2 Blockchain Consortia See Membership Rises

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Two blockchain consortia have seen their membership numbers increase, a good sign that distributed ledger technology will see continued support in 2017.

Hyperledger Project announced Thursday (Dec. 29) that eight new members have joined its ranks, including CA Technologies, Factom Foundation, Hashed Health, Koscom, LedgerDomain, Lykke, the Sovrin Foundation and Swisscom.

“Not only did we exceed 100 members, Hyperledger met significant development milestones thanks to the community’s hard work,” said Hyperledger Executive Director Brian Behlendorf in a statement. “As 2016 was a year of exploration, R&E and prototyping, we’re excited for 2017 to be the year we start to see case studies of the technology in production environments.”

According to reports, a quarter of Hyperledger’s members are based in China, though its membership spreads across Asia-Pacific, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the U.S.

On Thursday, reports also said Japan’s own blockchain consortium, founded by SBI Holdings and its SBI Ripple Asia subsidiary, added another member to its group, Fukui Bank. The group is now 43-strong, reports said.

The consortium, dubbed “Consortium for Considering Blockchain Technology to Centrally Provide Domestic and Foreign Exchange Services,” focuses its R&D on the use of distributed ledger for cross-border and FX purposes. The group was launched in August of this year with 15 starting members.

The two consortia’s membership increases follow comments by Deloitte Consulting LLP Principal Eric Piscini that highlighted the importance of these groups for progress in the industry of blockchain.

“Industry consortia will be critical to unlocking mass-scale value and keeping blockchain relevant in 2017,” he told PYMNTS. “With more than 20 consortia in place already, we are on our way to success.”