Since May 2025, our organisation has been an official adopter of Hiero, an innovative technological infrastructure originally developed by Hedera and now hosted by the Linux Foundation as part of its LF Decentralized Trust initiative.
This project is a major step towards a more reliable, traceable and responsible Internet.
➡️ check out the list of adopters Here.
🧠 What is Hiero?
Hiero is a decentralised trust registry technology designed to meet a major challenge of our time: being able to prove the origin, authenticity and integrity of digital data at every stage of its life cycle.
Today, we are faced with an explosion of digital content, often automatically generated, manipulated or rendered indistinguishable from authentic content. Whether it’s images, videos, documents or even artificial intelligence models, it’s crucial to know:
👉 Who created this content? When was it created? Has it been modified? Is it trustworthy?
Hiero answers these questions.
🛠️ An infrastructure designed for interoperability and simplicity
Hiero is designed as a lightweight, interoperable and universal infrastructure. It enables any player (business, media, developer, public organisation or citizen) to generate, publish and verify proofs of origin for digital data.
Thanks to command-line tools (CLI), libraries in Rust, Go and JavaScript, and clear documentation, Hiero can be integrated into virtually any existing application. Information is stored in a decentralised, immutable and open registry, guaranteeing its integrity and accessibility over time.
Hiero is not just a technical tool: it is an open standard for establishing trust on a large scale.
🔐 Here are some concrete, transformative use cases
Hiero can be applied to a multitude of sectors, with some very concrete use cases:
- Media and journalism: certifying that an image or video has not been altered since it was created, essential in the fight against deepfakes and disinformation ;
- Official documents: record the origin of a contract, diploma or digital certificate, and guarantee that it has not been falsified;
- Logistical and industrial traceability: tracking each stage in the transformation or transfer of a good or data item in a supply chain;
- Generative AI models: proving that an AI-generated model or result comes from an authorised source, trained on verifiable data.
Through these use cases, Hiero becomes a foundation for establishing systemic digital trust, without the need for a centralised trusted third party.
🤝 From Hedera to the Linux Foundation: a truly strategic move
Hiero was originally developed by Hedera, one of the world’s most advanced distributed registry networks, renowned for its performance, stability and public governance. In 2024, Hedera made a strategic donation of Hiero’s source code and governance to the Linux Foundation, to ensure its openness, sustainability and global adoption.
This major gesture enables Hiero to become part of the Linux Foundation’s open-source ecosystem, alongside such essential projects as Linux, Kubernetes, Let’s Encrypt and Hyperledger.
“Hiero needed to be openly and independently managed, so that any sector or institution could rely on it.”
Hedera, official blog – Introducing Hiero
🌍 Standardizing digital trust through LF Decentralized Trust
Since 2024, Hiero has been hosted by the Linux Foundation, as part of its LF Decentralized Trust strategic program. The mission of this ambitious project is to create an open, interoperable infrastructure to strengthen trust in digital systems on a global scale.
In a world where content is increasingly generated by machines (generative AI, automated processing, synthetic content), the issue of proof of authenticity is becoming crucial. Such proof can only be effective if it is based on shared standards that are recognised across sectors, jurisdictions and technologies.
This is precisely the aim of LF Decentralized Trust:
📌 To establish technical, ethical and legal standards enabling all players – businesses, governments, developers, institutions – to publish, verify and audit the provenance of digital data, in a reliable, neutral and verifiable way.
A public infrastructure for digital trust
LF Decentralized Trust is not just about standardisation: it is a collaborative platform that proposes a common framework for building the trust infrastructures of tomorrow. This framework is based on four pillars:
- Openness: the technologies developed (including Hiero) are open-source, accessible to all and publicly audited;
- Interoperability: they are designed to work together, whatever the underlying system (cloud, blockchain, database, etc.);
- Neutrality: governance is provided by the Linux Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that is independent of private interests;
- Security & transparency: every piece of evidence issued or verified via Hiero is legible, traceable and tamper-proof.
A global ecosystem under construction
LF Decentralized Trust’s vision is to create a digital infrastructure that is as essential and universal as the HTTPS protocol or SSL/TLS certificates are today. It aims to make proof of origin as essential as proof of identity on the Web.
Many organisations have already joined the movement – from the public sector, cybersecurity, media, artificial intelligence and regulation. Together, they are part of a global effort to make trust a digital public good.
The initiative’s official website is available at hiero.org.
The source code, CLI tools and documentation are freely available on GitHub: github.com/hiero-ledger
⚙️ The technical foundations of interoperability in Hiero
One of Hiero’s major assets is its ability to integrate into heterogeneous digital ecosystems, without requiring major modifications to existing systems. To achieve this, the project is based on several strong technological and conceptual choices, designed to encourage widespread adoption while guaranteeing long-term verifiability.
Universal, standardized proof formats
Hiero generates proofs of provenance encapsulated in open, readable formats that are compatible with other emerging standards such as C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity), promoted by Adobe, Microsoft and the BBC, among others.
Each proof includes elements such as:
- The identity of the creator (cryptographically signed) ;
- The timestamp of creation or modification;
- The content fingerprint (cryptographic hash);
- Public registry reference (unique ID or URI);
- Optional metadata (context, rights, version, etc.).
This evidence can be attached to any digital content (file, image, video, AI model) or stored separately in a verifiable database.
Tools that are easy to integrate into your workflows
Hiero offers:
- A CLI (command line interface) for recording or verifying proofs of origin on the fly;
- Software libraries in Rust, Go and JavaScript, for integration into embedded systems, web platforms or business applications;
- REST APIs for consulting or interacting with the registry via programmatic requests.
These tools make it easy to automate the recording of critical events (creation, modification, validation, etc.) in any data pipeline, with complete transparency for the end user.
Security, auditability and independence
All evidence generated with Hiero is :
- Cryptographically signed with publicly verifiable keys;
- Registered in an immutable registry, based on a distributed consensus (originally provided by the Hedera network);
- Can be freely consulted via the network or the registry browser, without depending on a single player.
This guarantees objective, unfalsifiable traceability that can be consulted by anyone – a genuine universal authenticity register for digital technology.
New contribution model
The Hiero Improvement Proposal (HIP) process replaces the old Hedera Improvement Proposal process, with similar mechanisms. Anyone in the community can submit proposals (features, fixes, optimisations) which are examined by contributors, committers and maintainers.
Process: The community can create, discuss and submit proposals. Previously, Hedera’s Technical Committee validated HIPs. From now on, the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) will manage approval and draw up a roadmap. Hedera continues to accept HIPs for its own environment, separate from Hiero.
Contributor roles:
- Contributor: Submits improvements via pull requests, without direct access to the code.
- Committer: Reviews and integrates contributions, with direct access to the repository.
- Maintainer: Supervises the project, makes strategic decisions, manages releases and resolves conflicts.
Flow of a proposal through these roles
Here’s how a proposal flows through the different roles at LFDT:
- Proposal Submission by a Contributor – A contributor proposes a feature, bug fix, or improvement by opening a pull request or issue, including necessary documentation, code changes, or ideas.
- Review by a Committer – A committer reviews the proposal with the purpose of checking code quality, documentation, project standards, and alignment with goals. The committer may request changes, improvements, or clarifications before approval.
- Oversight by a Maintainer – Maintainers review significant proposals, especially those affecting the project’s direction, and may provide input before final approval. For major changes, maintainers need to give explicit approval.
✅ Our commitment as a Hiero adopter
In May 2025, we officially joined the list of Hiero adopters, an initiative now led by the Linux Foundation as part of LF Decentralized Trust. This decision marks a strategic step in our commitment to a more responsible, traceable and ethical digital world.
Our decision to join is not just symbolic: it is part of a concrete approach aimed at integrating Hiero into our systems to guarantee the origin, integrity and authenticity of the sensitive data we handle or distribute.
In practical terms, this means
- 🛠️ The gradual integration of Hiero into our data flows, whether for the validation of documents, the traceability of digital content, or the certification of critical elements in our business processes;
- 🤝 Participation in an open ecosystem, where we contribute to the development of shared standards for proof of provenance, by collaborating with other adopters, researchers and public or private players ;
- 🌱 An alignment with our values: transparency, ethics, digital sovereignty, and protection against manipulation or falsification of information.
Our name now appears in the project’s official GitHub repository, within the ADOPTERS.md file, alongside other players committed to this transition towards a safer, more verifiable Web.
🚀 Towards an Internet you can trust
We are entering an era where digital technologies are no longer just tools: they are shaping our societies, institutions and perceptions. In this context, trust is becoming an essential infrastructure, as indispensable as electricity or access to drinking water in the physical world.
But trust can no longer be based solely on promises or brands. It must be verifiable, traceable and universal. This is exactly what Hiero offers: a neutral, interoperable and open technical architecture that enables anyone – individuals, businesses, media, governments – to prove the source and legitimacy of digital information.
Hiero is not just a technological innovation. It’s a public infrastructure building block that can restore the credibility of information in the age of AI, deepfakes and viral manipulation. It’s a foundation on which new trust services, new certifications and new uses for citizens can be built.
🌐 A collective responsibility
By joining Hiero, we are assuming our share of responsibility in building a more trustworthy Internet. We believe that a sustainable digital ecosystem cannot exist without a shared proof layer that is verifiable by all, independent of platforms and private silos.
We are proud to be among the first adopters of this emerging standard, and we invite all organisations that are sensitive to the issues of digital trust to explore, test and join this groundbreaking project.
Building a trusted digital future together
Hiero is not just a technical innovation. It is a concrete response to a need that has become fundamental: to know where our data comes from and to be able to prove it. At a time when generative artificial intelligence, deepfakes and disinformation are blurring our reference points, provenance is becoming the foundation of digital truth.
By joining Hiero and the LF Decentralized Trust foundation, we are affirming our determination not to be subjected to this technological transition, but to make an active contribution to it. We believe that the players on the ground, both public and private, have a major role to play in bringing about a more ethical, more resilient Web that is more respectful of its users.
It is only collectively, with open standards, transparent governance and concrete commitments like the one we have made, that we will be able to build a digital infrastructure worthy of trust.
The future of trust is in our hands. Let’s start coding it today.