The inaugural Hiero community meeting marked a significant milestone for the Hiero project, emphasizing its global reach and the adaptive nature of open-source initiatives. Diane Mueller, Head of Open Source Development at Hedera, opened the meeting by providing context on Hiero’s journey and its recent contribution to the Linux Decentralized Trust Fund Foundation. Originally scheduled, Hendrik Ebbers, Chair of the Hiero Technical Steering Committee (TSC), was set to present, but he had to bow out due to illness. Stepping up on short notice was Richard Bair, Hashgraph’s Director of Engineering, another member of the TSC, showcasing the community’s ability to adjust seamlessly.
The meeting highlighted the Hiero community’s global presence, with attendees spread across Europe, Canada, and the West Coast of the United States. Diane noted how the project team had gathered just a week earlier at the LF Decentralized Trust’s Maintainer and Member Summits in San Francisco, where they connected with other projects under the foundation’s umbrella. Despite time zone challenges—especially during the annual shift in daylight savings—the team’s collaborative spirit shone through.
Why Hiero Joined LF Decentralized Trust
Richard began the presentation by addressing one of the most common questions the project receives: Why join LF Decentralized Trust? Hiero’s code has been open source under the Apache license for several years, but it lacked structured governance. The transition to LF Decentralized Trust, provided much-needed organizational support, bringing world-class open governance, increased brand recognition, and valuable networking opportunities. According to Richard, this shift has already opened doors for collaboration and has elevated Hiero’s status in the open-source community.
Governance wasn’t the only advantage. Richard emphasized that being part of a Linux Foundation umbrella organization makes Hiero more appealing to companies with established open-source practices. The Linux Foundation’s reputation fosters trust and encourages companies to contribute or integrate with Hiero, accelerating the project’s growth and development.
What Sets Hiero Apart
Hiero stands out in the blockchain ecosystem thanks to its unique architecture and technological innovations. While it operates similarly to other blockchains in some ways, the core differentiator is its Hashgraph consensus algorithm. Developed alongside Ethereum, Hiero was designed to be Ethereum-compatible, allowing users to leverage familiar tools like MetaMask and deploy EVM smart contracts seamlessly.
The project offers two ways to interact with its consensus: through native API calls or the Ethereum JSON-RPC relay. Richard explained that users can choose between using Hiero’s native APIs or leveraging Ethereum-compatible methods. This flexibility ensures a smooth user experience, whether interacting directly with consensus nodes or accessing data through mirror nodes, which provide REST APIs for easy querying.
The Power of Hashgraph
A major highlight of Richard’s presentation was the discussion of Hiero’s Hashgraph consensus algorithm. Hashgraph solves the Byzantine Generals Problem, achieving asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT), the highest level of security for distributed consensus. Unlike traditional blockchains that rely on leaders or inefficient proof-of-work systems, Hashgraph is democratic, with all nodes participating in consensus without adding significant latency. This setup ensures maximum efficiency and security, even in adversarial conditions.
Richard also detailed the project’s unique gossip protocol, which optimizes message dissemination across the network. The Hiero community is working on further enhancements, including an epidemic broadcast tree gossip algorithm, to minimize message duplication and improve overall network performance.
Insights from the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust
David Boswell from LF Decentralized Trust provided further context on where Hiero fits within the broader landscape of the foundation’s projects. “Hiero is part of the larger LF Decentralized Trust community,” he explained, highlighting that this umbrella includes various open source projects, such as Besu and Hyperledger FireFly. David noted that Hiero already uses some of these technologies, like Besu for EVM compatibility and Hyperledger Web3j for blockchain interactions.
He also mentioned potential future collaborations. “There’s some opportunity for more collaboration, for example, with FireFly, which has been working on Hedera compatibility,” David said. He suggested exploring how Hiero could integrate with projects like Hyperledger Cacti, which focuses on ledger interoperability, and mentioned the importance of building bridges with other projects in the LF Decentralized Trust ecosystem.
David encouraged attendees to explore Hiero’s place within the LF Decentralized Trust community. “Feel free to join our open community calls, participate in discussions, and get involved in any way you’d like,” he said. He also shared details about the LF Decentralized Trust Discord server, a public space for communication and collaboration, and dropped the link in the chat for easy access.
R&D and Future Developments
Richard shared updates on Hiero’s active research and development projects. These include improvements to block nodes and the introduction of block streams. The team is also enhancing the Hiero Improvement Proposals (HIPs) process and developing new features like the Solos tool, which simplifies deploying Hiero networks in Kubernetes environments. Additionally, core components of Hiero are being transitioned to its new GitHub repository under LF Decentralized Trust’s governance.
This move involves a comprehensive review process, including Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) checks and license verifications. Richard encouraged contributors to update their DCOs promptly to help facilitate this transition.
We’ll be diving deeper into these topics in future sessions, with the next Hiero Virtual Meetup to be held on November 20th at 9AM Pacific and led by Hendrik Ebbers.
Community Resources and Next Steps Next Steps
Diane mentioned that “The Hiero Technical Steering Committee (TSC) will have two more seats to fill soon, an End User and Community seat, so watch for that announcement shortly if you are interested in getting more involved in the technical side of Hiero.”
Diane also provided an update on events tied to the announcement of Hiero at Open Source Summit Europe in September and noted that the TSC team is working through new project onboarding tasks. She asked past project contributors to respond quickly to DCO update requests and mentioned plans for an upcoming workshop on Solo, a CLI tool to deploy and manage standalone test networks. She also highlighted Hendrik Ebbers’ efforts in hosting meetups and hackathons, promising to share recordings in the community Discord.
In the spirit of Halloween, Diane mentioned Hiero’s Hacktoberfest initiative, which wrapped up on October 31st. She pointed out that there are still some great first contributions available, especially for Python enthusiasts, and that the Hiero community will continue to offer engineering and GitHub support for anyone wishing to make a first time contribution to the Hiero project.
Reflecting on her own Web2 to Web3 developer journey from the CNCF and Kubernetes world to blockchain, she humorously noted the overwhelming number of Discord channels she has joined, even more than the CNCF’s numerous Slack channels. If you’d like to get connected to the Hiero community and the LF Decentralized Trust’s ecosystem, here are some community resources and a link to the calendar for upcoming Community and TSC meetings that are open to all!
Additional Resources:
Recording of Oct 31 2024 LF Decentralized Trust Hiero Community meeting
Learn more here: Hiero.org