FedEx joins Hyperledger, the 270 member-large blockchain project. The shipping giant will stand alongside companies like IBM, J.P. Morgan, and Intel as a leader of blockchain technology innovation.
Hyperledger is an umbrella project for open source blockchains that was founded in December 2015 by the Linux Foundation. The project’s goal? to support the collaborative development of blockchain-based distributed ledger technology (DLT) and related tools.
FedEx’s dedication to the project will have “big implications” for supply chains, a noted use case for the decentralized technology. From manufacturing, shipping, logistics, and transportation can all have a lot to gain in the future from implementing blockchain integration.
FedEx CEO Fred Smith, like many others, believes that blockchain adoption is crucial, calling it the “next frontier” for supply chains. This isn’t the first gesture towards blockchain Smith has made. Back in February FedEx famously joined the Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA), a group leading the freight, shipping, and logistics blockchain revolution.
[image source: Blockchain in Transport Alliance: BiTA]
Kevin Humphries, senior vice president of IT at FedEx Services said then at the time of the BiTA partnership:
“One of our focuses has always been to find innovative ways to provide the kind of visibility that our customers need to get all the information up and down the supply chain. And blockchain is opening the door to that by giving customers even more visibility to their package before it gets in our hands and after it leaves our hands.”
