PwC joins the Hyperledger project to advance open source standards for blockchains

PwC announced this week that we have joined the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Project, which brings together leading technology companies, financial institutions and startups from around the world to explore and develop open standards for blockchain technologies. As PwC UK’s representative to the project, I’m thrilled to be taking part in this important initiative and wanted to share some brief thoughts on why we decided to join, and how we plan to contribute to the community.

Having worked on blockchain technology projects for the past five years, I’ve been amazed at the progress made so far. Developments on both public and permissioned blockchains continue to break new ground, and organisations and entrepreneurs now have a clearer view of the types of use cases where blockchain technology provides real value, and the protocols and platforms best fit for purpose.

This progress is highly encouraging for anyone working in the space, but there is still a lot of work to be done as organisations look to bring blockchain-based applications out of the lab and into the hands of millions of users. This is no small undertaking with any technology product, and the next phase of industry-wide blockchain will require, amongst other things, the development and availability of open standards that can be effectively utilised across blockchain networks and applications. Open standards that provide layers of ‘connective tissue’ between blockchain protocols, platforms and applications will massively improve the interoperability and connectivity of the technology, similar to the open standards (think SMTP for email) that allowed the Internet to act as the public infrastructure that connects us to the myriad of applications we use today.

This next phase requires a massive amount of collaboration between technology providers, institutions, and entrepreneurs across a range of industries and these standards will need to be open to push the tech to the next level. With its mission to facilitate collaboration on building standards and dedication to the principles of open source software development, the Hyperledger Project is well positioned to provide a launchpad for this next phase. We see a bright future for blockchain technology moving forward, and look forward to engaging our firm’s experience, insights, and expertise with the open source community to help make this a reality.