Hyperledger Fabric : Journey from 0–1 (Part 1)
Hyperledger Fabric is one of the fastest growing projects under the linux foundation. In this series of blog posts, I would like to invite you on a journey as I learn and understand the different Fabric tools and their business applications.
Before we dive deep into any Fabric specific stuff, it will be helpful to learn about the Hyperledger project itself.
Hyperledger
Hyperledger its self is not a blockchain technology. Hyperledger is a project hosted by the linux foundation that creates a platform to advance blockchain technologies. On it’s website Hyperledger explains:
“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.”
The Hyperledger project started in December 2015. Today Hyperledger has more than 100 members across several industries.
Hyperledger Projects
Hyperledger acts as a umbrella for many different projects. These cover a range of technologies, frameworks, libraries, interfaces and applications.
Hyperledger Frameworks
Sawtooth was first created by Intel and uses a new consensus algorithm called PoET (Proof of Elapsed Time) - a modular platform for building running and deploying distributed ledgers.
Fabric has a modular architecture. Hyperledger Fabric allows components to be switched in and out to meet specific business need. This project is led by IBM.
Iroha is based on Fabric, with a focus on mobile applications. It implements a new chain-based Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus algorithm called Sumeragi.
Burrow was originally contributed by Monax and co-sponsored by Intel. Burrow provides a permissioned smart contract developed alongside Etherium Virtual Machine (EVM)
Indy was originally contributed by the Sovrin Foundation. It is purpose-built for decentralized identity. It provides tools, libraries, and reusable components for providing digital identities in distributed ledgers.
Hyperledger Tools
Hyperledger Caliper is a blockchain benchmark tool. It was initially contributed by Huawei, Hyperchain, Oracle, Bitwise, Soramitsu, IBM, and the Budapest University.
Cello aims to bring the on-demand deployment model to blockchain. It provides an automatic and efficient multi-tenancy on various infrastructures.
Composer is collaboration tool to build blockchain business networks. It was built in Javascript. It allows developers to create robust blockchain solutions and makes it easy to test and build.
Hyperledger Explorer is designed to create user friendly web apps that can be used to view, invoke, deploy, or query blocks. Initially contributed by IBM, Intel, and DTCC.
Quilt provides interoperability between ledger systems by implementing ILP (Inter Ledger Protocol). The Linux Foundation now hosts both Quilt (Java) and Interledger.js (Javascript) implementations.
In upcoming posts, I will discuss the Hyperledger Fabric framework in greater detail. There is no actual code just yet. But it is worth spending some time familiarizing ourselves with the different frameworks and tools to be able to use the right tool for the job.
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