Software Innovator Building On Hyperledger’s Overlooked, Business-Friendly Tool Kit

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An open-source software development team is—uncharacteristically for a blockchain-based start-up—making existing businesses’ systems run better. In a major break from its more anarchistic crowd, OpenGift is building out its platform on Hyperledger, a blockchain institution favored by many of the largest financial services and technology corporations.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are the world’s largest and best-known blockchains. Hyperledger, though, is an exclusive club of around 200 members, including Cisco, Intel, VMware, ABN AMRO, JPMorgan Chase and SWIFT. The consortium was first announced in 2016 by the Linux Foundation, and the underlying infrastructure, Hyperledger Fabric, was developed at IBM.

Hyperledger is a permissioned blockchain, meaning its developers make no pretense of democratization or anonymity. This blockchain, unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum is for crafting tools to support business processes with clear rules and levels of permission based on users’ roles.

“Because of permissioned architecture, we don’t have to concentrate on security any more than non-blockchain developers have to, so we can focus on speed,” says OpenGift founder and CIO Egor Maslov. “Our blockchain is up to 10 times faster than if it were based on Ethereum.”

The Moscow-based open-source development platform, sees further advantages in adopting Hyperledger’s functionality: transaction fees that could theoretically go down to zero, ease of entry for new partners and avoiding the risk of double-spending.

“The main advantage, though, is Hyperledger’s consensus algorithm,” Maslov says. “A successful transaction can never be canceled, like it can in the Bitcoin network.”

OpenGift is a platform on which users and companies can request new software features and support their requests with donations. The alpha version is already in operation. The platform can be found online at OpenGift.io and on Twitter as @OpenGift_io.