Hyperledger Project Hits 100 Members With Addtion of China’s SinoLending, Gingkoo, ZhongChao

Hyperledger Project, an open source blockchain initiative hosted by the Linux Foundation, has hit a major milestone of 100 active members. Several new members from China have joined the project, including Dianrong (formerly SinoLending), Shanghai Gingkoo Financial Technology and ZhongChao Credit Card Industry Development Company.

“As a fintech company, Dianrong has always been at the forefront of applying emerging technologies to finance,” Peng Bi, Vice President of Engineering, said in a statement. “While our core business is connecting lenders and borrowers on our peer-to-peer lending platform, blockchain inherently applies to our business model since it can enable anonymous transactions between two unknown parties, solving the trust issue.”

Dianrong is a leading internet financial services company in China, specializing in alternative financing solutions. The company was founded in 2012 by Soul Htite, Co-Founder and former Head of Technology at Lending Club. Dianrong now ranks among the top three peer-to-peer lending platforms in China, according to a report by Wdzj.com and Yingcan Consulting.

Htite has hinted numerous times at his company’s interest in blockchain technology,stating earlier this month that Dianrong has been developing blockchain applications for use in online lending. He said that that the company has committed to invest between U.S. $30-40 million in development over the next two years.

According to Bi, alongside peer-to-peer lending, Dianrong is “also investigating other blockchain applications, such as consumer finance, borrower credit and contract certification.”

As for Ginkgoo, the company is looking “to explore how to serve banks with distributed ledger technology in China,” said Bruce Zeng, Manager, Gingkoo Blockchain Department. “We have developed our own Starfish [blockchain] and established partnerships with many blockchain companies worldwide.”

Bitcoin Magazine reached out to Zeng for further details on the company’s Starfish blockchain, but didn’t receive a response.

For the ZhongChao organization, joining Hyperledger allows the company to further advance currency digitalization. “We believe it is the next evolution of financial technology,” said Yifeng Zhang, President, Zhongchao Smart Card Research Institute. “We will cooperate with the central bank and financial institutions for further development of the industry.”

As of November 29, the Chamber of Digital Commerce has also entered into a strategic partnership with Hyperledger. This will leverage both the Chamber’s public policy knowhow and Hyperledger’s technology expertise to further promote the understanding, acceptance and use of digital assets and blockchain-based technologies. The Chamber and Hyperledger will work in tandem on public policy efforts, intellectual property issues, and global regulatory and technical interoperability.

“A pro-growth perspective towards regulation and industry standards are some of the biggest challenges the open source community faces,” said Perianne Boring, Founder and President of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. “We are excited to work with the technical experts and open source community at the Hyperledger Project to further support our efforts on behalf of the blockchain industry.”

Other members that have recently joined Hyperledger include, Beijing Botuzongheng Science & Technology Co. Ltd., an Altoros Americas LLC.

Launched in December 2015, Hyperledger Project is a collaborative cross-industry effort aimed at advancing blockchain technology by creating an open standard for “a new generation of transactional applications.”

The initiative is supported by prominent players in the technology, finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chain and manufacturing industries. These include SWIFT, Deutsche Bӧrse Group, DTCC, IBM, R3 and Thomson Reuters, among others.

“The growth and support across the globe is a testament to the need for an open source initiative, like Hyperledger, that accelerates the development of blockchain software and systems to reinvent industries,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director at Hyperledger.

Among Hyperledger’s membership, 41 percent comes from the U.S., followed by China with 25 percent, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) with 20 percent, and Asia-Pacific with 14 percent.

This year, several open source blockchain and distributed ledger projects moved into incubation under Hyperledger — including Hyperledger Fabric, Sawtooth Lake, Blockchain Explorer and Iroha.

In October, Hyperledger launched the Hyperledger Healthcare Working Group to foster conversations and proposals for applications of blockchain technology in the healthcare industry.

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