By Sandy Carter, Contributor. Feb 14, 2026, 10:30am ESTFeb 16, 2026, 12:18pm EST
There was a time when blockchain was the technology that big enterprises watched from the sidelines. That era is over. Today, some of the world’s most recognized brands are stepping into governance roles, running nodes, and actively shaping the infrastructure that will power the next generation of global commerce.
The latest proof point? FedEx just joined the Hedera Council. Hedera is a public, enterprise grade blockchain governed by a council that provides a trusted verification layer for applications requiring speed, security, and decentralized governance at scale.
Why FedEx’s Blockchain Move Matters
On February 13, 2026, FedEx Corp. announced it is joining the Hedera Council, the governing body of leading global organizations that oversee the Hedera network. FedEx will operate a node on the Hedera network and hold equal voting rights alongside other Council members, directly participating in the governance of Hedera’s software and services.
Tom Sylvester, President of Hedera Council, told me, “Hedera is guided by a Council of leading organizations that bring practical industry experience to the decisions that shape the network. FedEx moves goods and information across borders, time zones, and supply chains every day with a pace and reach few companies can match. Having FedEx join the Hedera Council is a powerful signal of what we can build together: a more trustworthy digital layer for global logistics, where data can be verified in real time and shared with confidence across the world.”
Tom Sylvester, President of Hedera Council, “Hedera is guided by a Council of leading organizations that bring practical industry experience to the decisions that shape the network. FedEx moves goods and information across borders, time zones, and supply chains every day with a pace and reach few companies can match.”
Why does this matter? Because FedEx moves more than 17 million packages a day across 220+ countries and territories. When a company of that scale commits to distributed infrastructure, it signals that blockchain has crossed the threshold from interesting technology to essential business infrastructure.
As Vishal Talwar, executive vice president, chief digital and information officer of FedEx Corp., and president of FedEx Dataworks, put it, the digital transformation of global supply chains is inevitable. He told me, “FedEx is the heartbeat of global commerce, managing one of the world’s most complex physical and digital networks. The future of supply chains is digital, but digital systems only scale if trust, standards, and governance scale with them. Through our role on the Hedera Council, we are helping shape the policy and interoperability frameworks needed to support secure, responsible global trade.”
The Blockchain Pattern: From Experimentation to Governance
FedEx joins an impressive roster on the Hedera Council that already includes Google, IBM, Dell Technologies, LG Electronics, Deutsche Telekom, and game publisher Ubisoft. Each of these organizations has moved beyond proof of concepts and into active participation in blockchain governance.
This pattern extends well beyond Hedera.
JPMorgan Chase rebranded its blockchain platform from Onyx to Kinexys and now processes more than $2 billion in daily transaction volume, with tokenized deposits recently deployed on Coinbase’s Base chain and a landmark commercial paper issuance completed on Solana.
Visa launched USDC settlement in the United States in December 2025, reaching a $3.5 billion annualized stablecoin settlement volume, with Cross River Bank and Lead Bank among its first banking partners settling on the Solana blockchain.
Samsung is expanding its Knox Matrix private blockchain across its entire smart device ecosystem, and Samsung SDS continues to run its Nexledger enterprise blockchain platform for supply chain and logistics.
Walmart still operates its Hyperledger Fabric based food traceability system, which reduced produce origin tracking from seven days to 2.2 seconds.
These are strategic commitments backed by C suite leadership and board level attention, with real transaction volume behind them.
Blockchain: What the Skeptics Say
Fair point but blockchain has a graveyard of enterprise projects. The high-profile shutdown of TradeLens, the Maersk and IBM supply chain platform, remains a cautionary tale. The Australian Securities Exchange scrapped its blockchain overhaul after years of investment.
Gartner Research has shown that enterprise blockchain projects historically carry a failure rate as high as 90%, with a typical project lifespan of just over a year. Many companies jumped in during the hype cycle, chased the buzzword, and walked away when results did not materialize.
So what makes this wave different?
The companies committing today are entering with clearer use cases, mature infrastructure, and governance models designed for long term participation. They are joining established networks with proven enterprise grade technology, contributing operational expertise, and building cooperative frameworks. The era of blockchain tourism, where companies launched a proof of concept and quietly moved on, is giving way to genuine strategic investment with measurable results.
The Perfect Use Case for Blockchain: Supply Chain
Global supply chains present one of the strongest arguments for distributed ledger technology: multiple parties across different jurisdictions who need to share verified data without any single entity controlling the entire system.
Getty Images
That is precisely the challenge FedEx is addressing through its Hedera Council membership. Cross border commerce today involves mountains of paperwork, manual verification steps, and fragmented data systems. A trusted, neutral verification layer can reduce that friction dramatically, enabling secure data sharing across organizations and jurisdictions while allowing each company to maintain control of its own sensitive operational data.
FedEx brings deep operational insight into global logistics and that their perspective will be valuable as the industry transitions toward digitally native supply chains.
Blockchain: What This Means for the Future
For those of us working at the intersection of AI and Blockchain, FedEx’s move reinforces a thesis I have been advocating for some time: the future of digital commerce requires trusted, decentralized infrastructure. As AI agents become more autonomous in managing supply chains, executing transactions, and making real time decisions, they will need verifiable identity and trusted data layers to operate effectively.
The brands joining blockchain governance today are building the trust infrastructure that will underpin the next decade of digital commerce, one where data moves at the speed of business rather than the speed of paper.
The world’s biggest brands are all in. The blockchain era is here.
Story originally featured on Forbes.com
Sandy Carter
Contributor | Forbes Digital Assets
Sandy Carter is COO at Unstoppable Domains and an alumna of AWS and IBM. She serves on the board of Altair, an AI company, is a former member of the Diversity Committee at the World Economic Forum, the Chairman of the Applied AI at TDE and founded Unstoppable Women of Web3 and AI. She uses AI daily and holds and trades modest amounts of ETH and BTC.
Her newest book is AI First, Human Always.
