The Linux Foundation has announced a new collaborative effort to advance blockchain technology, which is the backbone that powers Bitcoin transactions. The goal of the project is to develop an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework to help developers build industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support business transactions.
Blockchain offers a digital technology for recording and verifying transactions, offering a distributed ledger that provides a permanent, secure tool to make it easier to create business networks without requiring a centralized point of control. With distributed ledgers, almost anything of value can be tracked and traded, as it has with Bitcoin.
Industry examples include allowing securities to be settled in minutes instead of days. The technology could also be used to help companies manage the flow of goods and related payments, enable manufacturers to share production logs with OEMs and allow regulators to reduce product recalls.
Early commitments to project include Accenture, ANZ Bank, Cisco, CLS, Credits, Deutsche Börse, Digital Asset Holdings, DTCC, Eris Industries, Fujitsu, IC3, IBM (NYSE: IBM), Intel, J.P. Morgan, London Stock Exchange Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), R3, State Street, SWIFT, VMware and Wells Fargo.
Many of these founding members are already investing research and development efforts to explore blockchain applications for specific industries. IBM intends to contribute tens of thousands of lines of its existing codebase and its corresponding intellectual property to the blockchain open source community.
Digital Asset is contributing the Hyperledger mark, which will be used as the project name, as well as enterprise grade code and developer resources. R3 is contributing a new financial transaction architectural framework designed to specifically meet the requirements of its global bank members and other financial institutions.
The collaboration is expected to help identify and address features, as well as currently missing requirements, to help create a cross-industry, open standard for distributed ledgers that can transform the way business transactions are conducted.