The Linux Foundation | 25 June 2024
Expanded umbrella organization will host the growing Hyperledger ecosystem and accommodate additional technologies and communities.
SAN FRANCISCO – June 25, 2024 – Today, in recognition of the growing market for and adoption of decentralized technologies, the Linux Foundation announced plans to form Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust (LF Decentralized Trust). This new umbrella organization builds on the global strength of existing Linux Foundation blockchain and digital identity projects and creates room to support a rapidly growing decentralized technology landscape. To foster this broader ecosystem, LF Decentralized Trust will encompass the growing portfolio of Hyperledger projects and host new open source software, communities, standards, and specifications that are critical to the macro shift toward decentralized systems of distributed trust.
Decentralized technologies are quickly reshaping markets and disrupting traditional business models and systems. Asset tokenization alone is predicted to have a USD16 trillion market cap by 2030, according to the Boston Consulting Group. LF Decentralized Trust’s expanded project and member ecosystem will be both essential to emerging tokenized assets classes and networks, as well as to modernizing the core infrastructure for finance, trade, government, healthcare, and more.
LF Decentralized Trust will serve as a neutral home for the open development of a broad range of ledger, identity, security, interoperability, scale, implementation, and related technologies. It will be the Linux Foundation’s flagship organization for fostering innovation and collaboration in the development and deployment of these foundational technologies. LF Decentralized Trust will also include new directed funding models that will drive strategic investments by members into individual projects and project resources.
"With LF Decentralized Trust, we're expanding our commitment to open source innovation by embracing a wider array of decentralized technologies," said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. "This new, elevated foundation will enable the community to build a more robust ecosystem that drives forward transparency, security, and efficiency in global infrastructure."
“After eight years of advancing the development of blockchain, decentralized identity and related technologies via the Hyperledger community, the time has come to broaden our effort and impact,” said Daniela Barbosa, General Manager, Blockchain and Identity, the Linux Foundation. “Ledgers and ledger technologies are but one component of the decentralized systems that will underpin a digital-first global economy. LF Decentralized Trust is where we will gather and grow an expanded community and portfolio of technologies to deliver the transparency, reliability, security and efficiency needed to successfully upgrade critical systems around the world.”
LF Decentralized Trust will play a crucial role in driving open source development of decentralized systems with distributed trust. Learn more about membership opportunities, important details, news, and updates for LF Decentralized Trust here.
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Supporting Quotes
“Real change is driven by a combination of innovative technologies, active developer communities sharing common values, and resilient business leaders with vision. Progress is more powerful when we enable multiparty systems that truly prioritize users and acknowledge the interconnected nature of numerous products and services. As a founding member of the LF Decentralized Trust, Accenture will work alongside the vast developer community, our clients, and our partner network to apply the strength of decentralized systems and drive impactful change in this world.” – Michael Klein, Managing Director and Blockchain Technology Lead for Accenture
“The adoption of decentralized infrastructure is at an inflection point, reflecting the increasing demand from both enterprises and consumers for more secure and transparent digital transactions. As the industry leader for onchain data, blockchain abstraction, and interoperability, we’re excited to see the formation of the LF Decentralized Trust and to expand our collaboration with leading financial institutions on advancing tokenized assets and the onchain economy at large.” – Todd Barr, CMO, Chainlink Labs
“The expanded scope of the LF Decentralized Trust is a welcome development to further support the evolution of decentralized technologies and assess a broader set of tools with the potential to reshape financial infrastructures. We look forward to building on our collaboration with the Linux Foundation and exploring new opportunities that complement Citi’s efforts to innovate and scale our digital assets capabilities for our firm and our clients.” – Ryan Rugg, Head of Digital Assets for Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi
"The formation of the LF Decentralized Trust reflects the growing demand for open source resources that are critical to the management and functionality of decentralized systems such as the Canton Network. We look forward to deepening our relationship with the Linux Foundation and the new LF Decentralized Trust umbrella to support their goals of fostering innovation and collaboration across the industry." – Yuval Rooz, Co-Founder and CEO, Digital Asset
"We are encouraged by the launch of the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust. This initiative is a major step forward in our commitment to decentralized technologies that drive transparency, security, and efficiency. We look forward to partnering with LF Decentralized Trust to modernize infrastructure across vital sectors and foster a digital-first global economy." – Perianne Boring, Founder and CEO, The Digital Chamber
“As a founding member of the Hyperledger Foundation, and given our unique position in the financial markets, we recognize the vast potential for open-source innovation and decentralized technologies when it comes to reducing risk, increasing resiliency and improving security. The expansion of Hyperledger Foundation into LF Decentralized Trust represents an exciting opportunity to continue expanding these groundbreaking technologies.” – Johnna Powell, Managing Director, Global Head of Technology, Research and Innovation, at DTCC
“Various Hyperledger projects are an integral part in the tech stack of our research activities, which mainly focus on digital identity and digitizing processes. It has been great to collaborate and contribute in such an important open-source endeavor in the past, and we are looking forward to continuing to do so as these projects become part of LF Decentralized Trust.” – Andreas Sommerwerk, Researcher at T-Labs, Deutsche Telekom
"As long-standing contributors to the Linux Foundation and Hyperledger, Hedera is excited about the launch of LF Decentralized Trust, which is broader and more inclusive. Firmly supporting the foundation of open source — transparency and meritocracy — we are united in our commitment to fostering the adoption of decentralized technologies. We applaud the efforts of the Linux Foundation to form the Decentralized Trust project and look forward to driving more engagement from our own ecosystem.” – Charles Adkins, President of Hedera
“As the Government Chief Information Officer for the Ministry of Citizens’ Services, I am pleased to support the launch of LF Decentralized Trust. This project under the Linux Foundation aligns with our commitment to work in the open. By fostering collaboration, sharing updates, and making community-built trust technologies widely available, LF Decentralized Trust will strengthen the framework for critical services. We believe it will also enhance the success of Aries Cloud Agent-Python, an award-winning open-source software used globally, which the Government of British Columbia led the creation of. This software is vital for decentralized trust ecosystems.” – CJ Ritchie, Associate Deputy Minister and Government Chief Information Officer, Ministry of Citizens' Services, Government of British Columbia
“The establishment of LF Decentralized Trust is expected to accelerate the innovation and utilization of blockchain and other foundational technologies, leading to their adoption by a greater number of users in the world.” – Kei Fukuta, Director of Blockchain Planning Department, Hitachi
“LF Decentralized Trust demonstrates the substantial progress being made within our pioneering ecosystem. At IntellectEU, we are dedicated to this initiative, supporting various open-source frameworks under the LF Decentralized Trust umbrella through our enterprise-ready infrastructure management solution, Catalyst Blockchain Manager. We look forward to collaborating with the expanded community and creating opportunities for innovation and cross-pollination in decentralized technologies.” – Hanna Zubko, Co-founder and CEO, IntellectEU Inc.
“LF Decentralized Trust represents a significant advancement in the pursuit of secure, transparent, and efficient supply chain management and verifiable credentials in the healthcare industry. This initiative by the Linux Foundation aligns perfectly with industry goals around leveraging decentralized technologies to enhance patient outcomes and operational efficiency. I am excited to see the collaborative innovation it will bring to the industry.” – Daniel Pietrzykoski, Technical Strategy & Product Innovation - Blockchain & Program Management, Johnson & Johnson
“LF Decentralized Trust represents a significant opportunity to build a more secure and decentralized future, providing open technology infrastructure needed to advance the ecosystem. Kaleido is committed to this initiative and to collaborating in the open so that together we can bring enterprise capabilities to digital assets technologies.” – Steve Cerveny, Founder and CEO, Kaleido
"The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has always been a strong proponent of decentralized protocols and technologies. We have been actively collaborating with Hyperledger Fabric and its community. We are excited about NPCI's inclusion in LF Decentralized Trust. This engagement allows us to connect with the broader decentralized tech ecosystem and promote its adoption. We look forward to this new and exciting opportunity to collaborate with the LF Decentralized Trust community.” – Mr. Vishal Kanvaty, CTO, NPCI
“Oracle is a longstanding member of the Hyperledger Foundation and has both benefited from and collaborated on the open source technologies that evolved under the Foundation’s ‘greenhouse.’ One of the most notable outcomes is Oracle Blockchain Platform based on Hyperledger Fabric – a foundation used by many Oracle customers for their enterprise blockchain applications. As these applications have evolved to include digital assets, decentralized identity, and other multi-party systems, we welcome the expansion of the Hyperledger Foundation into LF Decentralized Trust, which creates an opportunity to increase our collaboration with the open source community on a broader range of decentralized technologies.” – Mark Rakhmilevich, Vice President, Blockchain Product Management, Oracle
“We see a growing demand for decentralized trust in the open industry ecosystem of sellers and developers with integrated hardware and software. LF Decentralized Trust, with its commitment to open development and governance, is uniquely positioned to meet this demand by fostering collaboration and innovation.”
– Andreas Kind, VP Cybersecurity & Trust, Siemens
“LF Decentralized Trust marks a pivotal moment for the future of decentralized technologies. As a leader in the layer one ecosystem, we at Stellar are excited to take an active role in the open governance that the Linux Foundation champions. This initiative will drive forward the innovation and adoption of decentralized systems, ensuring a transparent, secure, and efficient infrastructure for global digital transactions.” – Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director, Stellar Development Foundation
“Visa is supportive of a neutral and open-source approach that the Linux Foundation has been taking from the start. It encourages a unique developer ecosystem that is now being fast adopted by different enterprises for various use cases. This is important as we look to the future of developments in blockchain and tokenization, where an open-source, developer-led environment will help to continuously improve and evolve the software that underlies some of the core infrastructure that many financial institutions are utilizing.” – Catherine Gu, Head of CBDC and Tokenized Assets, Visa
"I am excited to learn about the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust initiative, which represents a pivotal step toward further simplifying and accelerating enterprise efforts to develop innovative decentralized solutions. By fostering an open and collaborative environment, this initiative will empower enterprises to focus their resources effectively, driving forward transparency, security, and efficiency in the digital economy." – David Palmer, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder, Pairpoint, Vodafone
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About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure, including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, ONAP, OpenChain, OpenSSF, PyTorch, RISC-V, SPDX, and more. The Linux Foundation 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
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