IBM is upgrading its enterprise blockchain solution to offer clients a new decentralized governance option that will enable transaction parties to propose and amend smart contract parameters.

The blue-chip IT firm stated in a statement that last week the IBM Blockchain Platform would carry over the developments in Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 – its base layer – insisting it “vastly improves” overall security and usability.

As well as enhancing performance and data privacy, IBM stated in a blog post that the upgrade would ultimately transform the platform’s smart contract governance.

“IBM Blockchain Platform will support Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 and continue to add additional capabilities around the new decentralized smart contract lifecycle management and other new improvements,” IBM said in its blog post. “Also, the platform will enable the user to determine which version of Fabric to use and to transfer from one version to another.”

Although IBM states it is “full steam ahead” with the Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 integration, it didn’t present a timeframe for when it assumes to go live.

On the existing Hyperledger Fabric 1.0, smart contract governance is mostly centralized. The capability to introduce new parameters is stored for one entity. At the same time, all other parties face a binary choice of either accepting them as they are or ignore them entirely and take themselves out of the ongoing transaction.

While they can still opt to put one entity in charge of the parameters, a document published by the Linux Foundation – the open-source tech consortium that launched the upgrade – states Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 attaches a decentralized model where various parties can propose and alter parameters before they become active on the transaction channel.

The protocol upgrade also indicates that rather than the proposing party merely stimulating the new parameters at whim, a quorum of other transaction parties now requires to approve the upgrade beforehand explicitly.

Since IBM launched its blockchain platform in May 2017, clients – generally businesses such as the digital platform we.trade – have been capable of picking and choosing, buffet-style, the distributed ledger features that go simultaneously with their requirements.

That clients can now pick a pre-packaged decentralized governance solution arrives to play right into “Big Blue’s” playbook.