Open Ledger Project by Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation has made an announcement regarding a collaboration between industries for developing blockchain technology. The project is called the Open Ledger Project. It is going to create an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework which will focus on creating strong, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems for supporting business transactions. The early contenders for the project are Accenture, Digital Asset Holdings, IBM, J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo. Several founding members are in the process of doing substantial research and development work to explore blockchain applications for industry.

IBM will be contributing tens of thousands of lines of its existing code base and intellectual property for this community. Digital Asset will be contributing the Hyperledger mark that is going to be used as the project name, along with enterprise-grade code and developer resources.

The SEC had already approved Overstock.com’s registration statement for sale of securities through blockchain technology. The Nasdaq Private Market is also going to trade shares using this technology in its pilot project.

There are obviously going to be risks linked with the technology’s large scale implementation. The technology, however, will have to prove its scalability for handling global settlement streams. This will include sufficient data processing and storage power for solving complex algorithms, which are essential for transferring property and maintaining ledgers. There will also be a need for global cooperation between financial institutions and regulators for the system to remain open and non-proprietary. Issues including hacking, confidentiality, money laundering and terrorism have to be addressed.