- Hedera is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) company that is building systems that aspire to be faster than the current blockchain technology.
- The Hedera Governing Council is the body charged with overseeing the governance of the DTL platform
- IBM and Tata join existing council members Deutsche Telekon, T-Mobile, DLA Piper, Magalu, Nomura, Swirlds and Swisscom Blockchain.
IBM and Indian telecom company Tata Communications have joined the governance council of Hedera Hashgraph, a distributed ledger platform for enterprises.
Hedera is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) company that is building systems that aspire to be faster than the current blockchain technology.
The Hedera Governing Council is the body charged with overseeing the governance of the DLT platform.
Tata Communications is the first Indian company to join the council. The other existing council members include Japanese financial holding company Nomura, Deutsche Telekom, law firm DLA Piper, Magalu, Swirlds and Swisscom Blockchain.
Hedera claims its flavour of distributed ledger technology, which works differently than blockchains, can facilitate micropayments and distributed file storage, support smart contracts and will eventually allow private networks to plug into the public one to take advantage of its transaction ordering mechanism.
Hedera Governing Council
The company said the council is being designed to “ensure decentralized and responsible governance for a next-generation DLT platform.” The council will comprise up to 39 multinational entities from various industries. Now, eight of the 39 available spots for governing council members have been filled.
All members of the Hedera Governing Council have equal say in approving updates to the Hedera platform codebase and in setting policies for the many nodes that will constitute Hedera’s decentralized network, the company said in a press note.
Council members serve a maximum of two consecutive three-year terms and act as stewards of the platform, the note added.
The addition of the two firms further expands the Council’s diversity which comprises of enterprises from telecommunications, technology, financial services, law and retail sectors, according to the company.
Mance Harmon, CEO of Hedera Hashgraph, said, “The addition of IBM and Tata Communications to the Hedera Governing Council is a powerful endorsement of the hashgraph consensus mechanism, and further decentralizes the governance of Hedera Hashgraph.”
Potential of Distributed Ledger Technology
Hedera’s governance model, the company says, protects users by eliminating the risk of forks, guaranteeing the integrity of the codebase and committing to make the source code open for review.
“Our governance model, which includes a robust system of checks and balances, ensures power can’t be consolidated, while at the same time providing a stable and scalable platform on which developers can build,” Harmon noted.
According to Ankur Jindal, Global Head of Corporate Venturing and Innovation at Tata Communications, innovations such as DLT, AI and IoT change the way organizations and people interact with each other and with the world.
He said, “These emerging technologies can be harnessed to strengthen our efforts to improve operational efficiencies and enable our customers’ digital transformation worldwide.”
“We look forward to engaging with other forward-looking businesses on the Hedera Hashgraph Governing Council to help deliver the potential of DLT to the wider digital economy,” he added.
IBM believes that the Hedera platform will help simplify the deployment of Hyperledger in the enterprise.
Jerry Cuomo, Vice President of Blockchain Technologies at IBM, said, “Hyperledger has proven to be the de facto standard enterprises use to build, manage and deploy blockchain-based ledgers. We believe Hedera could help provide an interesting way to enhance and simplify the deployment of Hyperledger Fabric in the enterprise, making it easier for groups to build and grow their networks.”
The IBM Blockchain Platform is built on top of Hyperledger Fabric, an open source blockchain project from the Linux Foundation.
Inputs: coindesk, ET, ZDNet
