Shopping Hyperledger’s Five Frameworks As If They Were Vehicles
Every year car makers roll out their new models in a series of auto expos. There’s a new sedan, a new SUV, a new truck, a new sports car, and then there are concept cars that apparently can split in two, but may never make it to market.
Similarly, Hyperledger is currently rolling out new private blockchain frameworks. There’s a foundation model, an identity model, a mobile model, a scalable model, and a smart contract model. Like the cars at the expo, not all frameworks are ready for the road: Presently, only one framework — Fabric — is live, while the others are still in incubation stage.
In this post we’ll review the different frameworks, identify their focus, and flesh out why they are important.
Fabric
As of this writing Fabric is the only live Hyperledger framework. This is because, as the Linux Foundation itself notes, it is “intended as a foundation for developing applications or solutions with a modular architecture.” In other words, Fabric is Hyperledger’s flagship, touch all the bases, private permissioned blockchain.
Here is the video that Hyperledger uses to explain Fabric:
As one would assume, Fabric has a ledger, uses smart contracts, and includes a system by which participants manage their transactions.
Because Fabric is private and permissioned, unlike the bitcoin blockchain, Fabric requires a way to allow its participants to enroll in its services. Fabric achieves this by offering a Membership Service Provider (MSP).
While Fabric is Hyperledger’s standard blockchain offering that is not to say that it is one size fits all. In fact, Fabric is modular and allows its users to choose their consensus algorithm, their MSP, and which format they want to store their ledger’s data.
Considering that Hyperledger Fabric is private and may at times include participants that are often competitors it “also offers the ability to create channels, allowing a group of participants to create a separate ledger of transactions.” What is a good example of when to use a channel? Let’s say someone wants to offer a special rate or service to some participants, but not to others. A channel allows them to do so discreetly.
In short, think of Hyperledger Fabric as the Honda Accord or Toyota Camry of blockchain frameworks: It’s not sexy, but it will get you there and it works.
Indy
Hyperledger Indy’s focus is to decentralize identity. As Hyperledger notes, it “provides tools, libraries, and reusable components for creating and using independent digital identities rooted on blockchains or other distributed ledgers for interoperability.”
Why is Indy important? It serves a few key functions.
First, many of us rely on our governments to confirm and issue our driver’s licenses and passports which serve as our primary forms of identification. But what if one’s government refuses to do so or uses the power of identification against its citizens? Indy addresses this problem by allowing an unbiased, decentralized, party to do so.
Second, for internet users Indy addresses the persistent problem with usernames and passwords at logins, not just at one site or another, but across the Internet.
Third, for companies it means they can free up their customer service employees from addressing login issues which currently account for 30–40% of contact call center volume according to Sovrin. It also means companies will not have to keep sensitive information about their customers — acting as centralized locations that are more easily hacked or targeted for hacking — as customers will control their identities and who has access to them.
To continue the car metaphor, Hyperledger Indy may be the Ferrari 488 GTB of blockchain frameworks: It’s cool, it might help you outrun the authorities, and people will know it’s you when you drive up.
Sawtooth Lake
Hyperledger Sawtooth, contributed by Intel, focuses on building, deploying, and running distributed ledgers, ledgers that are particularly able to scale. This focus on distributed ledger technology has made Sawtooth a favorite of the supply chain and logistics industries as this video by Hyperledger shows through its fishing example:
In terms of vehicles, Hyperledger Sawtooth is the UPS or FedEx truck of blockchain frameworks.
Burrow
The focus of the Hyperledger Burrow framework is smart contracts. According to Hyperledger, it even goes so far as to provide “a modular blockchain client with a permissioned smart contract interpreter partially developed to the specification of the Ethereum Virtual Machine.”
Now let’s take that a step further. Burrow can create and execute smart contracts in a variety of different places. According to Monax, a firm that helped created Burrow, Burrow can work from “internal enterprise deployments, to federated enterprise deployments, to more decentralized and public deployments. From deployments which require the use of tokens of value, to those that only require the utility of a blockchain but not monetized tokenization.”
That’s a whole lot of jargon, but as I understand it Burrow would also smart contracts to process payments through the use of tokens. In terms of what kind of vehicle Burrow is, think a Brink’s truck.
Iroha
Unlike other Hyperledger projects, Iroha is written in C++, a more popular programming language with more developers behind it than the Go language. Iroha runs on C++ because its focus is on mobile application development. It is also different from the other frameworks in that it uses Sumeragi as its chain-based Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus algorithm.
To complete the running car analogy, Hyperledger Iroha may be the DeLorean of blockchain frameworks. That may sound cool, but have you seen many DeLoreans driving around lately? I do hope the best for Iroha, but reading about it often makes my head spin as it quickly spins off from its mobile focus to promise more than it probably has to deliver for version 1.0.
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