As members of the Hyperledger community look forward to upcoming “Hackfests” and collaborative events, the group is making a strategic collaboration with the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, a global standards organization for the Enterprise Ethereum crypto offering, that could foster more openness in the cryptocurrency sector.
Crypto channels are reporting the announcement October 1 that Hyperledger and EEA will become associate members in one another’s organizations.
A tangible sign of the interconnectivity of this program is a blog post penned jointly by Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Hyperledger at the Linux Foundation, and Ron Resnick, Executive Director of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.
“Our two organizations have similar objectives, such as broadening and strengthening the community around and the adoption of enterprise blockchain technologies,” the two wrote. “What we hope to get across to the public is that anyone who ever put a ‘versus’ between EEA and Hyperledger got it wrong; it’s now conclusively ‘EEA AND Hyperledger.’”
In the past, experts had discussed and debated the use of these two different platforms, many suggesting that Hyperledger is a better choice for B2B operations where EEA better serves Business-to-Customer programs.
However, the new announcement shows a desire, articulated by Behlendorf and Resnick to “enable more active and mutual cross-community collaboration through event participation.”
The move, they say, will also bring other tangible benefits, such as enabling Hyperledger developers to write code that conforms to EEA specifications, and promoting more interoperability in terms of working groups, meetups and more.
Now, with this joint agreement in hand, Hyperledger is also promoting a collaborative “boots on the ground approach,” preparing for a new Hyperledger Hackfest October 3 and 4 to be held in Montréal, Canada.
By hosting these regular get-togethers, Hyperledger hopes to promote software development collaborations and an open transfer of knowledge.
“We conceived of this as an opportunity … to engage between projects and think about integrations … and then sort of kick off various collaborations,” said Chris Ferris, Hyperledger’s Technology Steering Committee Chair, talking about the goal of setting up a ‘crypto-library’ for zero-knowledge proofs to share across projects.
The Hackfest event will also include an introductory training session to get beginners up to speed.
“We thought it was important to have this training day,” said Tracy Kuhrt, Community Architect, explaining how although much of the focus of the events is on getting core participants and long-timers to advance cryptocurrency projects, some accommodation for newcomers helps to strengthen the program model.
All of this collaboration is exciting for those who want to be in on the ground floor of cryptocurrency development, and it should be exciting for investors, too. These happenings are part of what builds a broader base for crypto advances as the world waits with bated breath to see whether and to what extent Bitcoin and other digital currencies end up taking over from old paper money.
