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David MacFadyen, UCLA

Mar 01
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New Hyperledger Media & Entertainment SIG Launches with Welcome to All Comers

By Blog, Special Interest Group

We would like to extend a very warm welcome to anybody and everybody interested in permissioned blockchains for both media (writ large) and entertainment. The launch of the Hyperledger Media & Entertainment Special Interest Group (ME-SIG) is designed to be maximally inclusive: we would like to the see the widest possible range of engineers, developers, in fact all manner of professionals, together with artists, academics, students, experts, and—of course—amateurs.

Here’s how to navigate our initial resources: following a recent, virtual meet-up in Los Angeles, the Media and Entertainment SIG has started to build a landing page on the HL Wiki where you’ll find links to our:

  • Mailing list sign-up
  • Rocket Chat channel (while we ponder the pros and cons of Slack)
  • Proposed debut project
  • And other initiatives or aggregated info that will naturally grow over time.

In simple terms, the ME-SIG will be using decentralized, permissioned HL blockchains to discuss and build user-friendly apps that respond to the relative disorder of permissonless environments, where artists’ interests are significantly harder to safeguard.

Following comparative analyses of the technical challenges (and hypothetical solutions) facing filmmakers, musicians, novelists, poets, photojournalists, etc., these DLT apps/dapps will be created for content-creators and their publishers, irrespective of location or socioeconomic status. This implies a focus upon UX/UI concerns over command-line tools, all in the name of access and inclusivity.

The ME-SIG will focus on the application of Hyperledger DLTs to media-specific and entertainment use cases. Such activity will automatically foreground topics such as decentralized metadata, digital distribution, copyright protection, royalty payments, value chains, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), tokenized content, counterfeit reduction, and registered digital ownership. By logical extension, these same themes will lead to real-world scenarios or solutions for cinematic, literary, audiovisual, and photographic publishers, to name but four.

Following the established activities of the Social Impact and Trade Finance SIGs, the TME group can then hope to:

  • Collaborate with other core Hyperledger working groups and project in the areas of architecture

           —performance and scalability identity
           —smart contracts
           —and integration

  • Build user-friendly DLT ME applications on Hyperledger, focusing on UX-UI goals over command-line tools alone, thus simplifying the workflow of Hyperledger Fabric—for easier adoption by both artists and arts-related communities
  • Research different protocols—to build standardization across different parties and projects
  • Identify related reference architectures (business/integration or technical/infrastructure)
  • Work with businesses and non-profit or NGO communities alike
  • Share stories of civic success, failure, opportunity, and challenge
  • Encourage the equal involvement of both early adopters and student newcomers, looking to examine careers beyond the (barely existent!) academic job market.

So what of an initial project? Here’s where we are keenest to involve colleagues and collaborators from outside the worlds of media and/or entertainment. Our initial proposal notes can be found here. It is increasingly revisited and reworked by members of the SIG. We’ve called it a “Distributed Media Curation Platform (DCP) on Hyperledger Fabric.” Please add to those notes with help, criticism, or constructive abuse! Community input is—and will remain—vital. The more we know about your desires and needs, the more a finished product will be useful for you.

The DCP will curate, document, and fairly manage media assets—eg., music, ebooks, photojournalism, gaming figures, digitized artworks, etc. on the blockchain. It will accurately establish the provenance of an asset (its past) and assure that the asset’s creators or rights holders are properly acknowledged and remunerated in the future. For this reason, the DCP is suitable for museums, galleries, labels, and publishers on one hand, while proving equally helpful to artists or content creators on the other. In both environments, the watchword will remain fairness. The following paragraphs outline a plan to build the DCP in a modular fashion, together with definitions of the relevant and manageable technologies.

  • Hyperledger Fabric 2.X
  • Fabtoken
  • NFT
  • ISCC
  • OCCP
  • vLEI
  • DAO/DAC
  • Custom UI and Player (PHP/JS, HTML/CSS).

Early curatorial enterprise on the blockchain was celebrated in 2017 by Consensys’ own Engineer of Societies, Simon de la Rouviere. In his overview of P2P distributed curation markets (DCMs), de la Rouviere quoted Umberto Eco’s equation of curation or list-making with culture itself.

The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries.

The benefits offered by a blockchain DCP, de la Rouviere claimed, are not only decentralization and related systems of accountability. They also include the “the [cultural] wisdom of a crowd sharing at scale “ and micro-transactions or tokenized payments. Both will be addressed by the ME-SIG..

There are certainly lots of existing content aggregation tools, operating with human or artificial intelligence. Given, however, that DCPs rely on both the filtering of information and an attribution of value to those selected assets, AI is (thus far) less likely to to attribute lasting or accurate cultural worth to any resulting list than a known, human entity within a relatively small and permissioned environment. Culture is a profoundly human and abstract activity, revolving around what many blockchain/DCP scholars like to term a “Schelling (i.e., focal) point” of consideration. Some DCPs that have arisen around such foci are: 

In all cases, a relatively small and specialized community creates worth in a permissioned or walled environment, within which individuals determine a value-system. We will move along the same lines, so please help to guide our passage—and inform us of your needs in the process. Then we can be sure of building something you will want and use! 

Thanks for your attention!

David MacFadyen
Professor, Comparative Literature / Musicology / Digital Humanities, UCLA
https://www.davidmacfadyen.com

Feb 03
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Wecan Comply: How to use the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain for real-time compliance auditing

By Blog, Finance, Hyperledger Fabric

The state of compliance today

Compliance today is hampered by a real lack of coordination between its various players. Indeed, each actor uses its own processes and tools. Some have invested in technological innovation while others continue to use more traditional methods. The situation is such that nothing has yet been really proposed to facilitate compliance exchanges between external asset managers and their custodian banks.

The administrative workload is heavy and is increasing: the list grows daily, with a new regulatory alert in financial services alone issued every seven minutes according to Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence. And it is estimated that 15 to 25% of a company’s revenue is wasted because of poor data quality and management says Experian plc. Indeed, information is, most of the time, structured internally but exchanged externally by mail, email, phone or fax in a very inefficient and unsecured way. For EAMs, onboarding at a custodian bank therefore requires several hours of work: the announcement process carried out at all the custodian banks, which can go up to more than 50 hours, is still very manual today. 

In addition, the annual review (partial or complete) of the relationship with the bank is an important process for the bank and requires administrative verification work that can take several months.  

Compliance efficiency thanks to blockchain

The administrative burden caused by the duplication of compliance processes will be considerably reduced, thanks to blockchain. It will make it possible to digitize and streamline the management of information, thus avoiding many errors. Bockchain technology will enable independent managers to implement much more reliable, smooth and secure operating procedures.

The Wecan Comply platform makes it possible to digitize and standardise the information exchanged between financial players in order to facilitate and streamline exchanges between banks and independent asset managers in a secure manner. The objective is to enable financial players to pool their resources on non-competitive and non-differentiated subjects in order to improve auditability and, eventually, to automate it. This will not be available immediately, but the Wecan Comply platform will soon be linked to official registers. Managers will thus be able to ensure that their custodian banks have direct access to all kinds of official documents, without having to worry about collecting and processing them. By skipping these verification steps, they will be able to save time while limiting the risk of fraud. 

The Blockchain Association for Finance: a unique compliance network

Wecan Comply is an ambitious project aimed at optimizing compliance processes. It is the first blockchain infrastructure addressed to Private Banks, thus significantly opening up the prospects of use cases. Several banks and independent asset managers have already joined this unique network: Pictet Group, Lombard Odier Group, Edmond de Rothschild, REYL Group, Hyposwiss Private Bank Genève SA, Gonet, Banque Cramer, CAPITALIUM Wealth Management, PLEION Gestion de fortune, and Fransad Gestion SA. In order to carry out this project, Wecan Group has created an industry standard that meets the best regulatory requirements set by regulators. With a view to ensuring neutrality and the proper functioning of the platform, the members of the network have created an association: the Blockchain Association for Finance. 

Systematic and real-time compliance status 

The platform allows EAMs and banks users to track and receive real-time alerts for all changes to ensure the compliance of documents and information shared. It monitors, reports and analyzes events and changes while ensuring the security of the environment thanks to Hyperledger Fabric. This solution enhances the security by allowing the user to instantly know who made a specific change, when, and from which entity. Since the data stored is authenticated by multiple institutions and continually up to date, the compliance offices have a real-time reporting of the compliance status and can share it at any time to the management or the external auditors.

Custodian banks save time by accessing in one place standard and structured information coming from their EAM. And they have a real-time compliance status linked to all data. Wecan Comply solution drives efficiency and cost effectiveness, reducing the painful administrative work. Banks are processing top-notch quality of data since all information is validated by other banks of the network. All exchanges are digital, onboardings are faster and there is a real-time auditability of all modifications.

Why we choose Hyperledger Fabric 

Wecan Comply uses Hyperledger Fabric, an open source blockchain platform for enterprises hosted by the Linux Foundation. Hyperledger Fabric enables private actors to exchange information while retaining ownership of their data. Each party is clearly identified, and every transaction is authenticated, authorized, validated and tracked. 

Thanks to Hyperledger Fabric there is no central administrator: each bank and EAM controls its own information in a fully encrypted and secured network. As a solution provider, Wecan Comply does not have access to the information exchanged. It is only powering the network. Hyperledger Fabric offers a high level of security by ensuring that data access is only made after the user’s private key has been verified by the system. This eliminates the chance of unauthorized access and gives individuals greater control over their information. In addition, the platform is certified by a zero-knowledge proof technology that allows to protect the privacy of all users and to decentralize data control and sharing.

The world of compliance tomorrow

The union of financial players within a network offers good prospects for development.  In particular, data exchange among custodian banks, regulatory bodies and auditors will benefit from significant gains in efficiency.

The next step for Wecan Comply is the connection to the official registers that will create a real ecosystem around compliance and thus release all the value of the platform. Wecan Comply was initiated with and for the actors of the financial industry. Our ambition is then to apply this method to all regulated professions where there are standards in order to guarantee a monitoring and audit of compliance in real time.

Jan 28
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Cool Careers in Open Source: Sharing our stories at Grace Hopper

By Blog, Working Group

Over the last few years, Hyperledger has sponsored the annual Anita Borg Grace Hopper Celebration (GCH) supporting our existing member companies as well as leaders and future women technologists in our global community. In 2021, as part of our Diversity, Civility and Inclusion WG objectives, we will continue to form partnerships  with women-led initiatives centered around recruitment and engagement like Anita Borg.

For those of you who have not attended, the Grace Hopper Celebration is an experience like no other. In normal years, the event centers around the grand hall, full of hundreds and hundreds of booths, wholly focused on recruiting women technologists. There is an audible buzz in the air as the thousands and thousands of young women walk the floor, dash to their next scheduled interview or head to the another thought-provoking session. For women in technology, the feeling that GHC evokes is hard to beat elsewhere.

GHC brings the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront and highlights the contributions of women to the tech world. The event results in collaborative proposals, networking, and mentoring for all attendees. And, for many of us senior executives,  walking alongside the next generation of women leaders in technology in the halls, in the lunches and events and collaboration sessions creates a renewed sense of optimism. We feel and see hope in these young, aspiring technologists.  

As was the case for most  global events in 2020,  GHC, which took place in September, was virtual this year.  Although you can never replicate an in-person event, especially one that is so focused on networking and building lifelong relationships with your fellow female technologists, the Linux Foundation workshop on “Cool Careers in Open Source” certainly had some of that feeling when the session began. It was clear from the start that something special was going to take place when over 500 attendees joined the session. And, when prompted to say hello as they came in, shared in chat their names and where they were joining from in a fast and furious stream of chats that sparked a few minutes of joy that you can see the speakers react to as the video starts. 

The goal of the session was to help attendees learn how open source software is used by major motion picture studios like Netflix and Industrial Light & Magic for visual effects and by major retailers like Walmart in industry shaping blockchain-based networks. 

So a large and eager attendee base mingled  with a very cool list of speakers that spanned across four different parts of the Linux Foundation for a lively discussion about how open source software is everywhere. As a result, chances are high that young women entering the tech workforce  will be writing, deploying, or administering open source  and that candidates with experience in open source will stand out to hiring managers. Speakers and attendees all shared background, tips and resources and responded to a lot of great questions. The video below captures the discussion of how to get involved in open source at the start of one’s career:

Representing Hyperledger  
Archana Sristy, Sr. Director- Blockchain Platforms, Walmart Global Tech and Hyperledger Governing Board Member

Representing Academy Software Foundation (ASWF)
Carol Payne, Imaging Specialist Netflix
Rachel Rose, R&D Supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic, Co-Chair ASWF Diversity & Inclusion Working Group

Representing Cloud Native Foundation (CNCF)
Priyanka Sharma, General Manager CNCF

Representing Linux Foundation Training
Mary Campbell, Sr. Manager of Corporate Training at the Linux Foundation

The message was clear: open source software has the potential to level the playing field when it comes to diversity and inclusion – communities are open to everyone, it’s a meritocracy, and there are ample opportunities to build your resume and network while working alongside developers and engineers from forward-thinking companies that are part of the Linux Foundation like Walmart, Netflix, Disney, Microsoft, AT&T, Toyota, Uber, and more. There are thousands of communities out there where you can get started, learn new skills, develop/refine those skills, and gain experience that can lead to careers in tech, retail, motion pictures, banking, automotive, and more.

Here are just some of the resources available to anyone interested in getting involved in open source in the Linux Foundation and Hyperledger community:

Training – Gain marketable open source skills with the Linux Foundation

Training is an on-ramp to opportunity in the software development industry, especially in open source. 93% of hiring managers are unable to find enough individuals with the open source skills they require. Take advantage by gaining in-demand skills and set yourself up for a successful long-term career. 

The Linux Foundation Training & Certification catalog has 32 free courses available across various technologies, including key introductory ones like A Beginner’s Guide to Open Source Software Development (LFD102-Free), as well as training and certifications from beginners to advance that you can purchase.

For Hyperledger, check out our free Blockchain Essentials Courses as well as our growing list of trainings and certifications. When you are ready to jump into the community, please watch our short “Getting Involved with Hyperledger” video.

Mentorship – Make personal connections that drive success

Mentorship plays an important role in advancing everyone’s career. Sharing experiences, connections and ideas flattens learning curves and, especially in open source, drives innovation and success on the individual and community level. Mentorship is a particularly powerful way to help grow and shape individual careers through personal relationships. 

To make the power of mentorship more widely accessible, the Linux Foundation has many programs that all have diversity-specific opportunities:

Below are excerpts from the online Q+A with guidance  our cool panelists offered during the panel. Listen in on the video to hear the full discussion!!

“I would say explore as much as you can, expand your network. Don’t be afraid to take classes and try things not directly in your major – you never know what you’ll enjoy. Don’t stress too much about specializing if you don’t want to.” 

“Great question! Early in my schooling and my career, being involved in open source really helped me understand what it is like working in a larger code base. I learned a lot from other developers about engineering design and became more confident about having others review my code. These are skills that are directly applicable to my day-to-day work. The networking that comes from contributing to open source also can’t be overemphasized!”

“I believe anyone can pick up the skills! The job I have now I didn’t have any training on in school. Use the skills and what you learned in CS and jump in if you’re passionate – don’t be afraid to start entry level – you learn so much that way! “

“Open source is open source! Contributions are always welcome – jump in and get involved! All projects have contribution guidelines that are there to make sure the project rules are followed. As you start to contribute more, most projects have opportunities to get involved in the leadership / core contributions of the project.”

“Open source contributions always look good on a resume, provide new skills, and help you network! However, there’s not a direct way to apply to work in open source. My job at Netflix just happens to rely heavily on open source software which means I get the opportunity to contribute as a part of my job!”

How you can help make the community more welcoming

Participation and sponsorship of events alone won’t make Hyperledger a community where everyone feels included, although it is one way we can support diversity. There are certainly other things that can be done to make Hyperledger more inclusive and diverse, and we welcome your input on what else we should be doing. Please feel free to post to the Diversity Civility and Inclusion mailing list, or join our regular DCI calls with your suggestions and ideas.

PS. Big shout out to Ramona “Spielberg,” an 11-year-old future something, with some impressive video editing skills for helping her mom (VP World Wide Alliances at the Linux Foundation) with editing the zoom recording for sharing.

Jan 21
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Meet the Hyperledger India Chapter community! – Part II

By Blog, Regional Chapter

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2020 has been a tough year for everyone. The world is now in a new phase, where no one knows when things will return back to normal. It is really bitter and harsh. Yet, despite obvious hardships, the crisis inspired innovations and, yes, encouraged a lot of community contributions.

This Year Saintgits College of Engineering joined hands with Hyperledger India Chapter to organise “Women in Blockchain – a Panel Discussion,” with an objective to accelerate the powerful partnerships of women to lead in the education, development and promotion of blockchain technologies. There has always been a general conception that technology is hostile to women. There are people who believe technology is not feminine. There are people who question the ability of a woman to start a business. They believe women are too risk-averse to start a new business. It’s high time these age-old myths were busted. They need to be busted from their very roots. “Women in Blockchain” was the right platform to bring in amazing women from the field of blockchain technology who have placed their imprints in the technical arena. The event aimed to be a myth breaker demonstrating to the world how successful women have overcome their barriers to be world class leaders in blockchain technology, highlighting their accomplishments in the community and offering actionable tips for “How to start a successful career in Blockchain.“

The following female voices were there on the panel.

  • Dr. Jane Thomason, Co-Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer of Fintech Worldwide
  • Ms. Shalini Warrier, Executive Director, Chief Operating Officer and Business Head 
  • Ms. Nappinai N S, Advocate, Supreme Court of India 
  • Ms. Darshitha Gillies, CEO Maanch; Advisor, Impact Investor; Philanthropist 
  • Ms. Sosu Alex, Blockchain Technical Architect at Tata Consultancy Services 

In addition, we also had the privilege of organising the Hyperledger Asia Pacific Study Circle for the course “Introduction to Hyperledger Blockchain Technologies” by the Linux Foundation, which is hosted in the edX platform. Since this is an introductory course, we focused on  nontechnical, business-oriented audiences and students so as to equip them with basics of Hyperledger technologies and eventually prepare them to take the certification exam by the Linux Foundation.

Looking forward to contributing more, and I request everyone who is involved in blockchain space to join our journey.

Aneena Ann Alexander
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Saintgits College of Engineering-Kerala

Hyperledger turned five this year, a great milestone for Hyperledger and its community. I started this year by getting acquainted with Hyperledger India Chapter (HIRC) and its first event of the year, “HyperHack 2020.” I participated with my team and won the Hackathon as runner-up. It was a well executed event by the community and saw participation from across Asia Pacific. I had been working on various Hyperledger project implementations, but this event got me and many others like me to connect to the India community.

I also got introduced to the “Hyperledger Noida Meetup Group” and became its co-organizer. 

During the middle of the year, HIRC organized the “Blockchain Stories 2020” event. That saw huge participation by industry and academic experts who shared their blockchain journey, solutions and experiences. I myself participated at the event and shared our product and experience with the community. Along with many enthusiasts, I got the chance to volunteer at the event. It was a great success that helped the community membership grow and achieve 1,000 followers and beyond.

In the last quarter of the year, HIRC organized “Blockchain Techfest,” which allowed the community to know about various Hyperledger projects, connect with their maintainers and learn how we can contribute to them. Volunteering at this event and at the “5th year anniversary” got me connected to many other Hyperledger enthusiasts and various meetup group organizers and gave me the opportunity to work with them to spread the word.

I feel that this journey has just begun. I am looking forward to contributing to the community more actively here in India and abroad; and to a better new year for all who live on this Earth, people, plants, animals and birds alike.

Vikram Sharma
Certified Hyperledger Fabric Administrator
Senior Blockchain Architect,  HCL Technologies Ltd.
Co-organizer, Hyperledger Noida Meetup Group
Member, Hyperledger India Chapter 

Every journey starts with a challenge, and challenges become memories and memories become a service. With that said, my exploration started with the Hyperledger India Chapter, and it’s time to share the memories. The year started with small but committed community members sharing their thoughts and answering questions on Hyperledger projects, helping learners to begin their journey. Fast forward to today, and we see a much larger community of members sharing their thoughts and answering questions brought up by new learners.

Many individuals from the India community do participate in Hyperledger project meetings, working groups and special interest groups. I am proud to be part of the Language Translations WG, Learning Material Development WG and Climate Action SIG, as well as the Besu, Iroha, Sawtooth and Indy projects.  

The members have shared their solutions and tutorials to increase awareness and build community participation. The number of blockchain enthusiasts showing their interest in Hyperledger India Chapter activities is remarkable.

While 2020 turned out to be a milestone year, there is more to achieve in 2021. I wish for and I will make every effort to build an even stronger and better community for Hyperledger.

Ravi Vasagam
Blockchain & DevOps Consultant
CTO, ENACT eSolutions

This blog post concludes our series of blog posts featuring the community. The very first event of 2021 is planned to be held in March. HyperHack 2021 will be organized in collaboration with the Saintgits College of Engineering. Reach out to the co-leads of the Hyperledger India Chapter for more information to know how you or your organization can be part of the event.

Special thanks to Amol Kulkarni for laying the cornerstone to the Hyperledger India Chapter. Also, gratitude to Shon Joseph, Ajay Jadhav, Kiran Kalyan Kulkarni, Ankita Patidar, Lakshay Gaur, meetup organizers across the country, event coordinators, poster masters and many more. They have all been a major part of our journey this year!

We would have loved to hear from all of you in this blog series.

Want to join us? Join the Hyperledger India Chapter mailing list, follow us on LinkedIn, chat with us on Rocket.Chat.

Jan 19
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Meet the Hyperledger India Chapter community!

By Blog, Regional Chapter

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Like many of us, my interest in blockchain started with Bitcoin. As novel applications started emerging using blockchain and excitement began to reach a high pitch for this technology, my interest grew deep. I realized that this technology can solve many social issues. I have chosen the area of blockchain for my academic project.

At the same time, the relatively new programming languages such as Go, Rust and Swift that are used in blockchain development were in my mind so digging deeper into technology means I can gain much more for the investment of time. 

I have a practical problem to be solved. The problem is how to ensure that the logs generated by various systems are not tampered with. Naturally, blockchain is one of the technology options for solving that problem and, in fact, is an affordable candidate.

I considered Exonum and Hyperledger Sawtooth as they both have Rust SDKs. Meanwhile, I succeeded in installing Hyperledger Sawtooth in AWS Cloud, and, since then, Sawtooth and Rust have become my technical stack. During this installation, I started communicating with the Hyperledger Sawtooth mailing list.

Rust has a steep learning curve but delivers beautiful results. Initially, I depended on Sawtooth documentation, but it was not comprehensive for the early stage of the work. I depended on Rust User-Lang forum, which is a fantastic group, and the Hyperledger Sawtooth mailing list. At this point, Arun S M had responded to my queries. He politely answered my questions. Mr. Arun shared his Rust code, which stood as an example. On glancing this, I got some ideas on using Rust in Sawtooth and developed my code. As I was less busy during Covid lockdown, I spent a lot of time understanding Rust and Sawtooth SDKs, which helped me a lot. In addition, Dan Anderson’s videos helped me.

At last, the project has come up very nicely, and I could demonstrate to find out whether a log generated by a system is  tampered with or not. You can find the presentation in the Hyperledger YouTube channel as part 1 and part 2.

I’m interested in Distributed Algorithms and wish to work towards trustable distributed systems. I’m more interested in subtle things. But you all know, interests mutate along the axis of time. If my health permits, I would like to contribute more, which can bring deep satisfaction to me. 

The technologies like blockchain can certainly solve social problems, and I’m sure these technologies can bring next generation eGov applications and platforms.

S Gopinath
Scientist-F
National Informatics Center, Chennai

2020 as a year has been extremely challenging for all of us, for known reasons. However, that being said, there were a lot of innovative and productive actions taken by organizations and individuals across the globe.

Personally this year has been immensely satisfactory with respect to my activities related to blockchain. During this year, I successfully  completed the Blockchain for Business certificate course from Linux Foundations through edX. Also I became a Certified Blockchain Solutions Architect from BTA. I have been actively volunteering with the Hyperledger India Chapter this year. If you don’t know already, the Hyperledger India chapter is a vibrant community focused on encouraging more participation in Hyperledger from this part of the world. As you would have noticed in the accomplishments list, we have done quite a lot  in 2020.

In 2021, we, as a chapter, have some interesting and challenging activities planned like increased student outreach, reaching out to the industry to talk about the success stories, building a strong network, and much more. I hope to continue my volunteering activities in industry outreach. And I would request more people who are involved in building blockchain products and interested in learning and contributing to join us in this journey.

Wishing you all a happy New Year.

Sunitha Chandrasekaran
Engineering Manager, Sabre India

The year 2020 was where we completed a PoC on blockchain and also worked towards moving to production. I started volunteering with the Hyperledger India Chapter this  year, and it has been great to network with several blockchain experts from this region. The weekly meetings provide great insights into several Hyperledger projects and how newbies can join and contribute to them. The Blockchain Stories 2020 series and the Blockchain Techfest 2020 series provided an opportunity to share in depth about business use cases for enterprise blockchain and also knowledge around the Hyperledger ecosystem. These sessions also were great sources of the information on how to deploy/manage a production grade implementation. Julian and Brian gave us all volunteers a warm welcome to celebrate Hyperledger’s 5th Anniversary. They bring in so much energy/enthusiasm and manage to stay  connected with members from different time zones round the clock. I am looking forward to connecting and contributing to the lab projects that the Hyperledger India Chapter has planned in the year 2021.

Rajesh Krishnan
Distinguished Member of Technical Staff and Sr Technical Architect
Dell Technologies

“Tough times never last, tough people do!” ~ Robert H Schuller

This famous quote by Robert Schuller summarises most of our 2020 journey. It was bitter; it was challenging and, obviously, it was a hell of a lot harder than what we expected on new year’s eve of 2020, but here we are. Even through all these struggles, there are certain glimpses of hope or progress that has happened in our lives during this tough year. For me, personally, it was the opportunity to give back to the community.

This year I was given the opportunity to coordinate the student outreach program of Hyperledger India Chapter. Being an active member of various student and professional societies made the task much easier for me. In fact, we pulled together the first iteration of the same in a matter of days, all thanks to Arun S M, Kamlesh Nagavare, and the volunteers from IEEE Computer Society Kerala Chapter.

That being said, I am confident that Hyperledger India Chapter will spearhead a lot more of these student outreach programs and will be an evangelist of Hyperledger and enterprise blockchain among the growing student and professional circuits of the subcontinent.

Make sure you keep watching this space. A lot more is going to happen in 2021.

Athil Gafoor
Head of Blockchain
Phaethon Technologies

In the next blog post, you will hear from one of the Hyperledger members, Saintgits College of Engineering. Aneena Ann Alexander, a pioneer and a role model for women engineers, pens down her thoughts on Women in Blockchain.

Jan 12
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Hyperledger India Chapter in 2020

By Blog, Regional Chapter

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Blockchain technology adoption and the startup ecosystem around it within the Indian subcontinent reached new heights in the year 2020. The Government of India announced a blockchain center of excellence where the technology is being evaluated for adoption across multitude of areas. The Hyperledger regional chapter was inaugurated in early 2019 to bolster blockchain technology in India and rapidly spread its wings in 2020.

Below are a few of the chapter’s accomplishments in the year 2020:

  • HyperHack 2020: The first ever blockchain-run, blockchain-based hackathon to attract teams from across the Asia Pacific region. Prizes worth $10,000 USD were distributed through sponsors.
  • Blockchain Stories 2020: A platform for sharing stories and learning from each other. The event, which drew speakers from over 25 organizations across the Asia Pacific, was spread across five  weeks and had over 1,000 participants.
  • Women in Blockchain: A panel discussion organized in association with the Saintgits College of Engineering with distinguished speakers from the India diaspora. The event also featured renowned names in blockchain technology.
  • Blockchain Hype to Reality: An event aimed at answering the startup ecosystem that echoed the mantra of Vocal for Local. It attracted a crowd of over 1,500 from across the Asia Pacific region.
  • Blockchain Techfest 2020: An opportunity for technology enthusiasts to meet, greet and learn from the maintainers of different Hyperledger projects. The event, held in three sessions across three weeks, covered nine Hyperledger projects..

The year also saw improvement in the way community meetings are run. The chapter adopted a more structured format for running meetings and making decisions as well as an option to hear from everybody in the community, which led to increased participation. LinkedIn engagement also increased with more than 2,300 enthusiasts showing interest in the chapter’s activities in the last year. The chapter has also produced over 25 videos on the Hyperledger YouTube channel.

Members of the India community also have taken on an increasing number of leadership roles with Hypereldger at the global level. We have chapter members actively involved in the Hyperledger technical steering committee, as maintainers and contributors across all the projects within the Hyperledger greenhouse and as noticeable contributors in special interest groups and working group activities.

The community activities have accelerated in the region. One example of the quick pace of activity: The idea of student outreach led to an immediate invite from the IEEE Computer Society Kerala Chapter. While we are still defining quarterly goals for the year 2021, here is the gist of what to expect in the coming year:

  1. Additional student outreach and the possibility of a Hyperledger India Chapter – Student Wing.
  2. Industry outreach aimed at bridging the booming startup ecosystem with the industry experts.
  3. Aligning the blockchain activities with the broader effort to make India an innovation hub.
  4. A second edition of HyperHack, a hackathon with problem statements that are more relevant to the region. Plans include special consideration for student submissions to encourage the participation. There will also be a lineup of learning activities priori.
  5. A 2021 edition of our most popular event, Blockchain Stories, with the aim of increased participation and a new wave of success stories to be shared.

Here is the statement of gratitude from the co-leads of the Hyperledger India Chapter. Arun S M is a senior software engineer at Walmart and also a technical steering committee member at Hyperledger. Kamesh Nagware is a VP Blockchain Technology at Snapper Future Tech as well as an active contributor to the Climate Action & Accounting and Trade Finance SIGs at Hyperledger.

“It is amazing to see how a vibrant and diverse set of people come together for a cause, in this case blockchain technology and Hyperledger. India is a diverse country, and its strength lies in its diversity. We at the Hyperledger India Chapter brought together the finest like-minded people from across the country under one roof.

From running the community meetings once a week as a forum for answering technical questions to having  the weekly trackable activities, it was a long journey. The community stood by us through this transformational path. We did multiple experiments with our activities through the year. At the end, we are happy for what has come out of it.

When it was the time to organize events, we were quick to identify that going virtual is inevitable. Also, the geographical location advantage India provides has made it easy for us to connect with the audiences across Asia Pacific, Middle East Asia and Europe. The continued engagement of volunteers and the  interest shown by the blockchain enthusiasts has propelled us to do even more. This feeling of ours echoed through the feedback, emails, YouTube viewership and the number of times these events were spoken about across the globe.

Hyperledger India Chapter carried the strong bond it built across Asia Pacific region, and it shows up in the continued engagement we have with the enthusiasts outside Indian territory.

On Dec 17th, 2020, Hyperledger marked five  years since its inception. On Dec 18th, Hyperledger hosted an open networking event for the Asia Pacific region as part of its 5th anniversary celebration. The event attracted an overwhelming crowd from across India.

We couldn’t be more proud of what the Hyperledger India Chapter accomplished in the year 2020. It is all possible because of the ever increasing enthusiasm we see in the community. All roads now lead to 2021. We are excited to have more community engagement in the coming year!

 We look forward to having more technical contributions from the region in 2021 and  call on all of you residing in Indian subcontinent to join our weekly calls. Let us build a better future holding hands together.

All of this would not be possible without the help of staff at the Hyperledger. Everybody at Hyperledger has stood by us. Dorothy Cheng and David Boswell specifically have eased most of our jobs.”

“Since the launch of the Hyperledger India Chapter in early 2019, it has been a pleasure for me to work with this inspiring group of volunteers, dedicated to supporting Hyperledger technologies, open source collaboration, sharing information and assisting the India blockchain community. 2020 has been a challenging year. It has been heartening to see the innovative ways the India Chapter has found to share information and support the blockchain community – in India, across Asia Pacific and globally.

In 2020 the India Chapter created and ran engaging events online – from it’s HyperHack hackathon, to the informative Blockchain Stories series, to it’s Women in Blockchain event and much more. It set up exciting programmes in areas such as student outreach and tirelessly worked to meet, communicate with and support the community.

The India Chapter was the first of its kind in the Hyperledger community, and it has inspired the creation of Chapters around the world.

The India Chapter has grown immensely and accelerated its development in 2020. I am excited to see how they build on their successes as we move into 2021 and face the challenges and opportunities ahead. I know they will bring energy, commitment and inspiration to all that they do.

There are so many in the Hyperledger India Chapter who deserve recognition and thanks from the Hyperledger community. I would particularly like to thank Arun S M and Kamlesh Nagware for their great leadership in 2020.

I look forward to working with the Hyperledger India Chapter in 2021.”

From all of us at the Hyperledger India Chapter, we wish you all a very Happy New Year!

In this series of blog posts, you will hear from many of our active volunteers on what the year 2020 and the Hyperledger India Chapter brought to them.

Cover image by motionstock from Pixabay.

Jan 11
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Blockchain technology for healthcare data management

By Blog, Healthcare, Hyperledger Fabric

The accelerating digitization of the healthcare sector has led to the creation of large volumes of sensitive data stored online. Swiss eHealth strategy promotes the adoption of the electronic patient record to allow registered patients and authorized healthcare professionals to access medical data anytime and anywhere. To achieve this, a reliable, compliant, and privacy-preserving solution is required to support definition, maintenance, and enforcement of fine-grained authorizations (consents). Convergence of distributed ledger technology and intelligent data management approaches provides a unique opportunity to bring trust, transparency, auditability, and optimization of medical data management and other healthcare processes. 

Recent research works and numerous PoC implementations actively demonstrate the value of blockchain technology for connecting health care stakeholders in order to help maintain a complete history of patient’s health care data, ensure traceability of the data exchange and automate claims and reimbursement processing. Transparent and auditable prescription monitoring may help to avoid incompatibility of the prescribed medications and can provide incentives for writing fewer prescriptions for certain medications such as opioids. In the pharmaceutical supply chain, blockchain can bring traceability to the tracking of pharmaceutical goods, from verification of the producer, to the transportation and storage conditions and control over drugs returned to the pharmaceutical company. Applying blockchain technology in biomedical research may facilitate new ways for patients to contribute with their healthcare data while ensuring privacy and security and  may  speed-up participant recruitment and collection of large and integrated heterogeneous data. When building such heterogeneous datasets, ensuring authenticity of the data and their sources is essential in order to make informed unbiased decisions and get valuable insights from the data. 

What are the important aspects and potential hurdles that deserve attention from practitioners when employing blockchain in the healthcare settings? While domain-specific requirements to the system functionality vary depending on the application, desirable properties of a resilient healthcare infrastructure for management of the sensitive data distributed among multiple sources are: data and process interoperability, privacy, security, and compliance. For instance, in the case of connecting healthcare stakeholders to facilitate management of patients’ history, some of the most important requirements are ensuring patients’ rights to access and share their sensitive data but also to erase their personal data. To achieve these, the system must ensure interoperability (i.e., must have the ability to exchange and interpret the data) and must be privacy-preserving (i.e, the patients must be able to have full control over the sharing/access revocation/erasure of their data). 

Data erasure (i.e., the possibility to erase the data) itself is not an “out-of-the box property” of the blockchain technology. It is challenging to comply with the right of data erasure when using immutable ledger. However, different approaches exist to address this issue including off-chain management of sensitive data, privacy-preserving techniques (such as encryption, zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), secure multi-party computations (MPC), and data pseudonymization and anonymization. If anonymized data are released, a reliable infrastructure is required to support a trustworthy collaborative environment and to verify that the data were not altered. 

The choice of the appropriate approach depends on the underlying blockchain technology, the number of participants in the network and the sensitivity and volume of the data, among others. Moreover, patient control over his identifiable data and his actions (for instance, providing consent or authorizations) has to be efficiently verifiable and compatible with access to the data in an emergency situation such as when the patient is unconscious.

Hyperledger Fabric is a permissioned blockchain technology framework that has been actively employed in the implementations of blockchain-based systems for healthcare data management. To ensure privacy of data subjects, Fabric mainly relies (i) on multiple channels support, which make it possible to limit the access to the data to certain participants of the consortia, and (ii) on private collections where sensitive data can be exchanged peer-to-peer and stored in the private databases, yet accessible from chaincode on authorized peers and hashed to verify authenticity. Storing only hash on-chain is also used to provide verifiability of vast amounts of anonymized data for data-driven research and applications. In this case, contrary to limiting the access to the data, it is of a high importance to set up a reliable multi-cloud environment and collaborative framework – a step forward towards attaining interoperability. 

Blockchain infrastructure offered by Swisscom provides support for multi-cloud environments. Multiple non-endorsing peers provided by Swisscom are now dedicated to support verifiability of public COVID-19 related data, as a part of the multi-party, multi-source verifiable data sharing platform MiPasa. To address the scale of the problem, the types of data, languages, time-zones and jurisdictions,- many vendors joined forces to strengthen and support this blockchain-based shared infrastructure to unlock the potential of the data and deliver integrated, trusted, and verifiable insights across multiple industries around the globe. 

Jan 07
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Hyperledger Italian Chapter Launches to Bolster Local Community and Development

By Blog, Regional Chapter

The living society has long been inching toward a moment of overlap between physical and digital iterations in the so-called digital transformation of social interaction between people and legal entities.

Step by step, we are entering into a digitized society able to operate through the exchange of fungible and digitized assets.

Within this scenario, distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) have an essential role and a possible large-scale application that can be extended to various economic and social sectors by managing huge amounts of data with tangible consequences on the real life of end users. Nations are trying to onboard DLT software solutions with the intent to support development of the digital society and economy. 

In the case of Italy, the  diversified import-export-oriented economy offers a conducive environment for the development, test and adoption of blockchain solutions in a variety of sectors. This peculiarity of the Italian business structure opens several opportunities, as international trade is one of the most interesting areas of development of solutions based on DLT. 

Italian industrial sector that is worldwide famous for “Made in Italy” style carries an important market value that can strongly benefit from the features of transparency, security and traceability offered by blockchain. SMEs represent the core of the Italian industrial clusters (e.g., textiles, furniture, white goods and footwear) in addition to other important export sectors like mechanics and agri-food. Blockchain systems are inherently strong in ensuring optimal management of data provided by traditional quality assurance providers on provenance and quality of products, which could add significant value to production processes embedding this technology.

Innovative Italian SMEs are testing DLT solutions to serve these sectors, and some are starting to commercialize them. State-participated companies, financial institutions, associations and large Italian tech players are experimenting on distributed registries, for example SIA by SIAChain.

The idea of ​​proposing an “Italian Chapter” lay precisely on the purpose of ​​providing a different and more comprehensive perspective of the DLT phenomenon, being aware of the wide field of application of the technology. The Italian society should be preparing to experience a wide adoption of distributed ledger technology and the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger in its form of independent open source software collaborative has a key role to guide the interoperability of software solutions on the market and the harmonization of institutional compliance processes between digital iterations and real iterations at national institutional level.

The main task of the chapter will be the development of the Hyperledger community in Italy and guidance for the various private and public projects born in the national territory that aim to establish a common national best practice. The Hyperledger Italian Chapter will also seek to interface with national institutional entities to provide technological support for the harmonization and creation of common technical and operational standards for national strategic projects.

In this perspective, the chapter will engage with different functional areas from the technical sector. This entails coordinating meetups, involving academic-university research projects, encouraging  private business projects in different product areas in the territory national (from finance, manufacturing industry, agri-food, luxury industry, etc.) to share knowledge and experiences, and supporting of corporate or institutional initiatives for the development of national strategic projects.

Obviously, no project can work alone, which is why we consider it essential to share this proposal with the technical, private-corporate, academic, and public-institutional ecosystem so that a community can emerge and bring together the best technology experts to face the challenges that an intensely digitized society has to deal with.

The chapter’s initial activities will include diving into some new features released like Hyperledger Cactus, a new tool by Accenture allowing interoperability between DLT networks and now within Hyperledger Greenhouse, and other amazing updates by Linux Foundation and Hyperledger members like IBM, Chainstack and Digital Asset.

We hope you can join our community!

Sali a bordo con noi!

Please visit:

Hyperledger Italian Chapter wiki page
Hyperledger Italian Chapter LinkedIn profile

Dec 28
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Introducing the Social Impact Ecosystem blog series from Hyperledger’s Social Impact Special Interest Group

By Blog, Special Interest Group

The Hyperledger Social Impact SIG (SI-SIG) is a global community focused on how blockchain technology can be leveraged for a greater social impact. We are working together to identify use cases and opportunities, share feedback and lessons learned, and ensure blockchain is implemented where relevant and in a way that maximizes positive impact. 

Our SIG has put together several helpful resources to help new members find their way around. Our landing page gives a general overview of who we are and what we do. Those new to the SIG can visit the New Member Center to learn what we do and how they can participate. The Social Impact SIG Resource Center provides information on where to find resources for different sectors of the community, such as Financial Empowerment or Governance and Democracy. Our Community Presentations page is where you can find the latest discussion topics and presentations for our upcoming meetings as well as recordings and notes from past meetings. 

Since July 23, 2019, our meetings have been recorded and archived with the meeting notes, which makes them an excellent learning resource for new members and researchers alike. Highlights include talks by

If you would like to speak at a future SIG meeting, please reach out to us at the email list below.

We are excited to announce the launch of our blog post series “Social Impact Ecosystem,” which will feature blog posts from community members, guest writers and beyond on the various ways in which blockchain can be leveraged for social impact. The series will give members a chance to share what they are working on with others who are interested in our focus, and readers will be able to learn about different ways blockchain is being used to create positive changes in our world. Here is a quick glimpse of the blog posts that are in queue:

Shawn Wilborne will author a four-part series aimed at tackling the issues plaguing human consumption. From the food we eat to the clothing we purchase, we must maximize the value from every product and extend its lifecycle beyond single use. First, we’ll look at how blockchain can provide recycling and composting rewards to the masses to drive consumer adoption. Next, we’ll analyze hazardous and toxic materials to track them from the point of purchase through their proper disposal. This is vital to keeping our air, water, and soil free from contaminants that cause chronic diseases and shorten life spans. Then we’ll look at how the government can expedite the adoption of recycling and composting programs and use blockchain to verify accuracy, traceability, and program participation. Lastly, we’ll analyze how businesses and facilities can go Zero Waste and use blockchain to verify their entire supply chain. Cutting carbon not only benefits the environment and human health, but also increases brand recognition. We hope to inspire blockchain applications to preserve precious natural resources for future generations. 

Bobbi Muscara will share a series on how to develop a blockchain project to benefit your community. This will feature a series of guided checkpoints to help you identify the current needs of your community and how blockchain could be used to help.  

I will write a series addressing the varied ways blockchain is being leveraged in agriculture. While most readers will be familiar with the idea of using blockchain to track food along the supply chain to reduce food fraud and foodborne illness, there are a wide range of initiatives around the world that are focused on human rights and reducing human trafficking in our food and agriculture supply chains, environmental impact, and helping smallholder farmers and other producers access capital.

Would you like to add your project to our series? Would you like to present at a future meeting? Please reach out to social-impact-sig@lists.hyperledger.org to contribute. 

Get Involved! 

The SI-SIG is community driven. We are always looking for fellow social impacters to join our mission. To start, simply subscribe to the Hyperledger Social Impact SIG mailing list and introduce yourself and/or join our bi-weekly SI-SIG discussions every other Tuesday at 10:00am EST. Meeting details can be found here. Visit our Wiki page to learn more as well: https://wiki.hyperledger.org/display/SISIG.

Dec 21
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Hyperledger Fabric at the heart of a telecommunication carrier ecosystem

By Blog, Hyperledger Fabric, Telecom

Telecommunications are a central aspect of our daily life: we are always connected through our phones as are the majority of people on the planet. To support our connectivity, communication service providers have been building a network of infrastructure and business relationships for the past few decades. The new trends of the industry (global mobile, Internet of Thing and 5G) are bringing new challenges and a new business approach. Recent projects within the industry show that blockchain is a technology that can support the industry transformation.

A common scenario

In 2018, 93 million* Americans traveled abroad, according to the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Travel and Tourism Office. Of course, all of them had a cellphone. When they landed on foreign soil, their phones connected to a foreign network. Their American carriers charged them for every phone call, text or data consumed abroad through the foreign network. In the back end, the foreign network providers charged the American ones for letting the subscribers using the local infrastructure. 

Now imagine this scenario repeating itself for the millions of people traveling every day across any country in the world or for the millions that make international calls from their home or offices to other countries. You can get an idea of how much data carriers need to manage to successfully charge each other for these services.

Every month billions of transactions need to be tracked, validated, reconciled, cleared and settled based complex international agreements between competing parties. That makes for an ideal scenario where blockchain can streamline operations and lift carriers from the burden of manual processes, legal disputes and unforeseen costs.

A growing interest in blockchain

Several telecom industry organizations, such as the GSMA and ITW GLF-backed Communication Blockchain Network, are showing interest in blockchain as the solution of choice for the management of high-volume transactions.

The main reason for this choice is that, to solve an industry-wide problem, they are looking for an industry-wide solution. A blockchain network, through its distributed ledger technology, can provide the reach and the governance required to push shared standards among competitors in the same sector in a collaborative way.

In addition, blockchain enables an open and interoperable ecosystem based on shared standards, where each player is able to bring their own data, safely share it and contribute to the achievement of their business goals.

Looking closer to the specific process of clearing and settling large amounts of transactions, blockchain has capabilities that match perfectly with the issues faced by carriers.

Distributed ledger technology allows parties to see the same data (values, volumes, etc.) for each transaction. Smart contracts translate complex agreement into digital code, so that they do not need to be manually executed any longer. Consensus mechanisms reduce the disputes at the end of the settlement process. 

These capabilities allow telecommunication companies to save time and labor dedicated to manual processes and to reduce the cash tied up in disputes.

Hyperledger Fabric  is a central enabler of such use cases. In fact, Fabric is designed to support enterprise implementation, providing scalability, security and operational tools that make enterprise transactions safe and scalable.

But there is more

The telecommunication industry is facing one of the greatest shifts in its history due the arrival of Internet of Things (IoT)and 5G. Both technologies are supporting the voice to data substitution. Historically, voice was the driver of large volumes of transactions, but now data have a larger and growing share thanks to the role of machines in generating large amounts of IoT input.

The abundance and growth of data poses carriers with the challenge of storing, managing, and exchanging that information in order to drive business value. Hyperledger Fabric can be the enabling platform of high value and innovative use cases such as data access control (empowering final users to decide how and who should have access to the data they generate), device identity (integrating blockchain, IoT and security to record device on the network and prevent harmful usage) or data exchange (create marketplaces of accessible data where data supplier are rewarded by data consumer).

To conclude, the industry is strengthening its global ecosystem and is looking for a technology that fosters collaboration and creativity. Hyperledger Fabric is an ideal fit and can allow greater efficiencies and new capabilities that have not been explored yet.

* https://travel.trade.gov/tinews/archive/tinews2019/20190402.asp