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Hyperledger

May 31
0

Hyperledger Launches New Supply Chain Special Interest Group

By | Blog, Special Interest Group

Hyperledger has launched its sixth cross-industry Special Interest Group (SIG), the Hyperledger Supply Chain SIG, to facilitate focused technical and business-level conversations related to appropriate use cases for blockchain technology across Supply Chain management. The new group will cover a broad range of topics, including logistics, provenance, authentication, track-n-trace, related IoT utilization, and similar inter-related areas of interest. SIG participants will also contribute requirements to Hyperledger’s supply chain project, Grid. Hyperledger Grid intends to provide reference implementations of supply chain-centric data types, data models, and smart contract based business logic – all anchored on existing, open standards and industry best practices.

The distributed ledger of blockchain is already enhancing collaboration among shippers, carriers, and forwarders as well as producers and manufacturers, who themselves represent every industry imaginable. Blockchain is taking on a growing role in ensuring reliable tracking of goods in Logistics and Supply Chain and has the potential to help reduce delays caused by manual, often “paper-based” cross-border, settlement, tracking, and regulatory processes.

There are many challenges to overcome before blockchain elements like DLT and smart contracts can be deployed widely in the logistics and supply chain industry. According to DHL’s research, “Likely the biggest challenge will be achieving successful industry adoption through collaboration and even co-opetition between diverse Logistics and Supply Chain stakeholders that have legacy processes and varying interests.”

The new Hyperledger Supply Chain SIG, led by chair Jay Chugh, Senior Director, Oracle Cloud, and vice chair Joshua Q. Satten, Senior Director of Blockchain (North America), Wipro Limited, is designed to address some of these challenges by bringing the collective wisdom of the community in a vendor-neutral, open source manner, using the various available components of the overall Hyperledger open-source blockchain framework.

This SIG will serve as a platform for the community to share knowledge and build collaborative efforts, learning from each other’s experiences, successes, and challenges. The potential for blockchain in Logistics and Supply Chain will be predicated by moving from concepts and pilot applications to viable deployable solutions, built on lessons learned via open collaboration.

“Blockchain is a game changer for Supply Chain transparency and efficiency. Hyperledger’s Supply Chain SIG aims to harness the collective wisdom of experts in blockchain and supply chain to collaboratively bridge the gap between real world and theory, and advance the adoption of Hyperledger blockchain in supply chain.” – Sarabjeet (Jay) Chugh, Senior Director, Oracle Blockchain, and SC-SIG Chair

The Hyperledger Supply Chain Special Interest Group

The Hyperledger Supply Chain Special Interest Group (SC-SIG) represents a global membership of logistics and supply chain professionals united in advancing the state of the supply chain industry through the implementation of enterprise-grade technology solutions utilizing the Hyperledger greenhouse of business blockchain frameworks and tools.

The activities of the Supply Chain SIG will include:

  • Identifying related reference architectures (for example  business and integration architecture, technical and infrastructure architecture), frameworks such as Hyperledger Grid, and models (OSI), use cases, current pilots and proofs of concept, and production case studies;
  • Sharing stories of successes, failures, opportunities and challenges;
  • Exploring and addressing cross-cutting architectural principles, options and decisions  like performance and scalability, security, identity management and privacy, and identity in logistic contexts;
  • Identifying existing or needed common critical software, middleware, and hardware components that would serve the particular needs of supply chain.
  • Working towards proposing solutions to the problems identified;
  • Identifying conferences or other opportunities to connect face to face, as well as submit talks or present as a group at an event;
  • Identifying the business community and building an inclusive platform for early adopters to contribute with their experiences;
  • Identifying all different protocols across supply chain to build standardization across the different parties and efforts; and
  • Supply Chain best practices, awareness of and working in accordance with such rules as customs & import export regulations.

“Addressing distributed & decentralized frameworks for enterprise and cross-industry Supply Chain management is a truly unique need that will be addressed through this new Hyperledger SIG. What makes this special is the confluence of players coming together to advance standardization and adoption including those from transportation, logistics, and major companies from just about every major industry you could think of; whether you’re in consumer goods, technology, aviation, commodities, or just about any other non-virtual business, a company’s supply chain is something that exists as the core of both of its current profitability and its future desired operating model.” – Joshua Q. Satten, Senior Director of Blockchain (North America), Wipro Limited, and SC-SIG Vice Chair

How to get involved in Hyperledger Special Interest Groups

SIGs gather community members from an industry segment to work on domain-specific problems and create an environment for open discussion, document co-creation and solution proposals. SIGs help specific vertical markets in their efforts to address problems specific to that particular community. Hyperledger now has six SIGs, including ones focused on healthcare, telecom and social impact.

Participation in any SIG is open to everyone in the community. Each group has an open e-mail list, a Chat channel, and a wiki page. Live meetings are also held regularly via web teleconference. When needed, a task force can also be created within the SIG and have working sessions to discuss specific work items.

If you’re interested in joining the Supply Chain SIG, please subscribe to the mailing list and join the Chat channel where meeting details will be announced. You also can visit https://wiki.hyperledger.org/display/SCSIG or find a list of other community meetings on the Hyperledger Community calendar. We look forward to your participation and contributions!

May 20
0

Developer showcase series: Nadeem Bhati, High School Technology Services

By | Blog, Developer Showcase

Back to our Developer Showcase Series to learn what developers in the real world are doing with Hyperledger technologies. Next up is Nadeem Bhati of High School Technology Services.

What advice would you offer other technologists or developers interested in getting started working on blockchain?

Blockchain is fairly new technology. You won’t find experts with 10+ years of experience. Everybody is learning and growing together, which makes this field very enjoyable onceyou get into it. Having a level playing field helps new entrants get confidence quickly. Some great way of getting started include enrolling in a certification program, attending community meet-ups and participating in hackathons. You meet new people, share ideas and learn from each other, which makes this journey more enjoyable.

Give a bit of background on what you’re working on, and let us know what was it that made you want to get into blockchain?

Working on blockchain is working on the cutting edge of technology right now.There are very passionate people backing blockchain technology because they are confident that it has the potential to start a revolution. From decentralized currency to business transaction between parties in a trustless environment, blockchain has a varied range of use cases.

What project in Hyperledger are you working on? Any new developments to share? Can you sum up your experience with Hyperledger?

I am currently working on a pharma-trading platform that resolves the issue of drug counterfeiting using Hyperledger Fabric. Previously, I worked on platforms for energy distribution on Hyperledger Fabric  in which group of households, or group of societies, connected by a power-grid form a network of nodes. These nodes can buy/sell energy generated by non-conventional ways such as solar. I have also worked on stocks-bonds trading proof of concept, on Hyperledger Fabric as part of my exploration of blockchain use cases. Many of my proofs of concept  are either in development or have seen their 1.0 releases.

What are the main differences between teaching Hyperledger to students and developing Hyperledger applications?

While teaching at High School Technology Services, I often get lots of questions from students that help me in looking at blockchain development differently. For example, in-depth discussions on sovereign identities, asynchronous cryptography and consensus algorithms have widened my perspective on how layman and new entrants as well as experts feel when they think of blockchain. This has helped me in my personal research into blockchain and making my developed platforms more user friendly.

What do you think is most important for Hyperledger to focus on in the next year?

Recently, FabToken was introduced in the latest release of Hyperledger Fabric. Further inclusion and improvement to make fabric more versatile should be expected.

I would personally like to see Hyperledger Composer development to be taken up again as it is a tool that has motivated many individuals, including me, to head towards Hyperledger

Other things on my wish list include pluggable interfaces and documentation.

Also, it would be interesting to see when we are able to easily integrate crypto-currencies into Hyperledger Fabric blockchains natively.

As Hyperledger’s incubated projects start maturing and hit 1.0 and beyond, what are the most interesting technologies, apps, or use cases coming out as a result from your perspective?

I have a list:

  • Sovereign Identity and inclusion of better identity solutions in current web infrastructure.
  • All sorts of registries published on chain for security and easy verifiability.
  • Cryptoeconomics, micropayment schemes to reward publishers of good content.
  • Testing ground for new market designs like frequent batch auctions, combinatorial auctions and automated market makers.

What’s the one issue or problem you hope blockchain can solve?

Blockchain is a revolution that promotes transparency. You build peer-to-peer self-sustaining applications that can stand its ground. From destabilized governments to supply chain vendors, use cases of blockchain are endless. Control over personal information is vital and can be successfully addressed using blockchain.

Where do you hope to see Hyperledger and/or blockchain in 5 years?

I have another list:

  • Many dapps replacing centralized applications.
  • Peer-to-peer marketplace for internet connections/incentivized mesh networks.
  • Identity, reputation and credit systems for those that currently have few resources such as refugees.
  • Decentralized DNS alternatives like ens.domains .
  • Blockchain flourishing in production environments across a range of use cases.

What is the best piece of developer advice you’ve ever received?

Software development never stops evolving. It’s important that one always keeps learning and evolving. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable and adapt the growth mindset as this will ensure that you never stagnate.

What technology could you not live without?

The internet.

This global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities has deeply affected my life and learning.

May 16
0

Developer showcase series: Alishba Imran, The Knowledge Society

By | Blog, Developer Showcase

Back to our Developer Showcase Series to learn what developers in the real world are doing with Hyperledger technologies. Next up is Alishba Imran, a 15-year-old machine learning and blockchain developer and nanotech researcher at The Knowledge Society. She’s interested in leveraging these tech and sciences to solve some really important problems with human reproduction and healthcare.

What advice would you offer other young technologists or developers interested in getting started working on blockchain?

I would highly recommend taking courses, replicating projects, and talking to industry leaders in blockchain. The blockchain community is still fairly new, but you’d be shocked to see that there are so many resources out there for youth to get started. There’s still lots of work to do, but resources like IBM’s cloud service built on Hyperledger Fabric are very helpful. I think the best way to start learning is by replicating work that has already been done by other people. Once you have enough knowledge and sophistication in the topic, you can move to start creating your own projects. In this stage, I would highly recommend speaking with companies that are working in the space and setting up meetings. People are always willing to help, so just take initiative and reach out. The blockchain community is a small group, but it’s also a very interesting technology that can be used to solve some really big problems in our world.

Give a bit of background on what you’re working on and how you got into blockchain?   

I’m a 15-year-old innovator from The Knowledge Society. I got introduced to blockchain through The Knowledge Society (TKS), which is a human accelerator program for youth where we are learning about emerging tech/sciences and leveraging them to solve really important problems in our world. Through this program, I got to learn about blockchain and the mindsets and skills to start making my own projects. One of my most recent initiatives is called Honestblocks, which is a clockchain platform I developed using Hyperledger Fabric/Hyerpledger Composer that allows people in developing countries to manage their healthcare data and track their products. A huge issue in these countries is counterfeit medicine. Around 30-40% of medicine in many markets is counterfeit. I wanted to solve this issue by tracking medicine in the supply chain before it reaches the consumer. I partnered with a doctor in India to help develop the pharma side of the project. The platform is set to be tested in a few clinics in India. I also won Youth Innovator for this project at the Enterprise Blockchain Awards (EBA) this year!

Where do you hope to see Hyperledger and/or blockchain in 5 years?

Let’s say you just immigrated to a new country. In today’s world you would have to go through a lengthy process and paperwork to get your passport and documents. Even after you get them, there’s a chance that any of the online form of identification can be manipulated/tampered with. But in the blockchain world, governments will give out identities. This will enable anyone to have their own blockchain identity. There will only be one per person, giving every person one tamper-proof way to  access to all the services. Then, when you need to go to the doctor, all your medical records will be stored on a blockchain. You can grant access to required information to hospitals, insurers, or your doctor. All your money transactions are completely done by cryptocurrencies. I imagine all companies and corporations would be decentralized. We would enter a self-sovereign society where you own all of your information. This is the type of world that is possible using blockchain. This is the future that excites me.

What is the best piece of developer advice you’ve ever received?

The best piece of advice I’ve ever received is to always keep pushing out content and moving forward. You need to be oriented for other people’s success. You can have the most knowledge in the world, but, if you aren’t building stuff and putting out useful content, no one would know. Drive and ambition are very important, but it’s vital to have a really good ratio between thinking and doing. My overall goal is to be the next female Musk or Jobs. I want to break down stereotypes that still exist for females in this industry and use technology to solve really important problems in our world.

May 14
0

Announcing Hyperledger Aries, infrastructure supporting interoperable identity solutions!

By | Blog, Hyperledger Aries

Identity is commonly cited as one of the most promising use-cases for distributed ledger technology. Initiatives and solutions focused on creating, transmitting and storing verifiable digital credentials will benefit from a shared, reusable, interoperable tool kit. Hyperledger Aries, the newest Hyperledger project (the13th!), is a shared infrastructure of tools that enables the exchange of blockchain-based data, supports peer-to-peer messaging in various scenarios, and facilitates interoperable interaction between different blockchains and other distributed ledger technologies (DLTs).

Hyperledger Aries intends to:

  • Provide code for peer-to-peer interaction, secrets management, verifiable information exchange, and secure messaging for different decentralized systems.
  • Foster practical interoperability in support of ongoing standards work and extend the applicability of technologies developed within Indy beyond its current community components from the Hyperledger stack into a single, effective business solution.

What is Aries?
Hyperledger Aries is infrastructure for blockchain-rooted, peer-to-peer interactions. It’s not a blockchain and it’s not an application.

It includes:

  • A blockchain interface layer (known as a resolver) for creating and signing blockchain transactions.
  • A cryptographic wallet for secure storage (the secure storage tech, not a UI) of cryptographic secrets and other information used to build blockchain clients.
  • An encrypted messaging system for off-ledger interactions between clients using multiple transport protocols.
  • An implementation of ZKP-capable W3C verifiable credentials using the ZKP primitives found in Ursa.
  • An implementation of the Decentralized Key Management System (DKMS) specification currently being incubated in Hyperledger Indy.
  • A mechanism to build higher-level protocols and API-like use cases based on the secure messaging functionality described earlier.

The generic interface of Aries will initially support the Hyperledger Indy resolver but is flexible enough so that someone could build a pluggable method using other DID method resolvers such as Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum, or another DID method resolver they wish. These types of resolvers would support the resolving of transactions and other data on other ledgers.

Additionally, Hyperledger Aries will provide features and functionality outside of the scope of the Indy ledger to be planned and fully supported. We have reached out to other groups, including Ethereum-based decentralized identity efforts and others participating at the W3C to contribute to this code base.

With all of these capabilities, the open source community will now be able to build core message families that are necessary to facilitate interoperable interactions a wide variety of use cases involving blockchain-based identity.

Where did Aries come from?
Hyperledger Aries is related to both Hyperledger Indy, which provides a resolver implementation, and Hyperledger Ursa, which it uses for cryptographic functionality. Aries will consume the cryptographic support provided by Ursa to provide both secure secret management and hardware security modules support.

One of the main purposes of this project is to change the client layers in Hyperledger Indy to be interoperable with other identity projects. Hyperledger Indy has been incubating protocol work for peer interactions between identity owners for some time but as the development community has grown, it has become clear that the scope of that work extends beyond the functionality provided by Indy for support of other systems and networks.

With the main wallet and cryptographic code moving to its own project, it makes sense to move the pieces necessary to support that process with them in order to support a standards-driven approach and avoid cross dependencies between Indy and Aries.

What’s next for Aries?
The ultimate goal of Hyperledger Aries is to provide a dynamic set of capabilities to store and exchange data related to blockchain-based identity. These capabilities will range from the secured, secret storage of data such as private keys, up to the capability of globally accessible data that can be viewed and accessed by anyone. An example of such support is the creation of a secure storage solution similar to the wallet available in Hyperledger Indy today.

Other Aries functionality that would be in scope for a 1.0 project release would be a Decentralized Key Management Solution (DKMS) which would add key recovery, social recovery, and wallet backup and restore functionality. Using DKMS, clients will need a way to interact with one another peer to peer that is currently in development within Hyperledger Indy. Much of this work would be based on the DKMS documents outlined in the Indy-HIPE dkms design folder. This would be capable of storing verifiable credential data, private keys, relationship state data, and functionality that could perform operations with this data without having to extract this data.

We also hope to eventually have a scalable, searchable storage layer which is capable of storing other associated data necessary for identity maintenance. Examples of such data would be pictures, health records, or other personal information.

Who’s Involved?
The Sovrin Foundation has been the primary contributor to this initial initiative along with the team from the Government of British Columbia, but endorsements and possible contributions are in flight from several other organizations. Hyperledger has proven to be a collaborative and open environment for growing the community and has helped attract a variety of contributors. We are excited by the enthusiastic response from like-minded members of the community and look forward to collaborating further.

Want to Learn More?
If you’re interested in learning more about Aries, Indy, or Ursa, consider visiting https://wiki.hyperledger.org/display/HYP/Hyperledger+Aries+Proposal or #Aries on Hyperledger chat at https://chat.hyperledger.org/channel/aries

We welcome interest from all groups and organizations, including enterprises and standards organizations.  We are looking forward to hearing from you!

May 10
0

When Hyperledger Sawtooth Met Kubernetes – Simplifying Enterprise Blockchain Adoption

By | Blog, Hyperledger Sawtooth

Blockchain Technology Partners has teamed up with Digital Asset to deliver DAML Smart Contracts for Hyperledger Sawtooth deployed and managed on Kubernetes using its blockchain management platform Sextant.

One of the great things about being a member of the Linux Foundation is that you are part of a vibrant global community that is home to open source projects in a wide range of ecosystems and host to an impressive array of events worldwide.

  • A global community where you are actively encouraged to participate in meetups and events specific to your ecosystem as well as contribute to broader open source summits
  • A global community where there is the opportunity to collaborate not just within your own ecosystem but with ecosystems that complement yours – this is at the heart of the open source ethos

A case in point is Blockchain Technology Partners (BTP) which, like a number of our Hyperledger members, is also an active participant in the CNCF, aka Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Its founding team recognized early on that the only way to make blockchain technology more accessible and easier to adopt was to address the operational challenges that they could see lying in wait for enterprises. With their team’s  background in open source, operations and cloud, BTP quickly realised that CNCF’s Kubernetes was the perfect match for Hyperledger Sawtooth. This led to the creation of Sextant, their blockchain management platform that radically simplifies the development, deployment and ongoing management of blockchain-based enterprise applications.

The power of open source collaboration doesn’t end there as BTP have now teamed up with Digital Asset to bring DAML Smart Contracts to Hyperledger Sawtooth – integrating their open source DAML runtime with Sawtooth, similar to the way the Sawtooth Ethereum (SETH) project integrates the Burrow EVM with Sawtooth, and handling its deployment and management with Sextant.

For the full story behind the creation of Sextant to deploy and manage Hyperledger Sawtooth on Kubernetes and BTP’s collaboration with Digital Asset to bring DAML to Sawtooth, read our case study.

May 09
0

Hyperledger Community, Deployment and Development Momentum Continues

By | Announcements, Hyperledger Indy, Hyperledger Iroha

Adds 10 More Members, Powers Half of the Blockchain 50, Hits Production Milestones for Hyperledger Indy and Hyperledger Iroha

SAN FRANCISCO (May 9, 2019) –Hyperledger, an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies, today announced 10 more organizations have joined its growing global community. These new members join just as the Hyperledger portfolio of production-ready projects doubles and Forbes documents the scope of Hyperledger deployments in leading global businesses.

Hyperledger is a multi-venture, multi-stakeholder effort hosted at the Linux Foundation that includes various enterprise blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. According to the recent Forbes Blockchain 50 list, over half of the biggest companies deploying blockchain are doing so on a Hyperledger platform. And now two more projects, Hyperledger Indy and Hyperleger Iroha, have hit development milestones that make them production ready.

“As the Forbes 50 shows, blockchain technologies and, specifically Hyperledger projects, are now having real-world impact,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director, Hyperledger. “With four production-ready frameworks and 270 members working to develop and deploy Hyperledger technologies around the world, the rate of adoption and the rise of production systems will only accelerate. Our newest members will further fuel this growing community, deployment and development momentum.”

Hyperledger allows organizations to create solid, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support their individual business transactions by offering enterprise-grade, open source distributed ledger frameworks and code bases. The latest general members to join the community are Consensus Datatrust Technology Co., Ltd., FRST Corp., Fusion Tech+, Hedera Hashgraph LLC, INBLOCK Ltd,  RealMarket and Xilinx, Inc.

Hyperledger supports an open community that values contributions and participation from various entities. As such, pre-approved non-profits, open source projects and government entities can join Hyperledger at no cost as associate members. Associate members joining this month include Arizona State University, Portland State University and University College London.

New member quotes:

Consensus Datatrust Technology Co., Ltd

“It is a great honor to join and be a member of Hyperledger,” said Maolu Wang, Chairman, Consensus Datatrust. “As a revolutionary new technology, blockchain has shown great potential in the field of B terminal. We understand that the solution of digital letter integrates blockchain and big data. We believe that blockchain technology can be used as a link for multi-party data sharing to solve previous business problems by technical means. As a member of Hyperledger, we will provide strong technology promotion and product promotion support, and we look forward to making continuous contributions to the community.”

FRST Corp

“The open source dev ecosystem has a tradition of testing assumptions, trying new things, and building important, evolving codebases. FRST is excited to join the Hyperledger community, and we believe participation will advance our work as a data-driven, blockchain-native enterprise analytics company,” said Karl T. Muth, CEO of FRST. “We can’t wait to share our questions and ideas with this community.”

Fusion Tech+

“We are very happy to join Hyperledger and look forward to collaborating with the community to provide innovative solutions for our partners and customers,” said Yang Lu, CTO of Fusion Tech+. “Fusion Tech+ is a smart technology company under Fusion Group. Relying on the strong strategic layout of the IoT, Fusion Tech+ puts forward the concept of Tech+ for enabling innovation and an integrated service platform called ‘Fusionfintrade,’ which deeply integrates technology, finance and scenarios to create a mutual enabling ecosystem. Our platform supports many scenarios and, as we develop it, we will also be actively contributing to the Hyperledger ecosystem and working with the other members to promote the development of technology and industry.”

Hedera Hashgraph

“We are excited to join the Hyperledger community, which comprises some of the most forward-looking organizations working on distributed ledger technology,” said Mance Harmon, CEO of Hedera Hashgraph. “We know enterprises have been exploring DLT use cases with Hyperledger technology.  Hedera provides an enterprise-grade public network that complements those existing and future projects.”

INBLOCK Ltd

“It’s been a long-time goal for us to join the Linux Foundation and Hyperledger,” said Jay Baek, vice president at INBLOCK. “Since the introduction of Mainnet last year, we’ve been cooperating with leading experts and allies in the blockchain industry to develop and improve the global business value. While our focus in on digital assets, we see that blockchain has the potential to revolutionize all industries, and we hope to contribute to the technology’s wide, real world impact.”

RealMarket

“RealMarket is a FinTech/RegTech company producing innovative alternative finance solutions using enterprise blockchain, machine learning, and big data. Our ultimate vision is a fully programmable economy powering groundbreaking and sustainable development worldwide,” said Dr. Dušan Gajić, CEO of RealMarket. “Thus, it is natural for us to join Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation, and we are both proud and excited to do so. Hyperledger is vital to our efforts as its suite of technologies ensures that the store of business-vital data and the rules governing their transformation are securely distributed. It is our aim to help develop Hyperledger further as we build an innovative platform combining equity crowdfunding, a private equity secondary market, cap table management, and corporate governance automation. All of this is only possible because Hyperledger Fabric is at the core of our system.”

About Hyperledger

Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration including leaders in finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing and Technology. The Linux Foundation hosts Hyperledger under the foundation. To learn more, visit: https://www.hyperledger.org/.


May 06
0

Hyperledger Launches Hyperledger Iroha 1.0

By | Announcements, Hyperledger Iroha

Another production-ready framework released by the Linux Foundation’s open business blockchain consortium

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – (May 6, 2019) – Hyperledger, a collaborative cross-industry effort created to advance blockchain technology, announced today the general availability of Hyperledger Iroha 1.0. Hosted by The Linux Foundation, Hyperledger Iroha is the fourth active Hyperledger project to reach 1.0, following Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth and Hyperledger Indy. Iroha is a distributed ledger project that aims to provide a development environment where C++ and mobile application developers can contribute to Hyperledger.

New Hyperledger Iroha 1.0 features include:

  • YAC Consensus — a consensus protocol that ensures the  safety of the ledger, even if some nodes are faulty or cannot be trusted. The protocol scales linearly in the peer network size.
  • Fully Operational Multisignature — an option for transactions when your application needs multiple signatures for transaction settlement.
  • Updated client libraries — support for writing applications on many different platforms from mobile to mainframe using many different programming languages such as Java (compatible with Android, Scala etc.), JS, Python, and iOS.
  • Windows support (experimental) — Hyperledger Iroha now natively runs on Windows, as well as in Linux and MacOS environments.

“It’s extremely gratifying to see another one of Hyperledger’s active projects hit the 1.0 milestone,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director, Hyperledger. “This is a huge testament to the strong collaboration of our growing community. I look forward to seeing development efforts around Hyperledger Iroha continue to grow and more and more productions systems powered by the framework later this year.”

Hyperledger Iroha complements other Hyperledger projects by providing an alternative design solution for mobile-oriented use cases in finance and identity management. Hyperledger Iroha has a long-term vision to simplify the implementation of blockchain business applications by providing an easy-to-use API and a universal peer model. Hyperledger Iroha has a modular architecture making it additive to existing projects using other Hyperledger technologies and provides a robust library of reusable components to enhance existing applications.  

Hyperledger Iroha contributors from around the world attend meet-ups and blockchain events, collaborate  with universities, and answer constant questions in chats to help people learn about and use the framework. All are invited to participate in this open community.

Hyperledger aims to create distributed ledger technology that enables organizations to build and run robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support their individual business transactions. The consortium now has more than 270 members with steady growth since its inception, spanning various industries including finance, healthcare, the Internet of Things, credit card services, supply chain and aeronautics, among several others.

You can find the Hyperledger Iroha 1.0 documentation here: https://iroha.readthedocs.io/en/latest/. Follow the “Getting Started” guide to create your first Hyperledger Iroha network in 10 minutes.

Community Quotes:

“The release of Hyperledger Iroha 1.0 is a significant milestone for this vibrant community and the enterprise blockchain space,” said Makoto Takemiya, CEO, Soramitsu. “As a core contributor to the project, we are very excited to see the Hyperledger Iroha team reach this milestone and continue to build upon the diverse DLT ecosystem developing under the Hyperledger greenhouse.”

“We are very excited about the release of Hyperledger Iroha 1.0 because it offers an out-of-box solution for implementation of blockchain networks to mobile devices,” said Yasir Azeem, Head AI and Blockchain from Ikioo. “With the combination of scalability and a permissioned Blockchain, Hyperledger has built something worth commending.”

“Global business is always terrific, and we had looked for the solution that fits our requirements in terms of a solution that is 100% open-sourced, oriented to specific needs of our task: account management, and KYC and supportive in terms of community,” said Alexander Yakovlev, NSD. “Iroha’s existing adoption experience in several countries and practical case with Cambodian central bank were additional benefits.”

Additional Resources:

About Hyperledger

Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance blockchain technology by addressing important features for a cross-industry open standard for distributed ledgers. It is a global collaboration including leaders in finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing and Technology. The Linux Foundation hosts Hyperledger as a Collaborative Project under the foundation. To learn more, visit: https://www.hyperledger.org/.

Contact

Emily Fisher
Hyperledger/Linux Foundation
efisher@contractor.linuxfoundation.org

May 06
0

Welcome Hyperledger Iroha 1.0: Flattening the DLT learning curve

By | Blog, Hyperledger Iroha

My first experience running a blockchain was when I first launched a Bitcoin node about six years ago. I got into Bitcoin out of curiosity and because the idea of sending value as digital data across the Internet was a very compelling idea.

Since those early days of experimentation, blockchain and DLT have emerged and found its place in enterprise — companies, individuals, consortiums want to get rid of non-transparent resource allocation, corruption, and fraud. Today, diamonds are registered on a blockchain, insurance companies know if you registered your MacBook at several places, and cross-border payments can operate more efficiently.

While blockchain technology has passed its longevity test, the software in general is still far from being integrator-friendly, developer-oriented, and straightforward; specifically when it comes to using distributed ledger technology instead of a database. This is where Hyperledger Iroha is different. With Hyperledger Iroha, it took me about 10 minutes to start building a blockchain. And now the Hyperledger Iroha team is releasing its first production-ready version, offering a faster, less complex path to DLT deployment. Welcome Hyperledger Iroha v1.0!

When it comes to solutions for business, it is critical that the technology is fit for the task and easy to integrate. Moreover, it must be reliable and safe so a business can trust it. Hyperledger Iroha provides safety with its decentralized consensus algorithm and reliability with a tested set of commands and queries. With them you can be sure that the code will do exactly what it is supposed to do — whether you want to add information to, or get information from, the ledger.

For this release the team prepared a special set of improvements:

  • New native client libraries deliver cross-application support for desktop/server (on Java, Python, C++) or mobile (iOS, Android (Java)) applications. You only need to get an idea of the client application and you are ready to go! Take a look at desktop and mobile application examples: on Java or JS: https://github.com/soramitsu/iroha-wallet-js
  • Novel, asynchronous consensus algorithm supporting one step agreement on votes with vote collection optimizations included (Yet Another Consensus; YAC). This means that even if a node is faulty, your decentralised ledger will still be up and running correctly. You can now focus on implementing your business application, leaving the question of whether you can trust partners’ nodes to Hyperledger Iroha.
  • Multi-signature transactions, or as we call them, MST, are now ready for production use. What does it mean for your business? It means that you can set a quorum, such that transactions from your company’s wallet will need several signatories instead of just one — just like in traditional banking, but quicker and more secure. This can also be used to model complex business processes in a secure and automatic way.
  • New backwards-compatibility allows you to integrate Hyperledger Iroha into your business and be sure that no breaking changes will affect it.

Hyperledger Iroha is already gaining strong traction with the community and enterprises:

Alexander Yakovlev from Moscow Exchange Group’s National Settlement Depository is using Hyperledger Iroha in D3 Ledger, and he said: “Global business is always terrific, and we looked for a solution that fits our requirements and is 100% open-sourced and oriented for the specific needs of our task. Features such as Iroha’s account management and supportive community, in addition to Soramitsu’s KYC application, were key factors in our decision to use Iroha for D3 Ledger. Iroha’s existing adoption in several countries and the practical use case with the Cambodian central bank were additional benefits.”

Hyperledger Iroha is already used in asset management, identity management, and payment systems. From simple asset transfers to secure information exchange about customers, Hyperledger Iroha can be used to empower a multitude of use cases, all without the need to program custom smart contracts.

Last year, I wrote a paper about Sora Identity, an implementation of a self-sovereign identity protocol using Hyperledger Iroha. Since then, we have worked on expanding this app and now we have a working product for KYC, targeted towards financial institutions. We are now expanding this to be at the core of the Sora decentralized autonomous economy, an exciting new type of economic system, geared towards empowering the creation of new goods and services.

Try it – simplicity and friendly support from the community will surely help you find your own way of improving your project with Hyperledger Iroha blockchain. You can find the Hyperledger Iroha 1.0 documentation here: https://iroha.readthedocs.io/en/latest/. Follow the “Getting Started” guide to create your first Iroha network in 10 minutes.

May 01
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An overview of Self-Sovereign Identity: the use case at the core of Hyperledger Indy

By | Blog, Hyperledger Indy

In the real world, most identity interactions are self-sovereign. We collect and hold various credentials that we keep in our possession and present at our discretion to prove things about ourselves. These could be collections of cards, certificates, or paperwork that prove various things about someone or something. Some credentials are obvious, like birth certificates, licenses to drive, employee ID cards, passports, university diplomas…the list goes on. We hold and present these to any anyone we want, without the permission of the organization who issued them. These credentials are kept and controlled by the holder, and only taken from her wallets and revealed with her expressed consent.

This is not what happens on the internet. Like the famous cartoon says – “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” illustrating the very real issue with the lack of an easy, secure, standardized system for a person to collect, hold, and ultimately present trustworthy, verifiable credentials online.

Unfortunately, online identity is very clearly broken. This is due to the fact that the internet was created without any way to identify the people who used it. Initially, it was a fairly small network of machines. Internet protocols are designed to identify machines and services, not people. People used the Internet through some institution (usually their company or university) and were part of that institution’s administrative identity system. This can still be seen in the format of email addresses that identify both recipient and sender as someone@someplace.

As the internet grew to include people who weren’t formally associated with an institution, every website and service created its own administrative identity domain. The result is the fractured profusion of identifiers, policies, and user experiences that constitute digital identity in 2019. Where early internet users had a handful of credentials and logged in occasionally, modern internet users typically have dozens, even hundreds, of usernames and passwords. Security has made these harder to use by encouraging or even forcing users to use more cryptic passwords and not share them between sites. And now multi-factor authentication adds to the cognitive burden. And then there’s the inconvenience of supplying the same information to application after application, all the while suffering the dangers that they might lose it or expose it to hackers.

One attempt to solve this problem is single-source or ‘federated logins.’ Social login systems from Google, Facebook, and others expedite logging into various websites, but these systems are limited in the kinds of attributes they use and the trustworthiness of those attributes. As a result, they aren’t as widely used as one might hope. Many companies don’t or can’t use social login and so the system of fractured administrative identity systems remains.

Traditional, identity systems have a single identity provider (IdP) administering an identity system for their own purposes. The rights of the so-called “identity subject” are subordinate to those of the identity provider. These systems are siloed, meaning the attributes you’ve shared with one organization are difficult to use with another. Each company asks for the same information, like your name, credit card, address, and so on. Users are required to provide that information to use the service – whether they like it or not. This single entity determines what information will be collected, decides who can participate, and how their data is stored – and that data is only as secure as the company or organization that keeps it.

Consequently, until now, the internet has lacked a universally available digital identity system that lets individuals collect and hold trustworthy verifiable credentials and present them to whoever they want, whenever they want – without the reliance on a third-party managing access.

What is SSI

Self-sovereign identity (SSI) gives individuals or organizations agency to control their identity information. SSI acknowledges that identity is about much more than logging in. Identity can be expanded to other uses by using verifiable attestations, called credentials, to prove things about yourself. SSI uses verifiable, trustworthy credentials. Identity owners autonomously use those credentials wherever they want. Privacy is a critical feature of SSI because, without privacy, there is no control. In SSI, the identity owner must be in control of who sees what. This represents a monumental shift in how identity functions on the internet.

Credential issuers, holders, and verifiers are peers on an SSI network. Any person or organization can play any or all of the roles, creating a decentralized system for the exchange of trustworthy, digital credentials.

  • Credential issuers determine what credentials to issue, what the credential means, and how they’ll validate the information they put in the credential.
  • Credential holders determine what credentials they need and which they’ll employ in workflows to prove things about themselves.
  • Credential verifiers determine what credentials to accept, and which issuers to trust.


In SSI, players independently determine the role they’ll play, who they trust, and what they will believe. While credentials can be revoked individually, the identity owner still controls her own identity wallet and all the other credentials she has collected. The result is an internet identity system that is more flexible, more secure, more private, less burdensome, and less costly.

About the author: Dr. Windley, an expert in decentralized digital identity and IoT and event-driven systems, is Chair of the Board of Trustees, Sovrin Foundation. The Sovrin Foundation open sourced the codebase used to create the Sovrin Network and contributed the initial code for Hyperledger Indy to Hyperledger, a project dedicated to blockchain hosted by the Linux Foundation.