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Hyperledger to Expand into Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust – Ledger Insights
Open source blockchain foundation Hyperledger has announced plans to evolve into a broader umbrella, the Linux Foundation (LF) Decentralized Trust. In addition to blockchain software, the foundation already supports decentralized identity and interoperability software. Now it wants to do more, especially in the area of security.
“Ledger and accounting technologies are but one component of the decentralized systems that will support a digital-first global economy. LF Decentralized Trust is where we will bring together and develop an expanded community and portfolio of technologies to provide the transparency, reliability, security and efficiency needed to successfully upgrade critical systems around the world,” he said Daniela Barbosa, General Manager, Blockchain and Identity at the Linux Foundation in a statement.
The Linux Foundation wants to host the software used in the upcoming tokenization migration and the infrastructure modernization that will accompany that shift.
“This is important as we look to the future of developments in blockchain and tokenization, where an open source, developer-driven environment will help continually improve and evolve the software that underpins some of the core infrastructure that many financial institutions are using, ” said Catherine Gu, Head of CBDC and Tokenized Assets, Visa.
An obvious question is: what other technologies could be included under the umbrella? For example, multi-party computation (MPC) is a decentralized cryptographic technique and a natural companion to blockchains.
“On the horizon we see a number of additional technologies and applications in security, deployment and integration, decentralized identity, interoperability and accounting,” Barbosa added via email.
“We are currently working with various communities interested in bringing codebases and communities working on Zero Knowledge (ZKP), MPC, and more decentralized innovations to the Linux Foundation. Technologies like MPC, threshold cryptography, or FHE (fully homomorphic encryption) have not really an obvious home at LF right now. There are a lot of things around decentralization but not specifically blockchain that people and companies want to build projects in a collaborative and open way, and that’s the main reason we’re doing this expansion.”
Both vertical and horizontal expansion
To date, Hyperledger has been the home of open source software development, not so much standards. Today’s announcement mentioned that the new umbrella will “house new open source software, communities, standards, and specifications.” So this seems to be a vertical expansion as well as a horizontal one.
Barbosa agreed. However, he stressed that it’s not entirely new, pointing to Hyperledger’s work on the specification of verifiable credentials with AnonCreds.
As part of the expansion, LF Decentralized Trust will include “direct funding models.” Barbosa said that the additional project funds are common to other LF projects. They allow community members to fund specific projects directly, with the fund deciding how to allocate the money.
Much of this work was already underway with Hyperledger, but security aspects such as ZKP and MPC are key areas of expansion. For those attached to the Hyperledger brand, each project can decide whether to keep it or abandon it. Onwards and upwards.