Ripple Joins Hyperledger Blockchain Consortium

Distributed ledger startup Ripple has joined the Linux Foundation-backed Hyperledger blockchain consortium.

Hyperledger announced Wednesday that Ripple is among fourteen companies to join the group, which first launched at the end of 2015 and to date has added more than 200 firms and organizations to its ranks. Also joining the group is CULedger, a separate consortium backed by a group of credit unions that last year formed an industry-focused services company.

"Through our partnership with Hyperledger, developers will be able to access Interledger Protocol (ILP) in Java for enterprise use," Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas said in a statement.

ILP was previously only operable on JavaScript. However, Ripple entered into a collaboration with Japanese system integration company NTT Data last year to retool the protocol with the Java programming language.

The two companies subsequently submitted the revamped Java-based protocol to Hyperledger, under the new moniker Hyperledger Quilt.

"The Hyperledger Quilt project connects Hyperledger blockchains with other ILP-capable payment systems such as XRP Ledger, Ethereum, Bitcoin (Lightning), Litecoin, Mojaloop and RippleNet, helping us to deliver on our vision for an internet of value - where money moves as information does today," Thomas explained.

2018 is set to be a busy year for the Hyperledger consortium. It plans to advance three open-source blockchain platforms to version 1.0 or production status, and also intends to launch an enterprise blockchain tool aimed at speeding up the development of blockchain applications.