Bank of England and Boston Fed join Hyperledger

The Hyperledger blockchain project, led by the Linux Foundation, has welcomed 11 new members, including the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

The two central banks announced today that they have joined the Hyperledger consortium, becoming the first central banks to join the consortium. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has published research on blockchain, while the Bank of England has promoted a range of blockchain applications, including the potential issuance of digital currencies.

Other new members include healthcare group Kaiser Permanente, academic research institute Cryptocurrency and Contract Initiative (IC3), and China Merchants Bank. In addition, Monax, a new startup, submitted an Ethereum virtual machine code base to the Hyperledger project.

Brian Behlendorf, executive director of Hyperledger, said in a statement:

“With Hyperledger now at 122 members, we are seeing more diverse organizations across a variety of industry sectors investing their resources to learn about blockchain technology to enhance their own business processes. The combined backgrounds and experience of the new members will be invaluable to the community as we strive to increase product deployments this year.”

(Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Hyperledger)

The Hyperledger organization has been steadily adding new members since the beginning of the year, including Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler and credit card giant American Express.

The next phase of Hyperledger’s software is expected to be released in March or April.