Linux Foundation, a non-profit organisation enabling IT innovation, has announced Hyperledger – a new collaborative effort to develop blockchain technology with the participation of several major financial and IT organisations.

The companies that have joined the project include Accenture, ANZ Bank, Cisco, CLS, Credits, Deutsche Börse, Digital Asset Holdings, DTCC, Fujitsu Limited, IC3, IBM, Intel, J.P. Morgan, London Stock Exchange Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), R3, State Street, SWIFT, VMware and Wells Fargo, says the website of Linux Foundation.

The idea expressed by Linux Foundation is that an early-stage technology such as blockchain can only be fully explored and developed through a joint effort of many companies working in various fields. “Distributed ledger systems today are being built in a variety of industries but to realize the promise of this emerging technology, an open source and collaborative development strategy that supports multiple players in multiple industries is required”, writes the website.

Jerry Cuomo, IBM Vice President working on the Hyperledger project, writes in his blog that the blockchain developed for this project is referred to as Open block chain (OBC) and differs from other open ledger platforms used nowadays. OBC is permissioned, which means that members can have different permissions, roles and statuses – public, private, or in between. OBC is secured, which means that the system allows various levels of confidentiality and doesn’t give users information about each other’s interactions unless required by a special status user (auditor or regulator). OBC is extensible: business logic can be written in the golang language, which issues transactions and manipulates data within a blockchain. OBC is modular: key system aspects can be replaced. And, finally, OBC can be optimised – that is, constantly improved.

Apart from powering digital currency bitcoin, blockchain has already found many applications in various fields. Coinfox has previously written that securities are being issued via blockchain and that Japanese Nomura Research Institute is exploring ways to apply blockchain to banking.

Andrew Levich