Citi and Brazilian Development Bank Join Hyperledger Foundation

Citi and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) have joined the Hyperledger Foundation to work collaboratively on fostering enterprise-grade services and solutions using blockchain technology.

Enterprise blockchains are permissioned and, therefore, can be accessed only by verified users, unlike public blockchains.

The Hyperledger Foundation is a global ecosystem for enterprise blockchain technology, which currently has 134 supporting members, including IBM and American Express, according to the company. Members of the Foundation are building products and solutions on top of Hyperledger’s code bases.

"We are excited to have joined the Hyperledger Foundation as we are committed to constantly being at the forefront of innovating blockchain and distributed ledger technology," said Biser Dimitrov, global head at Citi’s distributed ledger technology center of excellence.

Hyperledger Foundation also announced a Besu Financial Services Working Group, which is a collaborative group for enterprise users and code contributors to Hyperledger’s Besu.

Besu is an open-source Ethereum client designed for enterprises for both public and private network use cases. An Ethereum client is software that lets users interact with the Ethereum blockchain.

Other members in the working group (WG) include Accenture, Mastercard, Santander and Visa. The group will be chaired by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which is also a member of the Hyperledger Foundation.

“When global financial organizations like DTCC, Citi, Visa and more step up to collaborate together under this open WG, I believe the market understands the importance of this technology to the financial industry and how working collaboratively in the open under a foundation like ours will drive faster and better outcomes,” said Daniela Barbosa, executive director at the Hyperledger Foundation.