Recently, the Hedera Governing Council made a vote to decide whether or not to act on the proposal to purchase intellectual property rights to the hashgraph consensus algorithm. The decision was to do it, and the Council bought it from the founding architect and the council’s inaugural member, Swirdls, Inc. However, neither of the parties decided to disclose the price of the deal.
The Council published the details of the plan this Wednesday, revealing that they plan to transition the code to a new, open-source model later this year. The transition will happen under Apache 2.0 license, according to the announcement, and alongside it, several core team members — such as CEO Mance Harmon and chief Scientist, Leemon Baird — will be transferred from Hedera to Swirlds Inc. Harmon will transfer as CEO and Baird as CTO.
The pair will then deploy a number of updates, that will bring new features, such as community staking and node opportunities.
Why does this matter for Hedera?
Hedera Hashgraph is a project aiming to use enterprise-grade DLT in order to create dApps for the Web 3 sphere. Meanwhile, its governing council consists of 25 major corporations, some of which are IBM, Boeing, Tata Communications, and Google. All of the members are supportive of pushing the decentralization of the project to the next level by way of establishing and operating blockchain nodes.
The companies can also participate in governance voting, as well as fulfil other duties regarding the project’s maintenance and evolution. The switch to open-source technology is part of that evolution, and it is significantly different from the current model of open review. The open-review model makes the code visible to the public, although it is not available for editing or contributions in terms of development by the global community.
The Council decided to change this came after conducting a conclusive technical assessment, and finding that the possibility of a network split in Hedera’s ecosystem is “highly unlikely.” As a result, the patent that upholds legislative exclusivity to this tech can be safely distributed into the public domain. The council was assured that doing so would not be an advantage for Hedera’s competitors, but instead, a mechanism for internal growth.
Baird commented on the matter, saying that open-sourcing the software will help the project expand into new ways that will be beneficial to users, developers, as well as startups and enterprises. It will draw new developers to the projects in the Hedera ecosystem, and boost growth. As a result, Baird expects a number of new opportunities and possibilities to open up.
What is next for Hedera?
Following open-sourcing the project, the next big challenge for the project will be its expansion from a layer-one protocol to one that can deliver products and services and allow others to leverage the power of the layer-one protocol to create value.
Baird is also going to host a webinar alongside Harmon on January 26th, starting at 11 am EST, to discuss the Shared Worlds initiative in detail.
To learn more about this token visit our Investing in Hedera Hashgraph guide.
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