Introduction to Hyperledger for Blockchain Applications

One project that you will most likely come across with when you follow news about blockchain and attend blockchain conferences is the Hyperledger from Linux Foundation. Although it’s relatively straightforward to understand cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin, it’s a bit more complicated to comprehend the Hyperledger initiative. Yet when you do, you will discover some exciting projects on industrial Blockchain applications.

What is Hyperledger?

To best define Hyperledger, let’s first find out what it is not. First of all, it is not a company, and it’s not a cryptocurrency. It’s not even a Blockchain. Instead, Hyperledger is a platform for open industrial Blockchain development. It’s an open source collaborative effort that was created to advance the cross-industry technology of Blockchain. Hyperledger is a global collaboration that was hosted by The Linux Foundation, including the leaders in the industry of banking, finance, IOT, manufacturing, supply chains, and technology.

Hyperledger doesn’t support Bitcoins and other Cryptocurrencies. Instead, the platform was thrilled by the Blockchain technology. According to its website, Hyperledger possessed the technology that promises a broader and more fundamental revolution than the Blockchain technology. It has the potential to create a new generation of transactional applications that establish accountability, trust, and transparency within their core while also streamlining business processes as well as legal constraints.

With Hyperledger, the Linux Foundation intends to come up with an environment where communities of software companies and developer will converge to establish a Blockchain framework. It is the Linux Foundation that developed the platform in December of 2015. In February of the following year, they have announced their first founding members, and on the following month, 10 more members have joined.

Nowadays, Hyperledger ha san impressive list of more than a hundred members. The list includes a wide range of well-known industry leaders and includes mobile tech giants, such as Daimler and Airbus. It also includes IT-companies such as the IBM, SAP, Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel, Samsung, and Nokia. There are also financial institutions like the JP Morgan, American Express, Deutsche Börse, Wells Fargo, and other Blockchain startups. Several of the world’s Tech and Finance companies meet at Hyperledger along with the hottest startup companies in the Blockchain industry.

The executive government of Hyperledger consists of more than 10 executives, and most of them have decades of experience in Open Source with tight connections to several other industries. You will also find leaders of the Apache Foundation as well as the W3C consortium and some engineers of IBM, and many more. The members of Hyperledger, such as Tamas Blumer and Richard Brown, have already worked with the Blockchain technology for many years. As for its members, Hyperledger will not only offer technical knowledge and software frameworks, but they also offer various contacts to developers and industries.

Early in the history of the Hyperledger, the project will need to come up with an important decision. The project’s executive director was asked if a Hyperledger Coin might soon be created. This is a monetary unit that runs on the Hyperledger Blockchain. He replied saying that the project will never come up with its own cryptocurrency.

He further added that a Hyperledger coin would not be expected soon. By not creating a currency, they could avoid a lot of political challenges in having to a globally consistent currency.

Such decision has greatly shaped the goals of the Hyperledger Project in building the industrial application of Blockchain technology and separating sharply from those “get-rich” schemes that usually evolves from currency-based Blockchain technology. This might appear boring, but it’s also more straightforward for the technology.

Furthermore, a “charter” outlines the goals of the Hyperledger, which serves as the mission guide. It stated that the project aims to come up with an open source ledger framework that’s enterprise-grade, while also creating, promoting, and maintain open infrastructures.

This is somehow obvious, yet a bit vague. It has outlined a certain kind of program. However, it doesn’t address some of the most important questions, such as, what will these world-leading companies do at Hyperledger? What type of projects are they pushing forward and who are going to participate?

Projects

Hyperledger’s umbrella strategy incubates and promotes a wide range of businesses that are Blockchain-based, along with interfaces, libraries, application, and framework. As of the moment, Hyperledger hosts the following projects:

• Hyperledger Sawtooth — This project is a modular Blockchain developed by Intel and makes use of a new consensus algorithm known as the Proof of Elapsed Time.
• Hyperledger Fabric — Lead by IBM, this project is a plug and play implementation of the Blockchain technology that was created as a foundation to develop high-scaling applications for Blockchain with a flexible amount of permissions.
• Hyperledger Burrow — This project aims to develop a legitimate smart contract machine based upon the specification of Ethereum.
• Hyperledger Iroha — This is a project made by some Japanese companies for the purpose of easily incorporating the framework for a Blockchain technology.

Aside from these framework projects, Hyperledger also comes with several tool projects that are aimed at making it easier and more effective to access the development of Blockchains. Known as the Cello, this is a Blockchain as a service deployment model that also works as a composer and a tool for creating Blockchain business network. It also serves as an Explorer that can view, search, and deploy transactions that are linked to data Blockchains. Another is Indy, which is a collection of libraries, tools, and several other components used for the digital identities rooted from Blockchains.

Hyperledger clearly engages in a wide range of non-monetary Blockchain-based projects. However, this rough view on these projects must remain displeasing since the short descriptions would not go far beyond the keywords.

We have taken a closer look at two of the most prominent projects, Fabric and Sawtooth. Both of these projects are made by large companies, IBM and Intel, and have given to Hyperledger as open source code. With Hyperledger, the companies will keep on pushing their Blockchain-based projects forward, while everybody else will be asked to share.

Sawtooth from Intel

Sawtooth Lake is the modular Blockchain technology suite of Intel. It’s written in Python and is mainly designed for use in various fields, from Financials to the Internet of Things. The most prevailing characteristics of the Sawtooth Lake is that it supports both the permission-less and permissioned application, and a deployment that makes use of a newly developed consensus algorithm known as the Proof of Elapsed Time.

This algorithm makes use of the new secure CPU instruction that is more and more available for new processors such as Intel builds. With these instructions, the algorithm can help to ensure a safe and random selection of a “leader.” This is somewhat similar to Bitcoin mining where the miners have to vie for access to write Blockchain. Aside from Bitcoin’s proof algorithm, the Proof of Elapsed Time does not need to use specialized hardware for mining.

To become a leader, every validator, which is equivalent to a miner, must use a secure CPU instruction to request for a wait time. The validator that has the shortest wait time will be designated as the leader. Just like with any good mining, the algorithm also functions as a lottery when it comes to getting access to write the Blockchain.

At present, the Hyperledger Sawtooth is getting tested in various applications. The project is being tested in recording the time it takes for the seafood to get into the table coming from the ocean with the use of IoT sensors. It works by tracking ownership and parameters in the entire supply chain, from the fisherman, and into the supermarket. The buyer will have access to a complete and trustless record of the entire live chain of the seafood. This method is increasingly being discussed for the Blockchain technology.

Fabric from IBM

Perhaps, the most exciting project in Hyperledger is the Fabric from IBM. Instead of a single Blockchain, this project is a base for the creation of Blockchain-based solutions that have a modular architecture. The fabric has different components of Blockchain, including membership and consensus services that can be used as plug and play. The fabric is created to become a framework where enterprises can place together with their own individual Blockchain network that could quickly scale to more than a thousand transactions for every second.

Such a framework is being implemented in Go and is made for enabling the consortium Blockchains to the various level of permission. Fabric relies heavily on a smart contract system known as the Chaincode, where every peer of the network runs through Docker containers. An overview of the technology of Fabric is stated in the manual.

Although it’s not completely and generally allowed, Fabric allows enterprises to develop parts of Blockchain, if not all. Participants must first register to get approval to join and issue transactions through Fabric-based Blockchain technology. To be able to use more resources efficiently, Fabric has fewer nodes compared to a public chain and calculates data massively, making Fabric scale much better than the public Blockchain. Also, the project’s basic architecture supports confidential data, which gives more privacy to its members.

What is probably more important is the separation between the “Consensus Nodes” and “Endorsers.” If you’re familiar with the Cryptocurrency technology such as Bitcoin, you’ll recognize a separation between the nodes and the miners. The Consensus Nodes orders an already validated transaction while the Endorsers will build, propagate, and validate transactions and chain code.

Even if it does not come with its own native currency, Fabric allows users to define assets from the client side and use the assets with the Fabric Composer. The smart contract framework of Fabric is somewhat similar to Ethereum. Its Chaincode defines the business logic of the assets, as well as the rules for reading and altering the state of assets. Just like with Ethereum, Fabric does not maintain a set of unspent outputs, although Bitcoin does maintain. However, the state of Blockchain is not only restricted to transactional data.

Aside from the public Blockchain of Cryptocurrency, Fabric also allows its participants to create a separate channel for their assents, hence, isolating and segregating transactions, as well as a ledger. With this option, the chain code that’s required to read and alter the state of the asset can only be installed on peers that are involved with this particular business case. Just like in ideal chat programs, the Blockchains of Fabric allows the user to be able to participate in both private and open interactions.

Beyond this, IBM has proposed an alternative design for permission-less and public Blockchains. They utilize a public key infrastructure in generating cryptographic certificates linked to users and organizations. Therefore, it will be possible to restrict access to data and channel.

The strength of Fabric seen to be the high grade of flexibility regarding privacy and permission while allowing high scalability into a more advanced division of network participants and labor.

IBM Fabric serves as a flagship project for the development of Blockchain technology. This giant IT company utilizes Fabric for various purposes in its own projects and when collaborating with various business partners.

The Foundation of Industrial, Non-Monetary Blockchain Technology

Although there’s plenty of information available out there on Fabric and Sawtooth, little is known about the other projects. Perhaps, these projects must first grow to mature before they can become a subject of media releases. However, both Fabric and Sawtooth seem really interesting not to mention the fact that they are backed by strong giant IT companies. It’s exciting to see if Hyperledger will be successful in connecting these Blockchain technologies.

While most of the Blockchain projects focus more on tokens and Cryptocurrencies, the projects around the Hyperledger demonstrates a strong potential in building the backbone of non-monetary and high-scaling industrial applications within the Blockchain technology. With interesting leaders and concepts backing it up, Hyperledger has the best chances to win such a prize.