Hyperledger (or the Hyperledger Project) is an umbrella project of open source blockchains and related tools that the Linux Foundation started in December 2015. IBM, Intel, and SAP Ariba have contributed to support the collaborative development of blockchain-based distributed ledgers. It was renamed the Hyperledger Foundation in October 2021.
In December 2015, the Linux Foundation announced the creation of the Hyperledger Project. The founding project members were announced in February 2016, with ten further members and the governing board announced a month later on March 29. On May 19, Brian Behlendorf was appointed the project’s executive director.
The project’s objective is to advance cross-industry collaboration by developing blockchains and distributed ledgers, focusing on improving the systems’ performance and reliability (compared to cryptocurrency designs) so they can support global business transactions by major technological, financial, and supply chain companies. The project integrates independent open protocols and standards in a framework for use-specific modules, including blockchains with their own consensus and storage routines, and services for identity, access control and smart contracts. There was some debate about whether the Hyperledger would develop its own bitcoin-type cryptocurrency, but Behlendorf clearly stated the Hyperledger Project would never build its own cryptocurrency.
In early 2016, the project began accepting proposals for incubation of codebases and other technologies as core elements. One of the first proposals was for a codebase combining previous work by Digital Asset, Blockstream's libconsensus and IBM's OpenBlockchain. This was later named Fabric. In May, Intel's distributed ledger, named Sawtooth, was incubated.
In January 2018, Hyperledger released the production-ready Sawtooth 1.0. In January 2019, the first long-term-support version of Hyperledger Fabric (v1.4) was announced.
Daniela Barbosa was named executive director of Hyperledger Foundation in October 2021.