TSCCall20260317 - hiero-ledger/governance GitHub Wiki

Hiero Technical Steering Committee Meeting

TL;DR: The TSC reviewed community and program updates, deferred the TSS Ceremony HIP discussion for one more week while leaning toward treating it as an informational HIP, and discussed new community infrastructure including the Hiero Hackers organization, contributor analytics work, and a proposed website migration from Hugo to Next.js.

Details

Organization: Hiero
Date: March 17, 2026
Time: 10:00 AM ET
Recording: Zoom recording

TSC Attendees

  • Hendrik Ebbers
  • Richard Bair
  • Alexander Popowycz
  • Michael Kantor
  • Brandon Davenport
  • Milan Wiercx van Rhijn

Guests

  • Alexander Shenshin
  • Angelina Ceppaluni
  • Bhargava Tejas
  • Daniel Ntege
  • Diane Mueller
  • Jason Fabritz
  • Jessica Gonzalez
  • Joseph Sinclair
  • Keith Kowal
  • Kiran Pachhai
  • Mark Blackman
  • Michael Garber
  • Mike Cave
  • Priyanshu Yadav
  • Stoyan Panayotov

Agenda Items

  1. Short overview of last TSC call
  2. Any updates/events from communities or members?
    • RareEvo 2026 — Hiero community invited to run a technical workshop
  3. Reminder to attend public community calls and bring more activity into Hiero Discord channels
  4. Update on Mentorship program
  5. HIPs
  6. Hiero Hackers
  7. Analytics about contributions at Hiero
  8. Any other business (AOB)

Guests

As every Hiero meeting, the TSC meeting is a public meeting and everybody can attend it.
You can find all the information about the TSC meetings and all other Hiero meetings in our public calendar.

Code of Conduct

As in every meeting we start with a short notice of the antitrust policy of Linux Foundation and an introduction of our Code of Conduct.

Meeting Summary

  • Hendrik opened with a recap of the prior TSC meeting, which included an x402 introduction from Rincy Walker, continued discussion of the TSS Ceremony HIP, and prior mentorship-program discussion.
  • Michael Kantor highlighted the ongoing Hedera APEX hackathon, noting it closes on March 23 and encouraging startups and partners to participate.
  • Jessica Gonzalez invited the community to propose and run technical workshops at Rare Evo 2026 in Las Vegas. She also mentioned an April 18 virtual workshop being planned with Hendrik, with a possible in-person option in Seattle if logistics work out.
  • Hendrik shared that Hiero submitted four mentorship proposals covering contributor identity, GitHub workflow automation for onboarding and maintenance, future SDK architecture work, and enterprise Java integration with smart-contract events/logs.
  • The TSS Ceremony HIP discussion was postponed for another week. Mark Blackman said the proposal is currently leaning toward an informational HIP, and Richard Bair agreed that this is likely the correct classification because it does not introduce a specification change.
  • Richard and Mark clarified that the ceremony output can be reused across ledgers, and that the ceremony itself is a background technical process rather than a live or theatrical event.
  • Hendrik introduced the new Hiero Hackers GitHub organization as a lightweight space for hackathon projects, demos, tutorials, and experiments, designed to reduce process overhead for community builders.
  • Richard raised liability questions around code hosted in Hiero Hackers. Jessica explained that the organization is under Linux Foundation stewardship, that maintainers will monitor it, and that normal checks such as DCO review would apply before any code is transferred into core Hiero repositories.
  • Diane suggested adding Code of Conduct guidance to Hiero Hackers governance, and the group agreed that lightweight rules and clearer guidance on what does not belong there should be added.
  • Sophie introduced a new analytics project in Hiero Hackers that fetches GitHub data, generates charts, and provides custom governance/contributor analytics without relying on a database layer. Early examples focused on issue-difficulty labeling and contributor activity.
  • Hendrik suggested publishing recurring analytics snapshots, such as monthly blog-style reports. Sophie said the current scripts already support frequent updates and could later feed an interactive dashboard.
  • In AOB, Jessica reminded attendees that website, docs, and marketing topics have been consolidated into a single marketing/community-engagement call.
  • Sophie also presented a website pull request that migrates the site from Hugo to Next.js while preserving the overall look and blog workflow. The discussion emphasized the move to reusable components and Tailwind, and Richard strongly supported the modernization effort.

Presentations

Contributor Analytics Overview — Sophie Bulloch

  • Introduced a lightweight analytics repository under Hiero Hackers.
  • Current workflow fetches GitHub data, stores intermediate data simply, and outputs charts/PNGs.
  • Initial use case focuses on issue-difficulty tagging and contributor analytics across repositories.
  • Future possibilities include recurring reports and an interactive dashboard.

Website Modernization Update — Sophie Bulloch / Hendrik Ebbers

  • Presented a pull request to migrate the website from Hugo to Next.js.
  • Migration preserves the current site appearance while enabling more flexible component-based improvements.
  • Hendrik noted Tailwind and componentization as important foundations for future design improvements.

Key Decisions

  • The TSS Ceremony proposal will return next week, with current consensus leaning toward handling it as an informational HIP rather than a standards/specification change.
  • The TSC supported continued use of Hiero Hackers as a low-friction home for experimental community projects, hackathon work, tutorials, and demos.
  • The group agreed that Hiero Hackers governance should be strengthened with clearer conduct and usage guidance.
  • The contributor analytics effort was positively received and may evolve into recurring reports and/or a dashboard.
  • The proposed website migration to Next.js will continue through the website/marketing process, with feedback routed through the relevant repository issues and discussions.

Prepared by: Brandon Davenport, Dir of Product, Hgraph