Hydrogen, a modular financial API platform that helps developers quickly build and manage savings, investing, insurance, and overall wealth, has founded a non-partisan consortium to facilitate a more open, transparent, and decentralized global financial system powered by public blockchains.
The Financial Industry Decentralization Initiative (FINDI) is a collaborative working group created to usher in the Web 3.0 with security, knowledge, and trust to financial services, usingpublic blockchains as a superior alternative to the private and permissioned implementations pursued by many financial institutions.
The use of public blockchains preserves the vision for openness, transparency, and user control supported by FINDI and Hydrogen, which was recently named “FinTech Startup of the Year” by KPMG.
Mike Kane, co-founder of Hydrogen and founding member of FINDI, commented:
“Financial institutions want to implement public blockchain technology, but have been scared by an aggressive campaign from private blockchain consortiums like R3, causing $500 Mil in private blockchain spending already in 2018. Financial services institutions are fast approaching the point of no return. Billions around the globe risk losing access to the blockchain revolution without FINDI.”
“Private blockchain is an oxymoron and centralized financial security is obsolete, as we have seen with recent hacks of Equifax, BMO, Coinrail, Bancor, and Bithumb. There are still 2 billion unbanked globally. Together, the members of FINDI can change the financial paradigm by leveraging public blockchains,” Kane concluded.
The initiative welcomes financial executives, startups, consultants, academics, and governments, who are free to join, with no membership dues. Through joint research, product development, symposiums, and industry consulting, FINDI intends to promote public blockchains while being chain- and protocol-agnostic.
FINDI has already onboarded members overseeing over $1 trillion in assets and tens of millions of customers before launch. The initiatives aims to boast over 100 members within a year. Members include executives at Natixis Investment Managers, Principal Financial Group, Marsh, Synpulse, Gilga, Wipro, and Dubai International Finance Center.
