What is Hyperledger?

One of the projects you will inevitably stumble upon when you visit blockchain conferences and follow blockchain news is Hyperledger of the Linux Foundation. But while it is relatively straightforward to understand what cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and even Ethereum are, it is more difficult to get your head around the Hyperledger initiative. But if you do, you’ll find some exciting projects for non-currency, industrial blockchain applications.

Let’s start with what Hyperledger is not: Not a company. Not a cryptocurrency. Not a blockchain. Not an IBM blockchain coin. Hyperledger is rather something like a hub for open industrial blockchain development. On its website Hyperledger explains:

“Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration, hosted by The Linux Foundation, including leaders in finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing, and Technology.”

Hyperledger does not support Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. But the platform is thrilled by blockchain technology. Not since the Web itself, the website tells, “has a technology promised broader and more fundamental revolution than blockchain technology.” Blockchains has the potential to “build a new generation of transactional applications that establishes trust, accountability, and transparency at their core while streamlining business processes and legal constraints.”

So we have a lot of promises – and we have Hyperledger. With it, the Linux Foundation aims to create an environment in which communities of software developer and companies meet and coordinate to build blockchain frameworks. The Linux Foundation founded the platform in December 2015. In February 2016 it announced the first founding members, in March 2016 ten more members joined.

Today Hyperledger has an impressive list of more than 100 members. The list covers a wide scope of well know industry leaders. It includes mobility tech giants like Airbus and Daimler, IT-companies like IBM, Fujitsu, SAP, Huawei, Nokia, Intel and Samsung, financial institutions like Deutsche Börse, American Express, J.P. Morgan, BBVA, BNP Paribas and Well Fargo, as well as Blockchain startups like Blockstream, Netki, Lykke, Factom, bloq and Consensys. A lot of the world’s largest companies in Tech and Finance meet at Hyperledger with some of the hottest blockchain startups.

Relatively early in the history of Hyperledger, the project had to make an important decision. Executive Director Brian Behlendorf was asked if there will be an “Hyperledger Coin”, a monetary unit running on the Hyperledger blockchains. Behlendorf answered that the Hyperledger Project itself will never build its own cryptocurrency.

“You’ll never see a Hyperledger coin,” he said, “By not pushing a currency, we avoid so many political challenges of having to maintain a globally consistent currency.”

This decision strongly shaped the strategic goals of Hyperledger to build industrial applications of blockchain technology and sharply separating it from the get-rich schemes usually evolving from currency based blockchains. This might be more boring, but also more straightforward to the technology.