IBM Official Elected Chair of Hyperledger Blockchain Tech Board

The Hyperledger technical steering committee (TSC) has elected another IBM official as its chair amid controversy over the tech giant’s increased representation on the panel.

Arnaud Le Hors, a senior technical staff member for blockchain and web open technologies at IBM, succeeds Dan Middelton, a principal engineer with Intel, according to an email sent to the TSC mailing list Wednesday.

“I’m happy to have the chair role in good hands,” Middelton wrote to the list.

A year ago Middelton replaced Christopher Ferris, CTO of open technology at IBM, who had chaired the TSC since Hyperledger was founded in 2015.

Neither IBM nor Hyperledger was immediately available for comment.

The Hyperledger TSC is responsible for creating working groups to focus on technical issues, approving projects and reviewing updates.

Last week, Hyperledger code contributors elected the TSC for 2019-2020, and the number of IBM employees on the committee doubled, giving Big Blue 6 of the 11 seats. This rekindled concerns that the company has an outsized influence over Hyperledger, the Linux Foundation’s umbrella group for open-source enterprise blockchain projects.

In response, executive director Brian Blehendorf suggested that the TSC discuss increasing the size of the committee with the governing board or for “one time add of a set of new TSC members, so that this greater representation can happen in the current TSC team.”

Le Hors has worked nearly 20 years at IBM and has been involved with Hyperledger since its launch, according to his bio. He served on the 2018-19 TSC and contributes to Fabric, the oldest Hyperledger platform and the basis for the blockchain Walmart uses to track food through its supply chain.

Image from CoinDesk archives.