logo

Hiero Graduates as the First Project under the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust Umbrella and Its New Project Lifecycle Framework

Hiero Becomes the First Graduated Project under LFDT’s New Project Lifecycle Framework — and the First to Achieve Graduation since LFDT’s Expanded Umbrella.

📣 We are proud to announce that Hiero has officially reached graduated status within the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust (LFDT), becoming both the first project to do so under LFDT’s new project lifecycle framework — and the first project to achieve graduation under the newly expanded LFDT umbrella organization. 📣

This dual milestone underscores Hiero’s technical, contributor diversity and governance maturity while also signaling the growing strength of LFDT as a foundation dedicated to advancing decentralized trust.

Background Information and Project Lifecycle

The term “project” within LF Decentralized Trust (LFDT) refers to a collaborative endeavor to deliver a work item. A project life cycle is a structured, phased framework that guides a project from its initial idea through completion, breaking it down into manageable stages for planning, execution, and control to achieve successful outcomes.

The Technical Advisory Council of the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust has established a defined project lifecycle, including its stages, as outlined in the official documentation.

In Hiero’s case, the Graduated status signifies that a project has matured by surpassing rigorous evaluation across legal, technical, community, and documentation dimensions. While graduation marks a high standard of quality, ongoing TAC oversight means that projects must maintain those standards or risk reverting to earlier lifecycle stages.

A Year of Milestones

Since its launch in September 2024, Hiero has grown into a thriving, vendor-neutral project:

  • Community Governance: In June 2025, open elections expanded the Technical Steering Committee (TSC), with Michael Kantor (Contributor seat) and Milan Wiercx Van Rhijn (End User seat) joining. In July, we had Brandon Davenport (Contributor seat) joining as well.
  • Expanding Participation: Nearly 800 contributors from 80+ organizations and 50+ adopters are actively shaping Hiero.

Organizations participating in Hiero

  • Engineering Excellence: Hiero’s 28 repositories follow Apache 2.0/MIT licensing, CI/CD pipelines, OpenSSF Scorecard compliance, and transparent governance under LFDT.
  • Cross-Foundation Collaboration: Hiero has partnered with the OpenWallet Foundation and Hyperledger AnonCreds to advance privacy-preserving decentralized identity, delivering the Hedera ACA-Py plugin, the Hiero DID SDK for Python, and expanding support for interoperable, open identity tooling.
  • Global Presence: From LFDT webinars to the Global Digital Collaboration Conference in Geneva, Hiero has showcased real-world use cases like cross-border payments and verifiable credentials anchored to Hedera.

Why Graduation Matters

Graduation confirms that Hiero has achieved LFDT’s highest standards for:

  • Neutral governance and diverse community leadership.
  • Production readiness with enterprise-grade deployments (including powering the Hedera mainnet since February 2025).
  • Security and compliance with OpenSSF, GitHub Insights, and CI/CD best practices.
  • Growing adoption by enterprises, developers, and public sector innovators. More Information

Real-World Adoption

  • Hedera: Since February 2025, Hedera has been powered entirely by Hiero’s open codebase, making it the largest public network based on an LFDT project.
  • HashSphere: Enables enterprises and governments to run private Hiero-based networks with Hedera compatibility.
  • Ecosystem Tools: Wallets like HashPack, platforms like Hgraph, and developer tooling from Hashgraph Online extend Hiero’s reach.
  • Use Cases: Hiero is already enabling breakthroughs in cross-border payments (reducing costs from $40 to $0.10 and delays from a week to under a minute) and supply chain transparency (eliminating data mismatches and single points of control).

Community Contributions

Hiero’s graduation is not just about maturity — it’s about momentum. In its first year under LFDT, Hiero has welcomed a wave of community contributions, each expanding the ecosystem:

  • Hiero SDK in Python — Native Python SDK published to PyPI for managing tokens, consensus transactions, smart contracts and DIDs. Office Hours are scheduled for the community to participate.
  • Hiero Solo Action — GitHub Action to spin up a Hiero Solo test network inside CI/CD pipelines.
  • GoMint API — Open source API layer for authentication, token management, custodial keys, and consensus services.
  • Hashgraph Online Standards SDK — Reference implementations for Hashgraph Consensus Standards (HCS-1, HCS-10, HCS-11, and more), including demos for AI agent communication and decentralized file storage.
  • Hedera Smart Contracts — EVM system contract library exposing Hedera Token Service, Account Service, PRNG, and Exchange Rate features to Solidity developers.
  • Hederium — A Go implementation of the Hashio protocol, developed by LimeChain, bringing reliability, performance, and scalability to distributed applications.
  • hiero-cli — The official command-line interface for Hedera and Hiero, automating accounts, tokens, topics, smart contracts, and CI/CD workflows.

These contributions reflect the collaborative DNA of LFDT: open participation, vendor neutrality, and ecosystem-wide innovation.

Looking Ahead

Hiero’s graduation sets a precedent: it proves that LFDT’s new lifecycle framework and rebranded identity can foster projects that are technically mature, community-governed, and ecosystem-rich.

From identity to finance, supply chains to sustainability, and from SDKs to smart contracts, Hiero is laying the foundation for a new generation of decentralized trust.

We invite developers, enterprises, and governments to join us in building with Hiero:

The future of decentralized trust is open — and with Hiero’s graduation, LFDT has proven its ability to grow and nurture open source projects while cultivating the communities that allow them to thrive.

Further Reading

Recent Hiero Posts