Distributed Consensus Startup Progresses To SWIFT Competition Finals

Hyperledger was one of five startups in the Innotribe New York Showcase progressing to the finals, held later this year at Sibos Singapore. Besides the New York Showcase, Innotribe held regional showcases in Asia, Africa, and Europe, with the five best startups from each progressing to the finals. There they will compete for a $50,000 grand prize, and the possibility to work with global financial giant SWIFT.

"The regional showcases represent a unique platform for discussion, debate, and high-level networking for our community and are a great opportunity for the startups to meet face to face with potential investors, partners and customers."
— – Fabian Vandenreydt, Head of Markets Management, Core Business Development, The Swift Institute, Innotribe & Partner Mgmt

Hyperledger won the early-stage growth category in New York alongside SizeUp, a startup providing big data for small to medium size businesses, and Token.io, a startup focusing on secure payments.

"For the second consecutive year, we are thrilled with the record number and calibre of the startups applying to our programme."
— – Vandenreydt

During the New York event HyperLedger CEO, Dan O’Pery, pitched to a panel of judges including financial service executives and experts, and the Head of Markets Management at Innotribe and the SWIFT Institute, Fabian Vandenreydt. Their distributed ledger is “crypto-currency inspired” and designed to allow financial institutions to settle payments easily and quickly.

Unlike its nearest competitor Ripple, and farther way Bitcoin, HyperLedger creates private ledgers which don’t use a currency to secure a network. It really isn’t a “currency-less blockchain,” but its own beast. Unlike Bitcoin, and to some degree Ripple, it’s goal is not to allow unknown participants to transfer funds, but instead allows known and trusted financial institutions to pay each other.

An example of HyperLedger’s consensus works

While Bitcoin’s decentralized digital currency is certainly something to marvel at, according to O’Pery, the cost and pseudo anonymous nature that comes with it are something banks and large financial institutions aren’t interested in. He thinks they’re interested in a blockchain-like ledger that increases transparency, lowers costs, and to a degree increases security.

Although the Ripple protocol is a contender in this market, and has already publicly announced partnerships with several financial institutions, the Ripple currency’s volatility and very small market cap could leave it at a disadvantage, compared to HyperLedger’s asset agnostic platform.

Founded in mid-2014, HyperLedger has yet to announce if any financial institutions, or startups, are testing their technology publically. According to the O’Prey’s pitch at the showcase, they are working with several. Mike Sigal, Lead Coach of the Innotribe Startup Challenge, explained that this kind of networking is a core focus for SWIFT, "what really sets the Innotribe programme apart is the coaching we give the startups in how to engage the more established financial services providers."

"There’s a chasm between how startups and banks practice innovation, and helping our startups understand how to communicate their value propositions to SWIFT’s community helps banks quickly evaluate new technologies and models, and helps our startups identify appropriate partners and investors."
— – Mike Sigal, Lead Coach of the Innotribe Startup Challenge

To make the platform more attractive to his target audience O’Prey built Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) features into the HyperLedger technology, which banks require and need.

The startup has an impressive list of board members and advisors, which include  IBM executive artist Richard Brown, British tech expert Simon Wardley, and former Citibank and London Stock Exchange executive, Pinar Emirdag.

Hyperledger will move on to compete in the Grand Finales held on October 14 at Sibos Singapore, where they compete against numerous fintech startups, including two digital currency ones: bitcoin remittance platform BitSpark and bitcoin storage service Elliptic.

HyperLedger is still in development, but the project is open source and can be viewed on their github. It can be downloaded, as well as the HyperLedger server programs needed to create your own private ledger.