Hyperledger Fabric, with no chain lock-in. The SIMBA Blocks platform auto-generates virtual REST APIs that connect to smart contracts on various protocols – letting you write once and deploy to many with minor configuration. These chain-agnostic APIs simplify application integrations, reducing deployment times by weeks or months. Learn why companies like Boeing (using Hyperledger Fabric to track F/A-18 parts across four data warehouses) rely on SIMBA Chain for their blockchain solutions at simbachain.com.

Zeeve – introduced a major upgrade to its platform, a best-in-class offering for enterprise-grade Hyperledger Fabric automation. Now users can add more organizations to their deployed Hyperledger Fabric networks on runtime and scale up/down the number of nodes. Zeeve has also improved network monitoring & alerting and added the ability to directly download connection profiles of Fabric networks to applications. In addition, in addition to support for Golang, Zeeve has added NodeJS chaincodes support in CD pipelines using Zeeve CLI. Learn more:https://www.zeeve.io/blockchain-protocols/deploy-hyperledger-fabric/

Zeeve – launched IPFS as a service for decentralized applications with two options:- endpoints and dedicated nodes. The focus has been to make it very easy for any business application to switch to the power decentralized file storage without having to worry about the learning curve of infrastructure or development. This has been possible with the ZDFS (Zeeve Distributed File System) service, which allows users to have dedicated or shared endpoint services for IPFS, while ZDFS SDK makes integration with IPFS very seamless. Users can create access credentials for their applications for data APIs as well as pinning services of IPFS. IPFS comes with console-based resource management and an in-depth analysis of consumption for ZDFS services. Learn more: https://zeeve.io/zeeve-distributed-file-system/

About Hyperledger Global Forum (#HyperledgerForum)

Hyperledger Global Forum is the biggest annual gathering of the global Hyperledger community. It is a unique opportunity for contributors, members, service providers and enterprise end users from around the world to meet, align, plan and hack together in person. The event is open to everyone involved or interested in using, developing or learning more about Hyperledger’s open source enterprise blockchain technologies. Attendees will hear directly from those who are actively developing and deploying Hyperledger technologies as well as technology and business leaders who are shaping the future of enterprise blockchain. They will also have the chance to talk directly with Hyperledger project maintainers and the Technical Steering Committee, collaborate with other organizations on ideas that will directly impact the future of Hyperledger Foundation, and promote their work among the communities.

Event sponsors and partners include Accenture (Diamond and Keynote Translation), Siemens (Platinum), Digital Asset (Gold and Developer Lounge), Zeeve (Gold), AWS (Silver), BONbLOC (Silver), ConsenSys (Silver), Corsha (Silver), Espeo Blockchain (Bronze), Huawei (Bronze), Kaleido (Bronze), DTTC (Diversity Scholarship), IBM (Birds of a Feather), Black Women Blockchain Council (Community Partner), Blockchain Ireland (Community Partner), Blockchain Research Institute (Community Partner), Digital Euro Association (Community Partner), Diversity in Blockchain (Community Partner), European Blockchain Association (Community Partner), Global Blockchain Business Council (Community Partner), Kerala Blockchain Academy (Community Partner), International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (Community Partner),Trusted Blockchain Initiatives (Community Partner), Trust over IP Foundation (Community Partner), Wall Street Blockchain Alliance (Community Partner), Blocknews (Media Partner), BeinCrypto (Media Partner), Cointelegraph (Media Partner), CoinSpeaker (Media Partner), Forkast (Media Partner), Ledger Insights (Media Partner) and Merge by Fintech Nexus(Media Partner).

About Hyperledger Foundation

Hyperledger Foundation was founded in 2015 to bring transparency and efficiency to the enterprise market by fostering a thriving ecosystem around open source blockchain software technologies. As a project of the Linux Foundation, Hyperledger Foundation coordinates a community of member and non member organizations, individual contributors and software developers building enterprise-grade platforms, libraries, tools and solutions for multi-party systems using blockchain, distributed ledger, and related technologies. Organizations join Hyperledger Foundation to demonstrate technical leadership, collaborate and network with others, and raise awareness around their efforts in the enterprise blockchain community. Members include industry-leading organizations in finance, banking, healthcare, supply chains, manufacturing, technology and beyond. All Hyperledger code is built publicly and available under the Apache license. To learn more, visit: https://www.hyperledger.org/.

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation and its projects are supported by more than 2,950 members. The Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation’s projects, including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, Hyperledger Foundation, RISC-V, and more, are critical to the world’s infrastructure. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

Sep 12

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Hyperledger Announces Eight New Members, Including CasperLabs, Banque de France and Central Bank of Nigeria, to Kick off Hyperledger Global Forum

By Hyperledger Announcements, Hyperledger Global Forum

New Members Spotlight Broad Base of Applications for Open Source Enterprise Blockchain Technologies

SAN FRANCISCO and DUBLIN, (September 12, 2022) – Today, Hyperledger Foundation, the open, global ecosystem for enterprise blockchain technologies, announced eight new members to kick off Hyperledger Global Forum 2022 (#HyperledgerForum, HGF). The new members include CasperLabs, Banque de France, Central Bank of Nigeria, Digital Identity Laboratory of Canada and DSR Corporation. This line-up underscores the increasingly diverse range of enterprise blockchain applications and technologies in the Hyperledger ecosystem.

A speaker from new member Banque de France will be on stage this morning for a key panel on “The CBDC Journey: Research, Live Deployments, and Policy Considerations.” Other keynotes on tap today include:

The Evolution of Ireland’s Blockchain Ecosystem – Lory Kehoe, Head of EMEA Market Operations, Coinbase & Founder and Advisory Board Member, Blockchain Ireland
The Metaverse Continuum Creates a Defining Moment for Blockchain Leaders – Melanie Cutlan, Managing Director, Metaverse Technology Capabilities Lead, Accenture
Blockchain in Action at Allianz, DTCC and Fujitsu – Bob Crozier, Allianz Technology; Rob Palatnick, DTCC; and Christopher Pilling, Fujitsu; Moderated by Csilla Zsigri, VP Strategy, BTP

Free live streaming of keynotes is available here.

“As we will see on stage here at Hyperledger Global Forum, the technology and market landscape for open source enterprise blockchain just continues to get more robust,” said Daniela Barbosa, Executive Director, Hyperledger Foundation, and General Manager Blockchain, Healthcare and Identity at the Linux Foundation. “Hyperledger technologies are playing an outsized role in reshaping existing markets and creating new ones. Our newest members are bringing a diversity of innovation into the Hyperledger community, accelerating the development of open, decentralized technologies that will be the infrastructure for many generations of new services and applications.”

Hyperledger Foundation allows organizations to create enterprise-grade, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support their individual business transactions by offering enterprise-grade, open source distributed ledger frameworks, libraries and tools. General members joining the community are BCW Group, CasperLabs, DSR Corporation and Realto Group.

Hyperledger Foundation supports a premier global open source blockchain community that values the contributions and participation from various entities. As such, pre-approved non-profits, open source projects and government entities can join Hyperledger Foundation at no cost as associate members. Associate members joining this month include Banque de France, Central Bank of Nigeria, Digital Identity Laboratory of Canada and International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA).

New member quotes:

BCW Group

“BCW is committed to the success of our clients as they navigate their Web3 transformation. Across many industries, the application of hybrid public/private blockchain architectures leveraging Hyperledger Fabric is pivotal to adopting blockchain technology for enterprises,” said Jeffrey Tchui, Partner, Head of BCW Consulting at BCW Group. “We look forward to collaborating with fellow Hyperledger Foundation members to build key partnerships and find innovative new use cases for Hyperledger Fabric and other Hyperledger technologies.”

CasperLabs

“We are joining Hyperledger Foundation because we are committed to advancing blockchain interoperability to support enterprise operations,” said Medha Parlikar, co-founder & CTO, CasperLabs. “We’ve already found great success working with IBM to demonstrate the first atomic cross-chain swap of fungible tokens between an instance of a Hyperledger Fabric permissioned network and the Casper Blockchain at Davos 2022. In a few months, CasperLabs will be ready with an enterprise-grade production solution for cross-chain transactions.”

DSR Corporation

“Our membership in both the Linux and Hyperledger Foundations is an exciting development for DSR and our decentralized systems division as we’ve been working in the space for over six years,” said Alexander Shcherbakov, Decentralized Systems Business Unit Manager, DSR Corporation. “This is a tremendous opportunity to bring our nearly 25 years of software development experience to the growing number of companies leveraging the Hyperledger Foundation’s ecosystem. DSR is eager to make our contribution to both communities as an official member.”

Realto Group

“We are excited and honored to join the Hyperledger community of DLT innovators and enterprises,” said Prasanth Kalangi, Founder and CEO of Realto Group. “As a tokenization and Web3 technology provider in the global real estate industry, we have taken a leadership role in helping shape and transform the way real estate investing and capital raising is currently being done. And we look forward to collaborating with the Hyperledger community to advance blockchain education and adoption.”

About Hyperledger Global Forum (#HyperledgerForum)

Event sponsors and partners include Accenture (Diamond and Keynote Translation), Siemens (Platinum), Digital Asset (Gold and Developer Lounge), Zeeve (Gold), AWS (Silver), BONbLOC (Silver), ConsenSys (Silver), Corsha (Silver), Espeo Blockchain (Bronze), Huawei (Bronze), Kaleido (Bronze), DTTC (Diversity Scholarship), IBM (Birds of a Feather), Black Women Blockchain Council (Community Partner), Blockchain Ireland (Community Partner), Blockchain Research Institute (Community Partner), Digital Euro Association (Community Partner), Diversity in Blockchain (Community Partner), European Blockchain Association (Community Partner), Global Blockchain Business Council (Community Partner), International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (Community Partner), Kerala Blockchain Academy (Community Partner), Trusted Blockchain Initiatives (Community Partner), Trust over IP Foundation (Community Partner), Wall Street Blockchain Alliance (Community Partner), Blocknews (Media Partner), BeinCrypto (Media Partner), Cointelegraph (Media Partner), CoinSpeaker (Media Partner), Forkast (Media Partner), Ledger Insights (Media Partner) and Merge by Fintech Nexus (Media Partner).

About Hyperledger Foundation

About the Linux Foundation

Sep 09

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Want to influence the metaverse? See you at Hyperledger Global Forum

By David Treat, Senior Managing Director - Global Metaverse Continuum Business Group & Blockchain Lead, Accenture and Hyperledger Foundation Governing Board Chair Blog, Hyperledger Global Forum

I first entered the metaverse in 1992 when I was young.

My cousin had lent me his copy of Snow Crash, where Neal Stephenson coined the term that now permeates our headlines. In the book, he describes a profoundly mature metaverse, filled with elaborate systems and cultures.

That vision stuck with me like a Kourier harpoon to a Deliverator door. Thirty years later, we are finally bringing the metaverse to life. Today, however, I see things differently, especially as I look ahead to Hyperledger Global Forum next week.

My vision for the metaverse is one of responsibility. Because we are not only the ones exploring the metaverse—we are helping to build it. The Metaverse is the Next Evolution of the Internet. At Accenture, we think of the metaverse as a continuum: a spectrum of digitally enhanced worlds, experiences and business models poised to transform the next 10 years. It’s set to change every aspect of business, from payments and customer experience to manufacturing and supply chains.

But all this relies on one thing: trust. Adoption and acceptance hinge on our ability to get it right. That means we need to design the metaverse with responsibility at the core. Trust is contingent on safety, privacy, security, sustainability, equity, inclusion, accessibility, well being and more.

I am excited that our Hyperledger community will be at the forefront of shaping the metaverse as the next evolution of the Internet. Hyperledger Global Forum creates a unique opportunity for us to come together and explore the opportunities ahead of us. And as the global chair of the foundation, my goal is to collaborate with all of your to design a responsible metaverse.

Whether you specialize in blockchain or not, I firmly believe this is a must-attend event for anyone who wants to carve out their place in the creation of the metaverse. We welcome you to stop by the Accenture booth in the Expo area, where our Metaverse Continuum team and Hyperledger project maintainers will be showcasing some of our solutions and eager to explore what this new future means for you and your business.

The work begins now

When a friend asks Hiro, the main character of Snow Crash, whether he won a swordfight in the metaverse, he responds:

“Of course. […] I’m the greatest sword fighter in the world.”

“And you wrote the software,” the friend chides.

“Yeah. That, too,” he concedes.

Aug 17

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Hyperledger Global Forum 2022 Set to Tackle Blockchain Interoperability, CBDCs, Climate Change, Digital Identity, Tokenomics and More

By Hyperledger Announcements, Hyperledger Global Forum

More than 100 Speakers will Take the Stage in Packed Three-Day Dublin Event

SAN FRANCISCO and DUBLIN, (August 17, 2022) – Today, Hyperledger Foundation, the open, global ecosystem for enterprise blockchain technologies, announced agenda details for Hyperledger Global Forum 2022 (#HyperledgerForum, HGF), which will take place from September 12-14 at the Convention Centre Dublin in Ireland. The packed agenda will tackle key business and technical topics, including blockchain interoperability, CBDCs, climate change, digital identity and tokenomics.

More than 100 speakers will take the stage for talks, panels, demos and hands-on workshops.

Highlights include these keynotes:

The Evolution of Ireland’s Blockchain Ecosystem – Lory Kehoe, Coinbase and Blockchain Ireland
ESG with a little Help from Indy – Dr. Andreas Kind, Vice President Cybersecurity & Trust, Siemens AG
The Metaverse Continuum Creates a Defining Moment for Blockchain Leaders – Melanie Cutlan, Managing Director, Metaverse Technology Capabilities Lead, Accenture

Additional speakers will include:

Bob Crozier, Chief Architect, Head of Enterprise Architecture, Head of Global Blockchain, Allianz Technology
David Treat Senior Managing Director, Global Metaverse Continuum Business Group & Blockchain Lead, Accenture & Hyperledger Governing Board Chair
Eli Androulaki, Distinguished Research Scientist, Decentralised Trust Research Strategy & Manager, IBM
Heather Leigh Flannery, Founder & CEO, Equideum Health
Juan Jiménez Zaballos, Chief Executive Officer, Alastria
Rob Palatnick, Managing Director/Global Head of Technology Research and Innovation, DTCC
Shashank Rai, Chief Technology Officer, United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC)
Yifan He, CEO, Red Date Technology

“There has been an impressive amount of market evolution, technology development and innovation in the two plus years since we last held an in-person Hyperledger Global Forum,” said Daniela Barbosa, Executive Director, Hyperledger Foundation, and General Manager Blockchain, Healthcare and Identity at the Linux Foundation. “Our community has been a driving force in advancing blockchain for business and building the open source foundation for an increasingly decentralized world. This year’s event will be more than just an opportunity to reconnect, share successes, bring new ideas to the table and plan next steps. It will also be a celebration of the power of community to build better together.”

Inclusive agenda, inclusive community

HGF is the largest annual gathering of the Hyperledger community. It draws attendees from academia, governments, nonprofits and start-ups as well as major technology and end user companies from around the world. Hyperledger Foundation aims to create an event that is both valuable and welcoming to all. Some of the key ways the Hyperledger team and community have worked together to give HGF broad appeal and access, in keeping with an “All are Welcome” ethos, include:

Community-led Program Committee – To ensure a compelling content agenda that aligns with top-of-mind issues for the community, Hyperledger Foundation turned the selection process over to a community-led Program Committee.

Community Fair – A new addition to the “hallway track” of the conference, the Community Fair will be a dedicated space for connecting with leaders from across the Hyperledger Special Interest Groups, Working Groups and Regional Chapters. The goal is to make it easier for community members to make valuable connections and find people and resources that align with their interests and needs, regardless of where they are in their enterprise blockchain journey.

Diversity scholarships – With the assistance of DTTC, Hyperledger Foundation is also providing scholarships to 25 students, researchers, independent contributors and government or non-profit employees from as far as Bolivia, El Salvador, India and Sénégal to ensure they can attend HGF.

Free child care – To make HGF more accessible to parents of young children, Hyperledger Foundation will provide free child care during all three days of the conference sessions.

Commitment to health and safety – To enter HGF, attendees must show proof of being fully vaccinated or of a negative COVID test taken within 24 hours of presenting the results at the event. In addition, masks will be required inside the conference center.

Focus on community connections – Hyperledger Foundation is hosting this as an in-person event to facilitate critical community connections. There will be an emphasis on providing attendees non-stop opportunities for knowledge sharing, collaboration and networking, including a night of celebration at the historic Guinness Storehouse.

View the full schedule, sponsors and activities at: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/hyperledger-global-forum/program/schedule/

About Hyperledger Global Forum (#HyperledgerForum)

Event sponsors and partners include Accenture (Diamond and Keynote Translation), Siemens (Platinum), Digital Asset (Gold and Developer Lounge), Zeeve (Gold), AWS (Silver), BONbLOC (Silver), Corsha (Silver), Espeo Blockchain (Bronze), Huawei (Bronze), Kaleido (Bronze), DTTC (Diversity Scholarship), IBM (Birds of a Feather), Black Women Blockchain Council (Community Partner), Blockchain Ireland (Community Partner), Blockchain Research Institute (Community Partner), Digital Euro Association (Community Partner), Diversity in Blockchain (Community Partner), Global Blockchain Business Council (Community Partner), Trust over IP Foundation (Community Partner), Wall Street Blockchain Alliance (Community Partner), Blocknews (Media Partner), BeinCrypto (Media Partner), Cointelegraph (Media Partner), CoinSpeaker (Media Partner), Ledger Insights (Media Partner) and Merge by Fintech Nexus(Media Partner).

About Hyperledger Foundation

About the Linux Foundation

Aug 09

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The Hyperledger Global Forum Community Fair: Where to connect with people who share your interests

By David Boswell, Senior Director, Community Architect, Hyperledger Foundation Blog, Hyperledger Global Forum, Regional Chapter, Special Interest Group, Working Group

It has been over two years since we had a chance to get together in person and connect with Hyperledger community members from all over the world. Since Hyperledger Global Forum 2020, there have been hundreds of opportunities to meet online in calls and during virtual events, but those virtual interactions are just not the same as connecting with someone in real life.

The “hallway track” of a conference – the time in between sessions and other parts of the formal schedule where you walk around and meet new people and reconnect with friends and colleagues – is often people’s favorite part of an event. This informal opportunity to engage is what has been so hard to reproduce virtually (the Zoom breakout rooms, 2D and 3D online spaces and other attempts were worth trying but just aren’t as effective) so we are really looking forward to this part of Hyperledger Global Forum (HGF) this year.

To help people connect at HGF (#HyperledgerForum), we’re trying something that has been used in community events that Mozilla has run in the past. These community events were helpful in bringing people with similar interests together. For instance, you may be really interested in what is happening with blockchain in the telecom industry or you may want to speak in Spanish to someone about what is going on with deployments in Latin America, but you don’t know who to speak with as you’re walking around the event.

In order to help you find the right people to connect with, we’ll be setting up a Community Fair in the Expo Hall. The Fair will have a series of table tops manned by people from different parts of the community who are interested in meeting and talking with you. This will include people from our Special Interest Groups who are implementing Hyperledger projects in a range of different industries, people from our Regional Communities who are traveling in from all over the world, and people from our Working Groups who are exploring technical questions about distributed ledgers.

The goal of HGF is to create an event where community members from around the world can meet, align, plan and hack together in person. The sessions, workshops and other parts of the formal agenda will be very useful to help you do just that. We hope that the Community Fair will be another great addition to the formal part of the agenda.

Groups planning to participate in the Community Fair:

Regional Chapters

Brazil Chapter
India Chapter
Latinoamerica Chapter
Japan Chapter

Special Interest Groups

Climate Action and Accounting SIG
Telecom SIG
Financial Markets SIG
Media and Entertainment SIG

Working Groups

Learning Materials Development WG
Performance and Scale WG
Identity WG

Community Events

Hyperledger Challenge winner

Registration details for HGF are here. We hope you’ll join us and make the most of the Community Fair. Its goal is to make it easier for our community members to make valuable connections and find people and resources that align with their interests and needs, regardless of where they are in their enterprise blockchain journey.

Save 20% registration with the code HGF22NWSLTR and, if you are not already a subscriber, please subscribe to our newsletters for the latest news and developer insights.

Jul 26

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What’s on the agenda at Hyperledger Global Forum 2022

By Hyperledger Blog, Climate, Finance, Hyperledger Global Forum, Identity

We are just weeks away from gathering in Dublin, Ireland, for Hyperledger Global Forum 2022. The hard-working programming committee has put together a packed agenda with a line-up of business and technical talks and panels as well as workshops, demos and more.

There will be more than 100 speakers covering everything from DLT operations to the future of NFTs & tokenomics and from the Metaverse to interoperability. Below are just a sampling of the topics and sessions on tap for the largest global gathering of the Hyperledger community, taking place September 12-14:

Climate

Blockchain – Sustainable Supply chain, SDG, Climate & Carbon Credit Tokenization – Kamlesh Nagware, Snapper Future Tech
Cactus Helps Cross-Industries Collaboration to Tackle Climate Change – Shingo Fujimoto, Fujitsu
Panel Discussion: Carbon Accounting Digital Trust Pilot With Hyperledger Indy/Aries – Nancy Norris, Government of British Columbia; Martin Wainstein, Open Earth Foundation; Kyle Robinson, Mines Digital Trust
Under National Strategy of Carbon Neutralization, How To Build Up a Whole MRV System With Hyperledger Fabric – Dong Ning, China Mobile

CBDC

Hyperledger Iroha: Enabling CBDC and FinTech Use Cases (Bakong CBDC in Cambodia) – Makoto Takemiya, Soramitsu
Towards a Scalable, Privacy-Preserving, and Regulatable CBDC Framework – Mark Rakhmilevich, Oracle
US Digital Currency: Opportunities, Challenges and Strategies – Jim Mason, DTCC
Creating a Retail CBDC Prototype With Hyperledger Fabric – Imre Kocsis, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Making Distributed Ledgers Interoperable Using Weaver (Hyperledger Labs) – Venkatraman Ramakrishna, IBM
Workshop: Moving Central Bank Digital Currency from Conception to Reality with Hyperledger Technologies – Elli Androulaki & Angelo De Caro, IBM

Digital Identity

Enabling Interoperability and Multi-Ledger Support for Decentralized Identity Platforms – Hitarshi Buch, Wipro Technologies
Findy Agency — Highway to Verified Data Networks – Laura Vuorenoja & Harri Lainio, OP Financial Group
Digital Identity Using the vLEI – Christoph Schneider, Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF)
Blockchain, Biometrics and Geo-Location: Lessons Learned from the Implementation of Innovative Technologies at the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund – Dino Cataldo Dellaccio, United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund & Shashank Rai, United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC)
Hosted Discussion: Rhode Island Leads on Digital Identity Solutions with Hyperledger – Liz Tanner, State of Rhode Island & Jim Mason, DTCC
Last Mile Problem in Self-Sovereign Identity – Biometric Authentification and Device Independent Wallet for Hyperledger Indy – Non Kawana & Ken Naganuma, Hitachi, Ltd.
Workshop: How To Build a Self-Sovereign Identity Agent With Hyperledger Aries Framework JavaScript – Timo Glastra & Berend Sliedrecht, ANIMO & Jakub Koci, ABSA

Enterprise Blockchain

Taking on Challenges of Enterprise Blockchain Infrastructures – Dr. Ravi Chamria & Ghan Vashishtha, Zeeve
Latest Technology Adoption Trends in Enterprise Blockchain Projects – Jim Zhang, Kaleido & Tracy Kuhrt, Accenture
Solving Market Problems With Open Source Verifiable Credentials – Heather Dahl, Indicio & Mike Vesey, IdRamp
Design Patterns to Practically Scale Blockchain Networks – Deepika Karanji & Arun S M, Walmart Global Technology Services
Why You Shouldn’t Just Trust Your Blockchain – And Apply Critical System Design – Imre Kocsis, Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Hands-on ½ Day Workshops

Workshop: Moving Central Bank Digital Currency from Conception to Reality with Hyperledger Technologies – Elli Androulaki & Angelo De Caro, IBM
Workshop: How to Build Full-Stack Web3 Apps Faster with FireFly SuperNodes – Nicko Guyer, Kaleido
Workshop: Developing Interoperability Applications with Hyperledger Cactus – Peter Somogyvari, Accenture
Workshop : Developing Applications with Hyperledger Fabric – Josh Kneubuhl, IBM
Workshop: Hyperledger Bevel – Sownak Roy & Suvajit Sarkar, Accenture
Workshop: How To Build a Self-Sovereign Identity Agent With Hyperledger Aries Framework JavaScript – Timo Glastra & Berend Sliedrecht, ANIMO & Jakub Koci, ABSA

Come join us for these sessions and more as well as non-stop networking, knowledge sharing and collaboration. And a night of celebration at the historic Guinness Storehouse! View the full schedule, sponsors and activities at: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/hyperledger-global-forum/program/schedule/

Registration details are here. Save 20% registration with the code HGF22NWSLTR and, if you are not already a subscriber, please subscribe to our newsletters for the latest news and developer insights.

Still not sure why you should attend? Watch our Hyperledger Global Forum Returns video thanks to our returning Diamond Sponsor Accenture.

Jul 19

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Hyperledger Global Forum Highlights: CBDCs, programmable money and interoperability – part II

By Hyperledger Blog, Finance, Hyperledger Global Forum

As we covered in Part I of this series, CBDC and other payment projects are moving quickly from prototypes to pilots and beyond with some well known projects already in production. As CBDCs and other cross border payment use cases mature, central banks continue to partner with the private sector from small to big companies to accelerate and innovate, and the Hyperledger open source community is at the forefront of the most public CBDC projects.

At this year’s Hyperledger Global Forum (HGF), those on the front lines of CBDC deployments and the development of critical underlying platforms and technologies presented a mix of talks about requirements for and challenges of implementing current and future payment solutions.

Read on for some of the more technical highlights from HGF on the CBDC, programmable money and currency interoperability:

Build CBDC Platform on Hyperledger Besu – Dive in Retail CBDC’s Architecture – Charles d’Haussy, ConsenSys

In this session, attendees got an overview of the architecture of the CBDC platforms powered by Hyperledger Besu.

(8:16) Charles d’Haussy on selecting a CBDC platform: “We mostly recommend building platforms that have public and private capacities so it’s a perfect fit with Hyperledger Besu…we also like to build on systems which are interoperable and global…”

This engaging discussion was then followed by a deep dive from John Velissarios from Accenture into the current landscape of CBDC research and experimentation across the globe.

(26:20) James Edwards on Bakong’s impact on the Cambodian payments ecosystem: “Bakong allows users of commercial banks to take advantage of the PSP’s huge networks of over the counter agents so it has made life a lot more convenient for Cambodians and for Cambodians small businesses. It has also incentivized PSPs to develop more bank-like services, a wider range of services, and has incentivized banks to develop a wider range of PSP-like services so it is enriching competition within the Cambodian payments ecosystem…”

Other sessions of interest from Hyperledger Global Forum on the subject:

Panel: Hyperledger Contributions from IBM – Kelly Ryan, Rakesh Mohan, Chris Ferris, Arnaud Le Hors & Elli Androulaki, IBM (Sponsored by IBM)

This session explored two new Hyperledger Labs: Fabric Token SDK, which enables the creation of CBDCs, and Smart Fabric Client, which is already in use with a major European Central Bank project.

Digital Currency Interoperability With Messages – Vipin Bharathan, dlt.nyc

This discussion, led by the Hyperledger Capital Markets SIG Chair Vipin Bharathan, focused on challenges facing digital currency interoperability and took a deep look at one of the current trends in implementing interoperability: message-based interoperability.

Smart Contracts with Tokenized Fiat Currency on Sberbank’s Platform – Oleg Abdrashitov, Sberbank

This presentation was an introduction to a platform for the issuance of digital assets and smart contracts developed at Sberbank’s Blockchain Laboratory. Smart contracts settle in Sber’s stablecoin: a tokenized ruble. The platform uses Hyperledger Fabric with improvements: Smart BFT for ordering, and with localized cryptography. Transaction confidentiality is achieved via Confidential Non Fungible Tokens. Sber’s platform is scheduled to go live in 2021 for the bank’s commercial clients and will be open for developers to deploy their smart contracts and applications.

Beyond Hyperledger Global Forum

In addition to being a key topic at HGF, CBDCs and other payment innovations are regular topics for discussions and activity across the Hyperledger community. Here are some talks and events, including resources for anyone looking to take part in the CBDC Global Challenge, to check out:

An on-demand replay of the July 13 Singapore Fintech Festival Green Shoots Series | Global CBDC Challenge session: “An impact making opportunity not to be missed” moderated by Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief Fintech Officer, MAS, with speakers for the IMF and World Bank as well as Hyperledger’s Brian Behlendorf
Hyperledger Capital Markets SIG talk by Saket Sinha, Global VP FSS, IBM on “CBDCs Promise and Risk : Operationalizing CBDCs”CBDCs, Promise & Risk”
A panel discussion from the May 26 virtual Synchronize series on CDBCs moderated by Hyperledger’s Karen Ottoni with speakers from ConsenSys, Digital Asset, SilverBank and more

How else can you get involved in this work happening at Hyperledger?

Join as a Hyperledger member. Our member companies are leaders in financial services and technology working on these exciting projects. Learn more about membership.
Participate in our open communities, like our Capital Markets SIG.
Deep dive into Hyperledger projects with training and certifications.
Attend other Hyperledger events and webinars.

Jul 14

Love3

Hyperledger Global Forum Highlights: CBDCs, programmable money and interoperability – Part I

By Hyperledger Blog, Finance, Hyperledger Global Forum

Central Bank Digital Currency projects, known as CBDCs, are moving quickly from prototypes to pilots and beyond with some well known projects already in production. As CBDCs and other cross border payment use cases mature, central banks continue to partner with the private sector from small to big companies to accelerate and innovate, and the Hyperledger open source community is at the forefront of the most public CBDC projects.

As seen at this year’s 2021 Hyperledger Global Forum (HGF), the annual global event where the Hyperledger community gathers to showcase their work with Hyperledger technologies, there is a wide range of activities underway tied to CBDCs and cross border payment. Talks covered key technologies, lessons learned and industry trends as well as production implementations like the work Hyperledger member Soramitsu has done with National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) to the leading work Accenture has been doing for years in the digital currency space.

In addition to developing products and services to deliver to their central bank customers, the Hyperledger community is also working to build the future of digital money with open source principles and goals. Efforts range from market leading discussions in our Capital Markets and Trade Finance Special Interest Groups to IBM’s recent contribution of code bases already in use in conjunction with a major European Central Bank Project. These are now Smart Fabric Client and Fabric Token SDK, two new Hyperledger Labs

Technology innovation happens when companies, academics and regulators come together to meet common goals, and Hyperledger is proud to host the development of code that will enable payment innovations around the world. Read on for highlights from HGF and to learn more about how you can get involved.

On Stage at Hyperledger Global Forum

Keynote Panel: Asia Pacific CBDC Innovation, Collaboration and the Drive to Interoperability – HE Serey Chea, National Bank of Cambodia (NBC); Sopnendu Mohanty, Monetary Authority of Singapore; Brian Behlendorf, Hyperledger

During this session, National Bank of Cambodia’s Assistant Governor HE Serey Chea shared with the audience the work NBC has already put into production with a retail CBDC, working with Hyperledger member Soramitsu using Hyperledger Iroha. A deep dive into this project is also available as a full Hyperledger case study.

Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief Fintech Officer, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), shared some of the outcomes of their leading Project Ubin work and announced a new Global CBDC challenge that the Hyperledger community is supporting as a technical partner. Read more about the CBDC Challenge here.

While the National Bank Cambodia selected Hyperledger Iroha for its retail CBDC implementation, multiple implementations are using other Hyperledger projects, primarily Hyperledger Besu and Hyperledger Fabric. As highlighted below, choice in DLT protocols is important to support and nurture and with that the need for interoperability becomes more important, and during HGF many sessions addressed the needs of our community to come together and resolve.

Fireside Chat on Central Bank Digital Currencies – Dave Treat & John Velissarios, Accenture; Jennifer Peve, DTCC

In this session, both Accenture and DTCC highlighted how CBDC is fast approaching and here to stay. Dave Treat, Senior Managing Director, Global Blockchain Lead, Accenture, and Jennifer Peve, Managing Director, Business Innovation, DTCC, covered the benefits and different approaches to developing a third form of central bank money for our digital world. They offered some practical examples of using Hyperledger Cactus and the Blockchain Automation Framework and a call for our community not to lose faith.

(23:30) DTTC’s Jennifer Peve on the positive momentum in the digital currency space: “Things are happening across Accenture, across DTCC, there many other financial institutions in this space progressing the conversation using distributed ledger and tokenized assets and even looking at the concept of digital currencies, it should be viewed as incredibly positive to see these iterations continue… these are not easy things to solve overnight..don’t lose faith, some of these things are just not easy things to solve.”

This engaging discussion was then followed by a deep dive from John Velissarios from Accenture into the current landscape of CBDC research and experimentation across the globe.

(52:28) John Velissarios’s call to action to get involved: “There’s a strong willingness to share to explore open source ideas, to openly develop new concepts and new ideas…get ready for innovation that will be coming out way imminently.”

(30:30) John Velissarios from Accenture on the innovation behind CBDC: “the ability to bundle both the value and the ownership in a single item that you can transfer from one entity to the next.” Why now: “The technology has become much more mature…there’s a lot more appetite in the marketplace.”

Hyperledger Besu Use Cases – Grace Hartley, ConsenSys; Adam Clarke, Fnality International

For those interested in Hyperledger Besu, this session provided an overview of how the platform is used by Fnality. Fnality International is a financial technology firm founded in 2019 by a consortium of international banks and an exchange to create a network of distributed financial market infrastructures using blockchain to deliver the means of payment-on-chain for wholesale banking markets.

(7:33) Adam Clarke, CTO, Fnality International, on working with the Bank of England: “We’ve put in our application for our first central bank account…When participants of our network fund the Fnality bank account, we will effectively tokenize that money and give full ownership of that money back to them immediately and that effectively removes the counterparty risk. They don’t have to move money through a counterparty, but also they they can also use the DLT to move money between participants instantly with legal settlement finality without having to worry about two or three day settlement period.”

(10:22) Adam Clarke on finding the right DLT platform: “It has to be closed. It has to be permissioned. We are never going to run this on mainnet for obvious reasons, we’re backing central bank money…and actually the consensus algorithm within Besu being IBFT2 or IBFT kind of algorithm allows us to actually get to the point we can show that we have legal settlement finality at a given point within the consensus algorithm so really important for central banks and for meeting regulation.”

Look for part II of this series, which will include highlights from technical talks centered around CBDC and digital currencies.

How else can you get involved in this work happening at Hyperledger?

Join as a Hyperledger member. Our member companies are leaders in financial services and technology working on these exciting projects. Learn more about membership.
Participate in our open communities, like our Capital Markets SIG.
Deep dive into Hyperledger projects with training and certifications.
Attend other Hyperledger events and webinars.

Jun 23

Love0

Virtual Engagement: Content and Connections Bring the Global Hyperledger Community Together at Global Forum

By John Carpenter, Co-Founder, Global Blockchain Summit Blog, Hyperledger Global Forum

“Welcome to the new normal!” When I wrote that sentence as part of the title for my panel discussion at this year’s Hyperledger Global Forum, I reflected on how much had changed since last year’s in-person Global Forum that was held right before the worldwide pandemic shut everything down. In fact, that was the last in-person conference that I have attended in fifteen months, and Brian Behlendorf, Hyperledger’s Executive Director, mentioned during his opening keynote presentation that he had a similar experience. This new normal was the driver for my panel discussion at Global Forum with Alfonso Govela, Jyoti Ponnapali, David Boswell, and Jim Mason about the significant transition of Hyperledger Meetups from always being an in-person event to now trying to have the presentations appeal to a much broader virtual audience.

It was readily apparent from attending the three days of Global Forum that the attendees were very engaged in the virtual event and that the overall sense of community had grown stronger during the past year by virtue of having universal virtual collaboration across groups due to the pandemic. Arnaud Le Hors, Hyperledger TSC Chair, did a great job of highlighting all of the significant projects and innovation under the Hyperledger greenhouse during his keynote.

I enjoyed serving as a moderator for a few of the sessions, but I really want to congratulate the entire Hyperledger events team, especially Daniela Barbosa, Karen Ottoni, Emily Ruf, Celia Stamps and Helen Garneau, on their hard work and the monumental effort that went into creating a very successful, inclusive and diverse two track event that highlighted all of the contributors from around the world within one seamless event.

I attended a variety of technical, business and impact track events, and the Hopin virtual event platform worked well and allowed for good audience interaction with the breakout sessions. The virtual networking sessions in Gather.Town were also fun, as networking, whether virtual or in person, is a critical component of any successful conference. One of the other great fun networking events was the trivia session run by Alissa Worley, Global Marketing Director – Blockchain, as part of Accenture’s diversity and inclusion sponsorship, and the music provided by DJ JRIP. Who knew that Brian Behlendorf was also once a D.J.?!

One thing that really highlighted the commitment of Hyperledger Members like IBM to the open source community for me was the keynote announcement by Kareem Yusuf, General Manager AI Applications and Blockchain, that they were contributing source code for a number of new Hyperledger Labs, including Fabric Operations Console and one that supports token exchanges on Hyperledger Fabric.

The dynamic keynotes by David Treat of Accenture about his work with multi-party systems and FDA Deputy Commissioner Frank Yiannas around the use of blockchain to ensure food safety highlighted the thriving Hyperledger projects that are achieving real world success.

The rich content covered in the breakout sessions was phenomenal! I enjoyed many of the sessions that covered verifiable SSI credentials (Michelle Ghazal & Nate Sulat and Stephen Curran & John Jordan), industry blockchain consortia (Si Chen), blockchain interoperability (Peter Somogyvari), Central Bank Digital Currencies (David Treat, Jennifer Peve and John Velissarios), Hyperledger Ursa (Mike Lodder), supply chain security (Vipin Bharanthan), trade finance (Mark Cudden), and thriving ecosystems (Melanie Cutlan). (You can dive into the video stream of these sessions and more here.)

Some of the other keynote presentations that stood out to me included those on topics highly relevant to today such as the use of blockchain to fight climate change and to provide health credentials for international travel as well as the overview of the Hyperledger Governing Board by Robert Palantick of DTCC. It was also nice to hear about some of the new hot items such as NFTs with Imogen Heap, Daniel Heyman, Brendan Cooper, and Daniel Heyman, as well as how blockchain can take on misinformation in general as outlined in the keynote presentation by Jonathan Dotan.

Other highlights from Global Forum were some solid collaborations with the Ethereum and ConsenSys communities through Brian Behlendorf’s fireside chat with Vitalik Bueterin and the breakout sessions by Danno Ferrin, Grace Hartley and Adam Clark around Hyperledger Besu.

I’m proud to be a part of such a welcoming, purpose-driven, and inclusive community and looking forward to the next Hyperledger Global Forum when we can get back to having the “new normal” look much more like the “old normal.” It will be all the more welcoming when the diverse Hyperledger community can once again come together in person.

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