As I reflect on last week’s LF Decentralized Trust Member Summit and Maintainer Days, I want to extend a sincere thank you to every member and maintainer who showed up, participated, and contributed. The conversations, collaboration, and momentum over our days together were a powerful reminder of what makes this community so special. This was a week shaped by members who have been building with us for years and strengthened by those who are newer to the community and already leaning in.
This year, as we celebrated our 10th year anniversary at the Linux Foundation, we also recognize the important evolution of our community. We have spent a decade collectively laying the groundwork for what is happening in the industry today. By expanding our mission and charter from Hyperledger to LFDT in 2024, we strengthened that alignment and made space for important code bases, standards, and communities that have further supported the evolution of this technology and market.
Alongside long-standing members and contributors, last week we welcomed many new faces. They are already actively shaping the discussions, bringing fresh perspectives from across the Web3 ecosystem. What stood out to me was not just their energy, but their alignment. From day one, these participants leaned into the same principles that have guided our community for the past decade: open governance, code neutrality, production-grade systems, and collaboration across competing ecosystems. To me, it was clear that the next generation of contributors is not redefining our direction but reinforcing it and carrying it forward alongside the leaders who brought the industry to where it is today.
A special note of appreciation also goes to everyone who traveled through last week’s snowstorm on the US East Coast to be with us (9-12 inches of snow and 9 degrees fahrenheit/ -13 celsius!!). Weather disruptions are never easy, but the commitment our members showed by making the effort to attend speaks volumes. Even as travel plans shifted and conditions were less than ideal, the focus in the room remained steady: shipping code, operating real systems, advancing standards, and tackling the hard problems of governance, privacy, interoperability, and compliance. There is no doubt that resilience is part of our DNA. Through every up and down cycle in the industry, we keep our heads down and continue building.
We also recognize that not all members were able to attend in person. Even so, many contributed in advance and behind the scenes, helping shape the topics and priorities that drove the conversations throughout the week. As we move forward, we will take key themes and outputs from these discussions while observing Chatham House Rule for summit sessions. We will then create additional ways to convene the community around the outputs with new projects, focused working sessions, and other forums. We will be sharing more on how members can engage in these efforts in the weeks ahead.
The energy coming out of the summit is firmly forward looking. We see a community aligned around production deployments, long-term stewardship, and building infrastructure that enterprises, governments, and ecosystems can rely on for the next decade and beyond. The word “longevity” was a constant reprise for describing what we are building.
We are especially grateful to DTCC for hosting the summit, an appropriate setting to gather a community focused on trust given DTCC’s long-standing role as one of the world’s most trusted financial market infrastructures. We offer a special thank you to Johnna Powell, our LF Decentralized Trust Governing Board Chair.
To give you a glimpse of the energy and insights from this event, here’s the final fireside chat: Reflections and the Road Ahead: A Conversation with Brian Steele (DTCC) and Joe Lubin (Consensys), hosted by Michael Casey.
Thank you to all of our members for making this summit not just a milestone moment, but a clear signal of where we are going next and how we will continue #BuildingBetterTogether
And without you, we could not do this, so a big thank you to all our LFDT staff: Karen Ottoni, Tomaz Sedej, Hart Montgomery, David Boswell, Min Yu, Sean Bohan, Ry Jones, Jessica Gonzalez, Emily Fisher, Ben Thomas, and our amazing LF Events team leads Evi Harmon and Bridget Stearns.
Gratefully yours,
~daniela
Daniela Barbosa
General Manager of Decentralized Technologies at the Linux Foundation
Executive Director of LF Decentralized Trust