Tata joins Hedera Governing Council

INDIA’S Tata Communications and International Business Machines Corp have joined the governing council of Hedera Hashgraph.

The US tech platform, Hedera Hashgraph is a distributed public ledger platform.

The addition of these two firms further expands the council’s diversity; it now includes leading enterprises from the telecommunications, technology, financial services, law, and retail sectors.

The Hedera governing council, which will comprise up to 39 multinational entities from a diverse array of industries, was designed to ensure decentralized and responsible governance for a next-generation distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform.

All members of the Hedera governing council have equal say in approving updates to the Hedera platform codebase and in setting policies for the many nodes that will constitute Hedera’s decentralized network.

Hedera’s governance model protects users by eliminating the risk of forks, guaranteeing the integrity of the codebase, and committing to make the source code open for review, the tech platform said in a statement.

Council members serve a maximum of two consecutive three-year terms and act as stewards of the platform.

Backed by Digital Currency Group and hedge fund BlockTower Capital, Hedera raised £102.65 million in 2018 when the cryptocurrency market was facing a slump.

When the governments around the globe targeted digital currencies and started intense regulatory scrutiny last year, blockchain developments within firms continued without a break. Cryptocurrencies though made a strong comeback in the early part of 2019, led by bitcoin.

Ankur Jindal, Global Head of Corporate Venturing and Innovation at Tata Communications said: “Innovations such as DLT, AI, and IoT change the way organizations and people interact with each other and with the world.

“These emerging technologies can be harnessed to strengthen our efforts to improve operational efficiencies and enable our customers’ digital transformation worldwide. We look forward to engaging with other forward-looking businesses on the Hedera Hashgraph Governing Council to help deliver the potential of DLT to the wider digital economy.”

Mance Harmon, CEO of Hedera Hashgraph, said: “The addition of IBM and Tata Communications to the Hedera Governing Council is a powerful endorsement of the hashgraph consensus mechanism, and further decentralizes the governance of Hedera Hashgraph.

“Our governance model, which includes a robust system of checks and balances, ensures power can’t be consolidated, while at the same time providing a stable and scalable platform on which developers can build.”