Chainlink Labs Joins Hedera Hashgraph Governing Council

After months of adding blue-chip stocks including IBM and Boeing, Hedera Hashgraph is adding a crypto-native firm to the ranks of its governing council.

Chainlink Labs will become the 21st member on the council, becoming another node runner governing Hedera’s distributed ledger. Hedera Hashgraph is a blockchain-like public ledger. In the future, Hedera plans to have a total of 39 council members.

Chainlink will be integrated into the Hedera Token Service and will be Hedera’s preferred oracle service.

“The Hedera Governance Council provides a pretty unique structure within the crypto industry in that it brings a variety of organizations around the table to create interesting projects,” David Post, managing director of business development and strategy for Chainlink Labs, said in an interview, adding:

Because Chainlink Labs just began an enterprise research and development program, the Hedera governing council will be the first of many steps the startup is going to take in the enterprise space, Post said. The move comes as institutional interest surges in bitcoin and begins to gain traction in decentralized finance. 

If an action “needs to be executed” within an application based on on-chain activity, then Chainlink’s oracles will be part of that, said Hedera Hashgraph co-founder Mance Harmon.

“For example, if Alice needs to transfer to Bob some number of tokens, they’ll be able to do that externally by looking at what’s going through the oracles and have policy execute as a result, appropriately based on the external inputs,” Harmon said. 

Going forward, Hedera is interested in having two crypto companies on its council, Harmon said. A firm in compliance or blockchain analysis is likely to be the next crypto company added, he said.