Hoping to transform how industries conduct business transactions, IBM Corp. has announced the development of a new ecosystem based on blockchain technology.

To do this, the company will give developers, startups and enterprise participants training and support to build for the Linux Foundation Hyperledger Fabric v1.0 and the IBM Blockchain platform. The HyperLedger project is an open source development platform for building on blockchains, a technology for cryptographically secured distributed ledgers used to secure transaction information.

“The future growth and adoption of blockchain is reliant upon building a strong ecosystem. Business networks will only reach critical mass when innovators, industry experts and infrastructure providers come together in new ways to reinvent how business transactions happen,” Bridget Van Kralingen, senior vice president of IBM Industry Platforms, said in a statement released by the company.

Analysts from Research and Markets predicted in a recent report, “Blockchain Technology Market – Global Forecast to 2021,” that the blockchain market size would grow from $210 million in 2016 to $2,312 million by 2021. The report lists 17 startups and enterprise companies, including IBM, that have been expanding blockchain applications for banking and financial, digital identity, anti-counterfeiting and numerous other industry sectors.

“The growing maturity of the Hyperledger Project code is a major milestone,” Van Kralingen added. “That’s why IBM is investing to help developers accelerate the creation of blockchain networks by providing an environment where these players can work together.”

In order to bring its blockchain ecosystem to developers, IBM will be hosting what the company calls a “connect-a-thon event” on Dec. 17 to help businesses connect to blockchain platforms.

To further enable businesses to get on board, IBM’s developerWorks portal already hosts courses for business users to better understand blockchain technology. The Hyberledger Fabric Slack channel will also host IBM blockchain professionals for “office hours” to assist new developers.

The IBM blockchain ecosystem already has a large number of active partners working to make use of blockchain technology across multiple industries. Some prominent examples include Everledger, a startup using a blockchain to trace the origin of high-value and luxury goods, such as diamonds; Mooti and Netki, two companies working on digital identity services using blockchain technology; and Cloudsoft, a software company providing multi-cloud application management with open source tools.

The company said it hopes that building an open environment for companies to build on the Hyperledger Fabric and share information and tools that it will bring developers on board. The focus on business-level applications and practices — through identity management, security and cloud applications and product tracking — is intended to bring in businesses of all sizes.

Featured image via StockSnap