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Adam Ludvik and Anne Chenette

Dec 11
0

Making Dynamic Consensus More Dynamic

By | Blog, Hyperledger Sawtooth

In October 2017, the Hyperledger Sawtooth team started to implement a new consensus algorithm for Hyperledger Sawtooth. We wanted a voting-based algorithm with finality, which is very different from the Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) consensus algorithm that has been closely associated with Hyperledger Sawtooth since its start. This project presented a number of challenges and opportunities.

The greatest challenge in implementing this new consensus algorithm with Sawtooth was in breaking apart an architecture that has been heavily influenced by a lottery-based consensus algorithm with forking. A lot of refactoring and architectural work went into making both voting-based and lottery-based algorithms work well with Sawtooth.

However, the opportunities that we discovered from this effort made overcoming these challenges more than worth it. We designed a new consensus API that simplifies the process of adding new consensus algorithms while continuing to support the existing PoET and Dev mode consensus algorithms. We completed the first prototype validator with consensus API support in July 2018. Since then, we have been able to implement two new voting-based consensus algorithms for the Hyperledger Sawtooth platform: Raft and PBFT.

We are pleased to announce that the Sawtooth 1.1 release supports the new consensus API. This release also includes consensus SDKs to make it easier to implement new consensus algorithms.

Consensus as a Process

The new consensus architecture moves consensus functionality to a separate process, called a consensus engine, and provides an API for each consensus engine to interact with the validator.

Moving the consensus functionality to a separate process allows consensus engines to be implemented in a variety of languages. Currently, SDKs are available for Python and Rust and have been used to create the consensus engines for PoET, PBFT, and Raft.

Multi-language support is important beyond providing a choice for implementing a new consensus engine. This support makes it much easier to reuse existing implementations of consensus algorithms. For example, the Sawtooth Raft consensus engine is built on the pingcap/raft-rs library. We were able to easily integrate this well-regarded Raft library, which is itself a port from the widely-used etcd Raft library.

As SDKs for additional languages are built on top of the consensus API, it will be possible to add more and more consensus algorithms into Hyperledger Sawtooth. For example, a consensus SDK for Go would bring existing implementations such as Hyperledger Labs’ MinBFT one step closer to being compatible with Sawtooth.

Driving the Blockchain with a Consensus Engine

The consensus API is centered around a new consensus engine abstraction that handles consensus-specific functionality. A consensus engine is a separate process that interacts with the validator through the consensus API using protobuf messages and ZMQ.

The role of a consensus engine is to advance the blockchain by creating new blocks and deciding which blocks should be committed. Specifically, a consensus engine must accomplish the following tasks:

  • Determine consensus-related messages to send to peers
  • Send commands to progress the blockchain
  • React to updates from the validator

The validator continues to handle the mechanics of validation, communication, and storage for blocks, batches, and transactions. The validator must perform these tasks:

  • Validate the integrity of blocks, batches, and transactions
  • Validate the signatures for blocks, batches, transactions, and messages
  • Gossip blocks, batches, and transactions
  • Handle the mechanics of block creation and storage
  • Manage the chain head directly

New Consensus API and SDKs

The validator exposes the API for consensus engines as a set of protobuf messages sent over a network interface. This API is split into two types of interactions:

  • Service: A pair of (request, response) messages that allow a consensus engine to send commands to the validator and receive information back. For example, a consensus engine can instruct the validator to commit a block or request an on-chain setting from a specific block. Services are synchronous and on-demand.
  • Updates: Information that the validator sends to a consensus engine, such as the arrival of a new block or receipt of a new consensus message from a peer. Updates are sent asynchronously as they occur.

Although you could use the API directly to implement a new consensus engine, the recommended interface is a consensus SDK. The SDK provides several useful classes that make it easier to implement a consensus engine. Sawtooth currently provides consensus SDKs for Python and Rust. We have used these SDKs to create the consensus engines for the PoET engine (Python), PBFT engine (Rust), and Raft engine (Rust).

These SDKs have a consistent design with an abstract Engine class, an engine Driver, and a validator Service. The abstract Engine class provides a clear starting point for new consensus engine implementations. If you plan to write your own consensus SDK, we recommend conforming to this design.

Try it Today!

One of the most important decisions for a distributed ledger application is the choice of consensus. By opening up this interface, we hope that each application built on Hyperledger Sawtooth can select the consensus algorithm that suits it best.

Jun 26
1

(6.26.18) Enterprisers Project: How to explain blockchain in plain English

By | News

For all of the hype around blockchain, most businesses are barely tinkering with it right now – if they’re doing anything at all. A recent Gartner survey of CIOs found that 43 percent of respondents said blockchain was on their radar but they had no concrete plans in the works, while 34 percent said they simply weren’t interested. A scant one percent of CIOs reported any kind of blockchain adoption in their organization.

More here.

Jan 30
1

(1.30.17) Cyptocoinsews.com: American Express Wants “Full Advantage of Blockchain”, Joins Open-Source Hyperledger Project

By | Finance, News

Credit card giant American Express has joined the Linux Foundation-led open-source cross-industry blockchain working group, the Hyperledger Project.

In yet another noted example of the traditional financial services industry turning to Fintech’s poster child in blockchain technology, American Express has joined the Hyperledger Project as a ‘Premier’ member.

More here.

Dec 28
0

Hyperledger Wraps up 2016 By Welcoming Eight New Members

By | Announcements

Diverse set of new members joins fastest growing open blockchain initiative

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – (December 28, 2016) – Hyperledger Project, a collaborative cross-industry effort created to advance blockchain technology, announced today that eight new members have joined the project to help create an open standard for distributed ledgers for a new generation of transactional applications. Last month, Hyperledger announced it reached 100 active members in less than one year, a huge milestone for the open source project, hosted by The Linux Foundation.

“This year has been full of growth for the project,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director, Hyperledger. “Not only did we exceed 100 members, Hyperledger met significant development milestones thanks to the community’s hard work. As 2016 was a year of exploration, R&D and prototyping, we’re excited for 2017 to be the year we start to see case studies of the technology in production environments.”

Hyperledger aims to enable organizations to build robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support their individual business transactions by creating an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework and code base. The latest members include: CA Technologies, Factom Foundation, Hashed Health, Koscom, LedgerDomain, Lykke, Sovrin Foundation and Swisscom.

New Member Quotes:

CA Technologies

“To compete today, every company needs to foster innovation that delivers real business value. Blockchain has the potential to disrupt the way many of CA’s customers do business,” said Otto Berkes, chief technology officer, CA Technologies. “We’re honored to be a part of Hyperledger and look forward to collaborating with other members to help shape open standards for blockchain. It’s an exciting time for this because blockchain is not just about Bitcoin anymore, and the range of potential applications with it is vast for of our customers. This partnership will help us influence what that future looks like for both CA and our customers as they embark on their digital transformation journey.”

Factom Foundation

“We are honored to have been selected to join the Hyperledger Project,” said Paul Snow, Founder, Factom Foundation. “We are looking forward to helping build the open source framework for securing data and systems with our blockchain solution.”

Hashed Health

“Hashed Health is a healthcare technology innovation company focused on accelerating the commercialization of meaningful new blockchain and distributed ledger-based technologies,” said John Bass, Hashed Health CEO. “Hashed is proud to be a member of the Hyperledger Project, sharing its commitment to creating the foundation for scalable, reliable blockchain solutions.”

Koscom

“We consider blockchain technology as the next generation infrastructure in the Korean capital market. As an industry leader with 40 years’ experience in the financial IT field, we are looking to leverage this industry disruptive technology,” said Chung Youn Dae, CEO, Koscom. “We will constantly explore the ways to contribute to the blockchain ecosystem, as we collaborate with the Hyperledger community. We also hope to better serve out customers in a more secure and efficient way by integrating blockchain technology and our own Fintech platform.”

LedgerDomain

“LedgerDomain delivers next generation supply chain solutions, harnessing permissioned blockchains to assure supply chain integrity and finished product authenticity through to the consumer for the benefit of all. This highly transparent, trustworthy approach is built upon an industrial-strength Hyperledger Fabric backbone,” said Dr. Victor Dods, LedgerDomain. “We’re proud to be a part of Hyperledger and its growing community.”

Lykke

“We’re looking forward to being part of the Hyperledger project,” said Richard Olsen, Lykke founder and CEO. “Our company is building a digital asset exchange. Right now, we’re implemented on the Bitcoin blockchain settlement layer, with Ethereum to come within the next few months, but our involvement with Hyperledger isn’t just the next step forward. Providing decentralized settlement on the Hyperledger blockchain with multisignature wallets and atomic swap transactions will benefit both of our user communities.”

Swisscom

“We are very proud to be Switzerland’s first connection to Hyperledger,” said Johannes Höhener, VP, Swisscom’s Fintech Cluster. “We look forward to working with a highly professional community on cutting-edge blockchain developments. Our membership and participation will shape our capabilities to develop blockchain solutions – for our clients and Switzerland.”

The success of Hyperledger is due to the support of the developer community and member companies. Learn how your organization can contribute to the project here: https://www.hyperledger.org/about/join

About Hyperledger

The Hyperledger project 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 as a Collaborative Project under the foundation. To learn more, visit: www.hyperledger.org

Nov 01
0

Hyperledger Welcomes Iroha

By | Blog, Hyperledger Iroha

iroha_3

We’re pleased to announce that the distributed ledger project, Iroha, has been accepted into incubation status under Hyperledger. Originally developed by Hyperledger member company, Soramitsu, Iroha was inspired by the Fabric architecture and aims to provide a development environment where C++, web, and mobile application developers can contribute to the Hyperledger Project.

What is Iroha?

Iroha seeks to complement Fabric, Sawtooth Lake, and other potential projects, by creating reusable components in C++ that can be called from languages such as Go. In this way, Iroha is additive to existing projects and the long term goal is to realize a robust library of reusable components that can be selected and used freely by those running distributed ledgers on Hyperledger technology.

“Iroha allows even more developers to interact with Hyperledger to build infrastructural projects and applications requiring distributed ledger technology,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Hyperledger. “It is encouraging to see member companies actively contributing to a diverse and sustainable open source blockchain ecosystem built on cooperation.”

The design and architecture of Iroha is greatly inspired by Fabric, in that blockchain and chaincode services form the overall architecture. Where possible, APIs were made to be similar to Fabric and, rather than competing with Fabric, the goals of Iroha are to:

  1. Provide an environment for C++ developers to contribute to Hyperledger
  2. Provide infrastructure for mobile and web application support
  3. Provide a framework to experiment with new APIs and consensus algorithms that could potentially be incorporated into Fabric in the future.

Why Iroha?

Currently, the Hyperledger Project lacks an infrastructure project written in C++, thus limiting the potential developers who can contribute. Also, there is not currently a strong focus on user interaction or mobile applications, though both are necessary for the realization of the widespread use of distributed ledger technology. Iroha aims to rectify both of these points, bringing in more developers while providing libraries for mobile user interface development.

Iroha is a distributed ledger project that was designed to be simple and easy to incorporate into infrastructural projects requiring distributed ledger technology. Iroha features:

  1. Simple construction
  2. Modern, domain-driven C++ design
  3. Emphasis on mobile application development
  4. New, chain-based Byzantine fault tolerant consensus algorithm, called Sumeragi

Although turing complete smart contracts are available via chaincode in Java (running a sandboxed JVM), users do not need to write chaincode in order to define digital assets in Iroha. Common use cases, such as deploying new currencies and sending text messages, are available as part of the core framework. Iroha is composed of the following:

  • Iroha core
  • Iroha Native iOS Library
  • Iroha JavaScript Library
  • Iroha Native Android Library

Iroha core provides the distributed ledger infrastructure comprising the data membership services, consensus algorithm, peer-to-peer network transmission, data validation, and chaincode infrastructure. The iOS, Android, and JavaScript libraries provide convenience functions for performing common operations, such as digitally signing transactions. Future work will expand these common functions to interoperate with the Fabric ledger.

Who will work on Iroha?

Soramitsu has committed several full time engineers to the project. Makoto Takemiya of Soramitsu is the initial project maintainer, along with six other engineers at Soramitsu. Besides Soramitsu, the co-sponsors of the proposal and other Hyperledger members are considering committing resources to work on Iroha including Toshiya Cho of Hitachi, Takahiro Inaba of NTT Data, and Mark Smargon of Colu.

Soramitsu is also doing collaborative research with The University of Tokyo, The University of Aizu, and Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM, below) of International University of Japan. From the University of Tokyo, Hideyuki Tanaka will consider economics use cases with Iroha. From The University of Aizu, Yasushi Fujii will explore business use cases with Iroha. From GLOCOM, Soichiro Takagi will consider economics and scientific research using Iroha.

“We’re pleased that Iroha has been accepted for incubation into  Hyperledger,” said Makoto Takemiya at Soramitsu. “By creating C++, mobile, and web development environments for Hyperledger, new developers can join the project and help contribute not only to Iroha, but to other sub projects, such as Fabric and Sawtooth Lake.”

Learn more about Iroha

Working with community members and use case partners, we would like to continue to improve upon Iroha and have it reach and active project stage in the future. The end goal is to realize a suite of components that can be freely interoperable with other Hyperledger projects.

The following repositories on github have been created to manage Iroha resources:

  • https://github.com/hyperledger/iroha
  • https://github.com/hyperledger/iroha-ios
  • https://github.com/hyperledger/iroha-android
  • https://github.com/hyperledger/iroha-javascript

You can learn more about Iroha in this whitepaper or other incubation projects under Hyperledger here. Iroha documentation can be found at http://docs.iroha.tech. For those interested in additional information, please reach out to: info@hyperledger.org