These Fortune 500 companies are teaming up to boost Hedera's governance
Quick Take
- A promising public ledger, which raised $100 million last year, has set up a governance council; attracting some big names
- The move is a promising step forward for enterprise blockchain
Heads of five of the biggest global companies are joining a governance council for public distributed ledger, Hedera Hashgraph, it announced in a press statement Wednesday.
Leaders at Nomura Holdings, Deutche Telekom, DLA Piper, Magazine Luiza, Swisscom Blockchain AG are the first five members to be announced, with Hedera's CEO Mance Harmon saying it intentionally chose "world-class" brands which represented different industries and geographies to guarantee it "continued decentralization." More specifically, the new governance council will help oversee changes to the software run by millions of Hedera distributed nodes, providing technical, legal and business expertise.
The $100 million public distributed ledger — which runs on a proof of stake model — is clearly making friends in the corporate world, aiming to offer a secure enterprise-ready ledger. Hedera believes it will provide enterprises with a transaction network that rivals Ethereum's current low throughput chain. For the 40-plus dApps set to launch on top of Hedera, the pitch of predictable governance, scalable architecture, and limited forks is seen as a viable path towards building enterprises applications.
One council member, Scott Thiel - a partner at law firm DLA Piper - told The Block his company has been involved in blockchain projects for various years and hopes his role on the council will help address some of the barriers to adoption.
“Legal uncertainty is an area we've seen a lot of nervousness...We've seen a piecemeal approach from regulators across the world," he said. "The exciting bit from my perspective is to bring innovative solutions to old challenges." He added that a lack of credible governance models in existing blockchains was creating a trust problem.
" There is also a lack of diversity of contributions to governance. There is power in diversity of opinions.”
The governance model is based on the original VISA company and "is designed in a way that ensures the governing council can be trusted to do what’s in the best interest of the Hedera network, that no single company has control, and that the Council cannot be unduly influenced by individual members or node operators," according to Hedera's press release.
The organization also announced a live stream of its first annual summit, being held on Feb. 20 in Seoul, Korea.
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