Fintech and global policy veteran Brian Brooks has joined the board of the HBAR Foundation, an organization that helps drive the adoption of the Hedera network.

The Hedera network is a community-driven decentralized public network founded by Dallas-based Leemon Baird and Mance Harmon. Hedera, which announced it was open-sourcing its code early last year, uses a unique consensus mechanism called Hashgraph for high throughput and low latency with strong security.

Brooks has substantial experience in financial policy, banking, digital assets, and Web3, and brings a wealth of experience to his new board duties, HBAR said.

Shayne Higdon, co-founder and CEO of the HBAR Foundation says Brooks has been “deeply involved in many of the most important financial, political, and policy events” over the last 15 years.

“His hands-on experience, knowledge, and personal network in traditional and Web3 finance are unparalleled,” Shayne Higdon, co-founder and CEO of the HBAR Foundation, said in a statement. “As we move into the next phase of growth for the Foundation, with more next-generation enterprise distributed applications (dApps) coming online and building an ecosystem together, we’re thrilled he is bringing his wisdom and insights to the Hedera community.”

$408M in funding allocated and 225 grants awarded to date

The HBAR Foundation said that to date it has allocated funding of more than $408 million and awarded over 225 grants to ground-breaking distributed ledger technology projects, empowering entrepreneurs to build economies on the open source, leaderless proof-of-stake Hedera network.

“Advancing responsible, widespread adoption of DLT and Web3 is something I feel passionately about, and I’m thrilled to work with the talented teams across the HBAR Foundation to make this a reality,” Brooks said in a statement. “The HBAR Foundation, through a comprehensive grant program, has successfully grown awareness, accelerated access and increased commerce in the HBAR economy by providing expert support across technology, marketing and business development. Together we will continue to be thought leaders and drive the industry forward to deliver on the vision of making Hedera the trust layer of the internet.”

The “first fintech comptroller”

Before joining Bitfury as CEO and board member, Brooks was acting comptroller of the currency for an eight-month stint ending January 2021, where he was the administrator of the federal banking system and the chief executive of the 3,500-employee federal agency responsible for chartering and supervising banks comprising 70 percent of all banking activity in the United States.

He is the former chief legal officer at Coinbase leading legal, compliance, internal audit, and government relations at the nation’s leading digital asset platform.

Brooks also served as a member of the board of directors of Fannie Mae and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and a voting member of the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

HBAR said that Brooks often is referred to as “the first fintech comptroller” and “CryptoComptroller” for his work advancing financial innovation. Brooks led the government’s efforts to provide regulatory clarity for stablecoins, digital asset custody, and the development of blockchain payment networks, and granted the first federal bank charter to a cryptocurrency company.

He also launched Project REACh, a national partnership of civil rights organizations, tech companies, and banks to promote financial inclusion via greater access to credit and capital.

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