Hyperledger Secures 11 New Members

Blockchain consortium Hyperledger has had its ups and downs recently, but the group says it continues to grow, as 11 new members join up.

Hyperledger announced the new members on Tuesday (Feb. 27), including commercial card and travel and expense company 8Common; blockchain firm ArcBlock; cloud storage firm Data Deposit Box and supply chain company FORFIRM.

ForgeRock, a digital identity management solution; Inspur, a cloud computing company; Nexiot, an Internet of Things firm; ~sedna GmbH, a digital marketing firm and Smart Block Laboratory, an IT research and development team, have also joined Hyperledger.

“It’s very gratifying to see the momentum behind Hyperledger continue in 2018, two years after the project first started,” the consortium’s Executive Director, Brian Behlendorf, said in a statement. “The community’s development efforts have led us to release two production-ready frameworks, and we’ve grown to more than 200 members in that time. Members add a great amount of value to our ecosystem, and I look forward to contributions by this new set of organizations as more production deployments take shape later this year.”

Last year, Hyperledger named American Express as its newest Premier Member, which enables the payments technology company to hold a larger role in the group’s efforts to develop blockchain-based solutions.

But last December, reports emerged that 15 existing members of the group either quit or reduced their financial stake in the initiative in the last few months, according to Reuters reports at the time.

“We have seen some members who were part of the initial December 2015 cohort shift their spending priorities but remain members of the organization,” Behlendorf told the publication. “We have seen others who never really engaged decide not to renew. This is normal and expected.”

Hyperledger has more than 190 members and said that 18 of them hit Premier status as of the end of last month.