Open Ledger Project is now Hyperledger

Linux Foundation has announced through a press release that the Open Ledger Project has a new trademark. It is now officially Hyperledger.

“Digital Asset has donated the trademark for the ‘Hyperledger’ name to the Linux Foundation,” reads part of the press release, “Use of the mark will be managed exclusively by the Governing Board of the Hyperledger Project with the approval of the Linux Foundation.”

Before this happened, Hyperledger was a startup that worked on building blockchains that did not require incentive coins like bitcoin. In June 2015 Digital Assets, another blockchain startup acquired Hyperledger.

Founding members

Digital Assets was founded by Blythe Masters, a former JPMorgan Chase executive. Just like Hyperledger, Digital Assets has been working on blockchain solutions that mainstream financial institutions can put to use.

Aside from the change of name for the project, Linux Foundation has also announced a list of 30 founding companies of the Hyperledger project. Some of the names in the list include Digital Asset Holding, R3, IBM, Hitachi and JPMorgan.

The project was unveiled last year as an open source blockchain project. There is a lot of anticipation amongst the major financial institutions and technology companies that the experience Linux Foundation has in building open source projects will play a significant role in delivering a superior blockchain to the one Bitcoin runs on.

Public or private

As a matter of fact, at The Block Chain Conference in San Francisco, IBM’s Global Blockchain Offering Director John Wolpert disclosed that about 2,300 companies have requested to be part of the project.

On the other hand, however, there are many, especially within the Bitcoin community who believe the permissionless blockchain, like the one on which Bitcoin is built, is superior to the private Blockchain that is being fronted by major financial institutions.