Leaders from Trade Finance, Capital Markets, Climate Action and Accounting, Media and Entertainment, Public Sector, Social Impact, Supply Chain and Telecom Special Interest Groups; Identity, Learning Materials and Development, Performance & Scale and Learning Materials Development Working Groups; and the Italian, Latin America and India Chapters agree:
“We are unearthing ways in which we can better collaborate
to overcome today’s and future cross industry challenges
by identifying and contributing heterogeneous expertise,
leveraging technology for the betterment of society,
unifying open communities under Hyperledger.”
Signatories:
Why?
The Hyperledger Special Interest Groups (SIGs) were initially focused on specific business areas such as Trade Finance (TF), Supply Chain (SC), Healthcare (H), Telecom (T), and Capital Markets (CM). These groups evolved separately and went through their own independent cycles of growth. These SIGs regularly hosted presentations about ways their industries and business domains leveraged open source protocols and software to deliver solutions that overcame their respective challenges.
Gradually, some individual SIGs came together organically and dynamically. In 2020, the Capital Markets SIG and Trade Finance SIG produced an exhaustive and comprehensive picture of the Chinese blockchain infrastructure for Trade and Trade Finance.
In March 2021, Trade Finance SIG and Capital Markets SIG met formally for the very first time to plan collaboration in earnest. That meeting sparked an inner debate within the Trade Finance SIG about how different SIGs in the Hyperledger ecosystem could further collaborate. Perhaps it is natural that large-scale collaboration started with trade finance as, thanks to its hybrid nature, it is intimately connected with many other branches of human activity.
Observations emerged from these initial meetings within the Trade Finance SIG and from initial collaboration with other Hyperledger SIGs that could serve as a role model for future and further open engagement throughout the Hyperledger SIGs.
It became clear that we cannot promote decentralization while locking ourselves in silos. We cannot promote decentralization while imposing singular perspectives on the world. We need collaboration, open communication, and strong connections among Hyperledger communities as we look for solutions to enable interoperability and standards at business and technical levels.
The Hyperledger communities should focus on finding new opportunities that support global adoption of blockchain. Intra WGs, SIGs and Chapters collaboration is a natural step forward identifying opportunities to accelerate that adoption. The goal is to discuss, create or adopt technical, business, legal and regulatory standards that may redefine common global practices for a harmonized worldwide adoption and come up with a set of shared, mutually accepted regulatory framework for the industries to innovate.
Blockchain-based ecosystems are virtual places where members come together to be part of an evolution or indeed a revolution in business practices. Hyperledger has always strived to be a neutral reference point that leverages the expertise of their participants.
We face global events that stimulate or accelerate technological advancements and the need for solutions to resolve some of the world’s most urgent problems—from climate change and sustainability, green initiatives including green trade and logistics, healthcare, provenance, security and privacy. We are uniquely positioned to break the silos and combine our thoughts, ideas and effort in a concerted way to solve these problems.
The creation of a Hyperledger Collaboration Working Group will break the silos through intentional collaboration starting a convergence of the Hyperledger ecosystem addressing large-scale real world problems. This new Working Group echoes the goal of the Linux Foundation itself: “Unlocking the value of shared technology.” Representatives from these groups will meet on a quarterly basis to achieve the goal of open collaboration.
Our Call to Action is for you to participate, get involved, contribute where you can and help us achieve our goal. We encourage the community to roll up its collective sleeves and take on this challenge. A good place to start is the event named “Breaking the silos” that will take place on June 15th.
Come and join us!
Cover image by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images