Off The Block: IBM Joins Hedera Hashgraph Governing Council

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IBM isn’t just about blockchain anymore. In addition to their joint efforts with Hyperledger Fabric and World Wire, Big Blue is now pitching in for a different form of DLT: Hedera Hashgraph.  The tech giant is now joining Hedera’s Governing Council, along with Tata Communications and a growing cast of council members.

The Governing Council will comprise up to 39 organizations, which currently include Nomura Holdings, Deutsche Telekom, DLA Piper, Magazine Luiza, and Swisscom Blockchain, along with a variety of companies from a diverse range of industries. By joining, IBM hopes to ensure decentralized and responsible governance for the distributed ledger platform. 

The addition of IBM and Tata Communications “is a powerful endorsement of the hashgraph consensus mechanism, and further decentralizes the governance of Hedera Hashgraph,” said the CEO of Hedera Hashgraph, Mance Harmon. The Hedera governance model, he explains, “ensures power can’t be consolidated, while at the same time providing a stable and scalable platform on which developers can build.”

Hedera’s Governing Council eliminates the possibility of forks occurring on the platform, with each member having an equal say in updates and policies for Hedera’s network nodes. Each council member may serve a maximum of two consecutive three-year terms.

Jerry Cuomo, Vice President of Blockchain Technologies at IBM, says that the company represents a chance to explore relationships between public and private ledgers. Touting Hyperledger as the “de facto standard” for enterprises to design and deploy distributed ledgers, he believes Hedera could “enhance and simplify the deployment of Hyperledger Fabric in the enterprise, making it easier for groups to build and grow their networks.”  

Ankur Jindal, Global Head of Corporate Venturing and Innovation at Tata Communications, explained how his company can contribute to Hedera as a global digital infrastructure provider.  Innovations in DLT, AI, and IoT can change the way the world interacts, he explained. “These emerging technologies can be harnessed to strengthen our efforts to improve operational efficiencies and enable our customers’ digital transformation worldwide.”

Tata Communications will contribute to the council in an effort to “help deliver the potential of DLT to the wider digital economy,” Jindal added.

Hashgraph CEO Harmon expressed the vital role of distributed ledger technology “to the future of digital trust and commerce.” Hedera’s Governing Council, he explained, “lays the foundation for a fair and stable commercial platform,” allowing Hashgraph’s distributed consensus model to provide strong security and high performance for enterprise adoption.

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