Why financial infrastructure should be open source – Hyperledger

Open source management and development tools are prerequisites for governments, organizations and financial institutions looking to use blockchain technology.

Speaking exclusively to Cointelegraph at Blockchain Week in Paris, Hyperledger CEO Daniela Barbosa discussed why open source blockchain technology is a non-negotiable standard for global institutions.

Barbosa, who serves as the CEO of the Linux Foundation, said the shift of critical financial infrastructure to blockchain protocols means the underlying network is open-source and open-governed.

“Around the world, organizations are choosing the Hyperledger family to work with because they know it's underpinned by the Linux foundation. It's in that open governance and transparent development, and it has the support of big companies, governments and organizations,” explained Barbosa.

According to the Hyperledger director, organizations can tap into the maintenance of the technology stack not only because the tools are open source, but because there is open development and an active community of diverse maintainers and code contributors.

“No one wants to build new railroads on code that a company owns. If that company goes out of business or changes its mind and says we're not open source, you have to pay license fees to continue using what they built.”

Barbosa believes the Linux Foundation's focus is on promoting open governance and developing tools under its umbrella. She highlighted critical infrastructure such as the inclusion of open source infrastructure in most computing systems, such as the Linux kernel.

“For the past 25 years, the Linux Foundation has been building open source communities and the code that matters most. Think Linux kernel and Kubernetes. Essentially, all cloud computing runs on Kubernetes,” Barbosa said.

Related: Hyperledger onboards Citi, forms Besu working group led by DTCC

The Linux Foundation GM says many organizations have made efforts to open source their software and code. However, she questions whether making this information openly available on GitHub is enough to allow the tools to be openly developed and managed.

“That's what the foundation does; We bring that open governance and development. Banks that compete with each other can come and cooperate. Companies like Accenture and IBM can collaborate on things for the community, Barbosa explained.

Related: Tokenized asset market on public blockchains could hit $16T – RippleX VP

She added that this is an important long-term consideration for the financial services industry as regulators begin to scrutinize who owns what and make changes to the underlying code.

Barbosa also opened up the development history of Hyperledger's blockchain tools. Hyperledger Besu, the popular Ethereum execution client, has become one of the most important infrastructure offerings.

Hyperledger Base is an open source Java Ethereum implementation client. It offers public and private functions and can process all Ethereum smart contracts. Unbreakable Token Levels Users can use all Ethereum token levels, including ERC-20 and ERC-721.

“In 2019, institutions were very interested in the Ethereum ecosystem. This was a contribution from Consensus when the Hyperledger Foundation and the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance joined forces,” Barbosa said.

Barbosa cited on-chain data reflecting 12% of Ethereum mainnet users running Hyperledger Besu as an execution client. Consensys Linea runs on the client, as does Hedera Hashgraph.

Magazine: Get Bitcoin or die tryin: Why hip hop stars love crypto