Hashport is a decentralised public utility that leverages the power of the Hedera Consensus Service (HCS). It relies on a robust, industry-leading validator swarm to operate, maintain, and secure its portal.
The strength of Hashport and its validator swarm is derived from the diversity of its members, with each organisation bringing its unique strengths, community, and trusted reputation.
Hashport’s validator swarm is composed of the following members:
Worldpay from FIS, The HBAR Foundation, StableNode, LimeChain, Calaxy, Hex Trust, Animoca Brands, BCW Group, and Polygon.
Let’s get to meet our nine validators below, and review a few of their contributions to Hashport during the past year, as well as their expanding achievements in the wider #Web3 space.
1 — Worldpay from FIS
Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, FIS is a Fortune 500® company and a member of the Standard & Poor’s 500® Index.
As a leading provider of technology solutions for merchants, banks, and capital markets firms globally, they are dedicated to advancing the way the world pays, banks, and invests.
Working with Hashport, Worldpay seeks to better understand the needs and applications of leading-edge decentralized networks and is beginning to explore new potential use cases in the distributed ledger space that will employ Hashport’s capabilities. Worldpay will also lend its payments expertise and insight as an active Hedera Governing Council Member to help expand the Hashport network over time.
In our recent article titled “Hashport: The State of Stablecoins”, we highlighted Worldpay’s plans to become the first global merchant acquirer to provide millions of merchants with the ability to receive settlements in $USDC, whereby businesses will no longer be constrained by payment service providers offering fiat integrations only, but will also be able to leverage blockchain and DLT to directly receive, hold, and transfer stablecoins in a fast and efficient manner.
In a more recent appearance on Hedera’s “Gossip about Gossip’’ podcast, Nabil Manji, the Head of Crypto and Web3 at Worldpay announced that the payment provider will be minting stablecoins, and then logging the “proof of reserves”, whether a bank transfer statement, a wire transfer record, or else, as an immutable hash record on Hedera, proving that Worldpay has indeed provided the minting party, (Circle, Coinbase, Paxos, or Binance, etc) with the equivalent amount of fiat.
2 — The HBAR Foundation
Founded in 2021, the HBAR Foundation was created to fuel the development of the Hedera Hashgraph ecosystem by providing grants and other resources to developers, startups, and organisations that seek to launch decentralised applications in DeFi, NFTs, CBDCs, ESGs, gaming, and other sectors. In addition to providing funding through a streamlined grant process, the HBAR Foundation acts as an integrated force multiplier through expert support across technical, marketing, business development, and other operational functions required for dApps to scale.
A unique aspect of the HBAR Foundation is that they are neither token issuers nor network governors, which gives them unparalleled flexibility in stewarding development on Hedera.
The HBAR Foundation has set up numerous funds dedicated to specific aspects of the industry. One such fund is the BCW Market Development Fund - focusing on rapidly expanding the ecosystem at the intersection of distributed ledger technology and digital assets with an initiative that supports the development and growth of the Hedera network.
With the creation of a plethora of funds, each focusing on growing a different aspect of the Hedera ecosystem, there is no shortage of exciting opportunities on The HBAR Foundation’s radar.
In August, we joined the first Hedera Ecosystem Catch-up Spaces with The HBAR Foundation, SaucerSwap, HashPack, and HeadStarter. Topics discussed covered the various funds established by The HBAR Foundation, grants applications, DeFi, NFTs, and interoperability.
3 — StableNode
StableNode is a node validator and venture capital fund for early-stage blockchain companies. They operate blockchain node validations and use the accruing rewards to invest in early-stage crypto and blockchain ventures, as well as provide liquidity to DeFi applications. They also provide a broad range of hands-on growth and governance advisory, supporting and guiding their portfolio companies, founders, and teams from early-stage to growth-at-scale.
As contributors to the Maker Growth Core Unit, StableNode facilitates relationships with the MakerDAO team. Their native token, $DAI, is a stable, decentralised currency that does not discriminate against participants in the global financial system.
Working with StableNode, $DAI became one of the first decentralised stablecoins on Hashport, and the first multi-collateralised stablecoin on Hedera. This collaboration between StableNode, Maker Growth, and Hashport will further enable users to securely access and port $DAI across supported networks, and for $DAI holders to explore DeFi on Hedera.
StableNode was recently featured in our Validator Spotlight Series, and our Director of Business Development Jesse Whiteside joined StableNode’s Co-Founder Doo Wan Nam on a Twitter Spaces to discuss DeFi, node validation, and decentralised governance.
4 — LimeChain
As a trusted technology partner of Hedera, LimeChain has been the driving force behind Hashport’s back-end development and continues to support the platform post-launch.
LimeChain is a leading blockchain and DLT development company. They specialise in helping businesses through their digital transformation by developing blockchain-powered solutions tailored to their client’s needs. The company is an expert in leveraging blockchain technology to build cutting-edge supply chain tracking tools, ERP integrations, and more. Since 2017, LimeChain has worked on more than 130 projects with over 150 smart contracts currently live. The team has a vast experience in working with some of the most prominent DLT protocols, including Ethereum, Hedera Hashgraph, Polkadot, The Graph, Baseline, and Hyperledger Fabric. Recognised as a major contributor to the DLT space, LimeChain has developed developer tooling and other products for Ethereum, Polkadot, The Graph, EOS, and others. The team’s work on Hashport is the latest example of the company’s commitment to building a thriving DLT ecosystem.
LimeChain has also been a core technical partner of Mantra since the early stages of the project’s development. Mantra has recently launched the HeliSwap decentralised exchange on Hedera, which is the first DEX to support Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard on Hedera, enabling participants in the Hedera ecosystem to swap between HTS (Hedera Token Service) and ERC-20 tokens in a cost-efficient and sustainable environment.
The collaboration between Hashport, Mantra, and LimeChain resulted in Mantra’s native $OM token being integrated onto the Hashport platform. This integration helps support the interoperability of $OM and enables users to transfer their $OM across Hashport-supported networks, which includes Ethereum, BNB, Polygon, Avalanche, and Hedera!
In September, our Director of BD Jesse Whiteside, alongside Daniel Ivanov, the Tech Lead at LimeChain and John Patrick Mullin, the co-founder at Mantra attended a Twitter Spaces to discuss cross-chain ecosystem expansion.
5 — Calaxy
Calaxy is a social marketplace built for creators, by creators. Backed by a team of visionaries, and spearheaded by co-founders NBA player Spencer Dinwiddie and ex-financier Solo Ceesay, Calaxy is an entirely new approach to the world of content creators, putting today’s fan right at the center of the action.
Utilising the Hedera network, Calaxy’s open social marketplace creates a fair exchange of value that enables creators to monetise relationships with their community through Creator Tokens, which fans can utilise for a suite of personalised experiences.
Calaxy leverages the Hedera Token Service (HTS) for both their social, fungible tokens and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). By reimagining the way people use social media and empowering more meaningful fan experiences, they aim to put power back into the hands of those that make it valuable. As an up-and-coming social token platform with high-profile celebrities already aboard, Calaxy’s spot on the Hashport validator swarm provides another unique sector of the DLT industry into its validator swarm.
“Calaxy will be an application, a decentralized application that will touch very many lives, and with the help of Hashport we won’t be limited on to the Hedera ecosystem, but we’ll also be able to interoperate with other chains such as Ethereum”
Spencer Dinwiddie, NBA Player for the Dallas Mavericks
In May, more than 1,300 people tuned in to our AMA with Calaxy Co-founder & CEO Solo Ceesay, CSO Rusty Matveev, CTO Cooper Kunz, Polygon’s DeFi Lead Aishwary Gupta, and Hashport’s Director of Business Development Jesse Whiteside.
6 — Hex Trust
Hex Trust is the leading fully-licensed and insured provider of bank-grade custody for digital assets in Asia. Led by veteran banking technologists and award-winning financial services experts, Hex Trust has built Hex Safe™, a proprietary bank-grade platform that delivers custody, financing, and brokerage solutions for financial institutions, digital asset service providers, and private clients. Hex Trust has offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam and are are currently expanding across Europe and the Middle East.
As the biggest digital asset custodial services provider in Asia, and with experience linking DeFi projects with traditional institutions, Hex Trust has a lot to offer to grow Hashport into the future.
In late May, Hashport and Hex Trust participated in an exclusive interview with The HBAR Bull, where our Director of BD Jesse Whiteside was joined by Hex Trust’s Head of Customer Success, Giorgia Pellizzari.
The interview was a great discussion on the importance of interoperability and secure custody of digital assets while also touching on DeFi, staking, and other wider industry topics. Because Hex Trust bets on an infrastructure-first approach, Giorgia Pellizzari emphasized that custody is only the start of what Hex Trust delivers. Hex Trust also offers DeFi, brokerage, and financing solutions to a broad range of clients, primarily institutions, funds, family offices, high net worth individuals (HNWIs), as well as digital asset issuers themselves, like blockchain foundations, for example. To learn more, watch the full episode.
7 — Animoca Brands
Animoca Brands, ranked in the Financial Times list of High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific 2021, is a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification. Animoca Brands develops and publishes a broad portfolio of products including the $REVV and $SAND tokens; original games including The Sandbox, Crazy Kings, and Crazy Defense Heroes; and products utilising popular intellectual properties including Formula 1®, Marvel, WWE, Power Rangers, MotoGP™, and Doraemon.
Animoca Brands’ portfolio of blockchain investments includes over 100 of the most promising NFT-related companies and projects such as Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity), Dapper Labs (CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot), OpenSea, Harmony, Bitski, and Alien Worlds. Its subsidiaries include The Sandbox, Blowfish Studios, Quidd, Gamee, nWay, Pixowl, and Lympo
In Animoca Brands, Hashport has the support and expertise of the industry’s most decorated and knowledgeable DLT-based gaming company.
Late last year, Hashport announced a partnership and launched a REVV Racing campaign with Animoca Brands, and hosted a series of giveaways featuring Hashport-themed REVV Racing cars! Winners of this joint promotion were airdropped Hashport-themed REVV Racing car NFTs, which they used to trade, rent, or play in the game.
8 — BCW Group
BCW Group is a venture studio & enterprise consulting firm dedicated to building Web3 infrastructure & applications that connect and interact with the on-demand digital universe.
As a leading strategy-consulting firm within the DLT ecosystem, they are highly equipped to foster Hashport’s growth. BCW Group has co-led alongside LimeChain the product development and go-to-market strategy of Hashport, and is thus highly knowledgeable in all facets related to our product to assist Hashport in reaching its full potential through expansion strategies and securing key partnerships.
BCW Group has already brought a plethora of DLT products and solutions to market. One such solution is Arkhia, the enterprise-grade middleware RPC solution for Hedera. While using the Hedera public mirror node service, Hashport’s transactions would occasionally get stuck or won’t proliferate around the network, due to the limitations of the public infrastructure on the hashgraph public node sets. Switching to Arkhia, Hashport’s service dependability and network persistence increased by a significant degree as Arkhia’s enterprise-grade infrastructure offer a significant assurance of data availability, speed, and consistency.
In August, Hashport, Arkhia, and BCW Group participated in Hong Kong’s first Hedera Heat Wave event.
The Partner and Head of Consulting at BCW Group explained the crucial functionality of interoperability and highlighted Hashport’s crucial role in such.
“Today, as it launched in November 2021, it’s connected Hedera with Ethereum and Polygon, ultimately over the next 6 months and year, we have the aggressive track of different networks, both EVM and non-EVM based”
Kyle Baron, managing partner at BCW on the LimeChain podcast explaining the vision of Hashport.
9 — Polygon
Polygon is the leading platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development. Its growing suite of products offers developers easy access to all major scaling and infrastructure solutions: L2 solutions (ZK Rollups and Optimistic Rollups), sidechains, hybrid solutions, stand-alone and enterprise chains, data availability solutions, and more. Polygon’s scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with 1000+ applications hosted, around 600M total transactions processed, 60M unique user addresses, and $5B+ in assets secured.
Alongside Ethereum, Polygon was one of the initial networks Hashport users were able to interact with. In addition to being a supported network on Hashport, Polygon joined us on plenty of campaigns throughout the year. One highlight includes a fantastic Twitter Spaces with Hashport and Calaxy where we discussed how the creator economy, the scalability of networks, and interoperability play an integral role in the future of Web3 and distributed ledger technologies.
In September, we attended Token2049 in Singapore alongside our validators from Worldpay by FIS, Polygon, Hex Trust, and BCW Group.
Conclusion
Each member of the Hashport validator swarm brings their own unique expertise to the table, as they each represent different sectors of the market. Just like the Hedera Governing Council, these diversified organisations operate within different core and emerging DLT market segments including gaming, strategy consulting, social tokenisation, financial services technology, custodial service solutions, back-end blockchain development, and stablecoins. Not only do they participate in the Hashport network by operating and maintaining nodes, they even contribute to the growth of the network by introducing new partnerships, and leveraging Hashport to expand the interoperability of their own projects across different networks.
About hashport
hashport is the enterprise-grade public utility that facilitates the movement of digital assets between distributed networks, extending their functionality in a quick, secure, and cost-effective way. In order to remain platform-neutral, hashport functions without the use of a proprietary token. The network is built on a robust and performant architecture, secured and operated by a group of industry-leading validator partners from around the world. hashport has passed a rigorous security audit and follows industry best practices; regularly performing comprehensive network tests to ensure the integrity of the network.
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