Leading Research Institution University College London Joins Hedera Governing Council as First Higher Education Member

DALLAS and LONDON, May 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Hedera Hashgraph, an enterprise-grade distributed ledger platform, today announced that University College London (UCL), London's leading multidisciplinary university, has joined the Hedera Governing Council. The Council, designed to be the most decentralized governance model for a public ledger, will comprise up to 39 global organizations from a diverse array of industries and geographies. 

UCL is one of the world's leading educational institutions in the area of blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT). Earlier this month, the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA) partnered with the European Commission and UCL to coordinate blockchain solution providers to respond to the European national health emergencies inflicted by the current coronavirus (COVID19) pandemic.

Mance Harmon, CEO and co-founder of Hedera Hashgraph, said, "The addition of UCL to the Hedera Governing Council marks a historic moment. As the very first university on the council, they help Hedera expand our reach into the education sector, with the engagement of a leading global educational institution already making waves in the DLT space. The launch of the COVID19 Task Force by UCL demonstrates how governments, society, businesses, charities, and medical research centres can utilize the full benefits of DLT in overcoming unprecedented challenges."

Ranked 8th in the world by QS World University Rankings in 2020 and with over 42,000 students from 150 different countries, UCL is amongst the top performing universities in the world. UCL launched the Centre for Blockchain Technologies (UCL CBT) in 2016 dedicated to researching the effects of DLT on socio-economic systems and to promoting the adoption of blockchain technology. The centre is one of the largest in the world, and serves as the nucleus for DLT and blockchain research and engagement across 8 different departments and over 180 researchers and practitioners from UCL, other academic institutions and companies.

Paolo Tasca, Executive Director at UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies, said, "The UCL CBT is one of the world's oldest and largest academic blockchain centres. We are proud to be joining the Hedera Governing Council to steward the next generation of DLT. The UCL CBT is ready to embrace this open, decentralized governance model and Hedera's innovative technological solutions to real-world problems. The recently launched COVID19 Task Force is just one example of how we will continue to support blockchain-based solutions in addressing profound global challenges, and we look forward to expanding the potential of distributed ledgers through our work with Hedera."

University College London joins other council members, including Boeing, Deutsche Telekom, DLA Piper, FIS (WorldPay), Google, IBM, Magalu, Nomura, Swirlds, Swisscom Blockchain, Tata Communications, and Wipro. All members of the Hedera Governing Council are required to run a node on the Hedera Hashgraph public network and are responsible for approving updates to the Hedera platform codebase. Members ensure the council's decentralization and diversity while the governance model protects users by eliminating the risk of forks, guaranteeing the integrity of the codebase, and making the source code open for review.

Harmon concluded, "UCL's membership on the council demonstrates our commitment to diversification of governance, and highlights our existing presence across multiple other industries including telecommunications, cloud computing, aviation, supply chain, and IT. We applaud their ongoing commitment to being at the forefront of DLT adoption, and look forward to their participation in Hedera's future growth."

For more information, visit https://hedera.com/council

About Hedera
Hedera Hashgraph is a public distributed ledger for building decentralized applications. Developers can build secure, fair, blazing-fast decentralized applications on top of the Hedera platform. Dr. Leemon Baird, Hedera Hashgraph Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, and Mance Harmon, Co-founder and CEO of Hedera, patented the groundbreaking hashgraph technology after working together at the United States Air Force Academy and as founders of Trio Security, BlueWave Security, and Swirlds, Inc.

For more information, visit https://www.hedera.com, or follow us on Twitter at @hashgraph, Telegram at t.me/hashgraph, or Discord at https://www.hedera.com/discord. The Hedera whitepaper can be found at https://www.hedera.com/whitepaper.

About University College London
Founded in 1826 in the heart of London, UCL is London's leading multidisciplinary university, with more than 13,000 staff and 42,000 students from 150 different countries. Ranked 8th in the world by QS World University Rankings in 2020, 4th in Europe and 1st in London, University College London is amongst the best universities in the world. It was the first university in England to welcome students of any religion and the first to welcome women on equal terms with men. UCL's founding principles of academic excellence and research aimed at addressing real-world problems continue to inform its ethos to this day through focusing its research endeavours on the Grand Challenges of Global Health, Sustainable Cities, Cultural Understanding, Human Wellbeing, Transformative Technology, and Justice & Equality. UCL's dedication to world-class research, education and innovation is recognised through its globally recognised ranking. In the most recent Research Excellence Framework, UCL was the top-rated university in the UK for research strength.

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