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An IBM executive has been named chair of the technical committee for the Hyperledger Project, the open-source blockchain initiative launched late last year under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation.

Chris Ferris, chief technology officer at IBM's open technology unit Open Cloud, was elected chair in a vote earlier this month. The result was announced at a committee meeting on February 25.

Representatives from major financial and technology companies, including Accenture, CME Group, Deutsche Börse, DTCC, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, and blockchain startups Digital Asset Holdings and R3CEV, make up the committee members.

Ferris will serve a six-month term, after which another election will be held. His role on the re-committee was notable for gaining IBM's enthusiastic support for the Hyperledger project, which officially kicked off in December. The company later launched a set of blockchain-as-a-service (BAS) tools that overlap in some ways with the Hyperledger initiative.

The conference also received a joint discussion proposal from IBM and blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings. The discussion discussed how to organize the Hyperledger code months in advance and how to merge two different approaches to blockchain applications into one.

The proposal provides the essential details for discussions to proceed as Hyperledger participants flesh out the governance structure of the project.

The document mentions:

“It is clear that the [Hyperledger] community is divided over the overuse of Bitcoin’s model (UTXO). We believe that the community should seek to rapidly implement a single, consistent, UTXO model and that iterative model(s)—that offer more elegance (and potentially better execution) to satisfy more complex use cases—are equally supported.”

Members of the Hyperledger technical community are expected to meet next month. The meeting is scheduled to take place in March.