Aerospace manufacturer Boeing and financial services company FIS Global have joined the governing council of Hedera Hashgraph, a proof-of-stake blockchain with impressive backers. Boeing joined today and FIS Global yesterday, and the two companies have a combined market cap of $287 billion.
Boeing and FIS Global are but the latest addition to Hedera's governing council; a roster of A-Class companies with deep pockets. Earlier this month, Hedera welcomed IBM and Tata Communications into the fray, and other members include Japanese investment bank Nomura and German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom.
But not everyone's welcome to Hedera's club, unfortunately: according to Hedera’s whitepaper, the total number of members in the council is limited to 39.
The governing council is primarily in charge of the Hedera codebase. The codebase will be released to the public, but the Hedera council will have the final say on changes to ensure its integrity. Hedera’s whitepaper says that this will make sure the platform doesn’t fork, preventing the rise of competing platforms or cryptocurrencies. The council will also set the rules of the network and manage the platform’s treasury of coins.
Each member of the council has equal voting rights so that no one member, or small groups of members, will have excess influence over the network.
Aside from governance and security, Hedera Hashgraph’s main game is speed. Bitcoin and Ethereum can only process 3-15 transactions per second, but Hedera’s mainnet, which will launch September 16, will be throttled to 10,000 transactions a second. And Hedera promises to up that number later in the year.