Hyperledger Fabric And It’s Architecture

Blockchain is the new buzz word in the industry nowadays. In this blog, we will focus on a blockchain framework Hyperledger fabric, and its architecture. Hyperledger Fabric is a solution that is at the top of the curve for governments and enterprises.

WHAT IS HYPERLEDGER?

“ Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration, hosted by The Linux Foundation, including leaders in finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing, and technology. These leaders include IBM, Accenture, American Express, SAP, NEC, Intel, AIRBUS, CISCO, Deutsche Bank, Daimler, Fujitsu and many more “

HYPERLEDGER FABRIC

“ Hyperledger Fabric is a platform for distributed ledger solutions underpinned by a modular architecture delivering high degrees of confidentiality, resiliency, flexibility, and scalability. Hyperledger Fabric supports distributed ledger solutions on permissioned networks for a wide range of industries. Hyperledger Fabric was designed to be a truly modular, scalable, and secure foundation for industrial Blockchain solutions.”

The Fabric platform is intended as a foundation for developing blockchain applications, products, or solutions. The fabric is a Permissioned system that delivers a high degree of confidentiality, resiliency, flexibility, and scalability. Like other blockchain technologies, Fabric has a ledger, smart contracts, and it is a system by which participants manage their transactions. The smart contract in the fabric is known as chaincode and it is in the chaincode the business logic is embedded. The following features impart a high degree of security and privacy for the fabric framework.

Hyperledger Fabric: A DLT for the Business

Hyperledger announces production-ready Hyperledger Fabric on July 11, 2017. Hyperledger Fabric is a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for the Business. Business application will require the DLT to have certain technology which may be different from the characteristics required from the public domain DLTs.

There are four characteristics that make Hyperledger Fabric suitable to build DLT based applications for businesses. They are:

• Permissioned network
• Confidential transaction
• No cryptocurrency required
• Programmable

Hyperledger Fabric Model

Following are the key features of Hyperledger Fabric that fulfill its promise of customizable enterprise Blockchain

• Assets: Enable the exchange of monetary value over the network.
• Chaincode: A chaincode typically handles business logic agreed to by members of the network, so it may be considered as a “smart contract”.
• Ledger Features: Encodes the entire transaction history for each channel, and includes SQL-like query capability Privacy through
• Channels: Enable multi-lateral transactions with the high degrees of privacy and confidentiality
• Security & Membership Services: In Permissioned membership participants know that all transactions can be detected and tracked by authorized regulators and auditors
• Consensus: Allow network starters to choose a consensus mechanism that best represents the relationships that exist between participants

PEERS

Nodes within the Hyperledger Fabric network are known as peer nodes and are categorized based on their roles:

Endorsing Peers

• These peers host smart contracts or chaincode and are connected to the state database.

Ordering Peers

• These peers do not host the smart contract or chaincode and neither are connected to a state database.
• These peers are responsible for creating the timestamped blocks containing transactions.

Committing Peers

• These peers do not necessarily hold the smart contract or chaincode and are connected to the state database.
• The Orderer Peers broadcast the blocks containing the transactions and the committing peers are responsible for validating the transactions and committing the blocks into the ledger and updating the state database for the Organization.

WORKING OF HYPERLEDGER FABRIC

• Through the client application, a participant in the member Organization calls a transaction request.
• The client app then broadcasts the transaction request to the Endorser peer.
• Endorser peer checks the Certificate details and others to validate the transaction. Then it executes the Smart Contract and returns the Endorsement responses to the Client.
• Endorser peer sends transaction approval or rejection as part of the endorsement response.
• The client now sends the approved transaction to the Orderer peer for this to be properly ordered and be included in a block.
• Orderer node includes the transaction into a block and forwards the block to the Anchor nodes of different member Organizations of the Hyperledger Fabric network.
• Anchor nodes then broadcast the block to the other peers inside their own organization. These individual peers then update their local ledger with the latest block. Thus all the network gets the ledger synced.

CONCLUSION

In the modern-day, we could not deny that the blockchain technologies gained higher popularity. It is useful for the adoption of innovative technology based on the different applications. Hyperledger Fabric has grown a lot in the last couple of years. Many of the production blockchain solutions in production today are built with Hyperledger Fabric.