Blog Archives – Hyperledger Foundation

Nov 30

Hyperledger in Action Across Asia

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth

It’s #HyperledgerAsia month, so we are spotlighting the fast-growing adoption and deployment of Hyperledger technologies throughout the region. Companies across Asia are driving a nonstop stream of innovative new enterprise blockchain implementations ranging from global shipping networks and international digital health passports to training certification and secure document solutions.

Read on for just a sampling of the solutions at work across Asia powered by Hyperledger technologies. And join the conversation using #HyperledgerAsia on social channels.

BondbloX Bond Exchange

Singapore-based BondEvalue broke through barriers when it unveiled the world’s first blockchain-based bond exchange that allows investors to trade BondbloX Bond Exchange (BBX) – $1,000 fractions of traditional wholesale bonds. This leads to better access and better diversification opportunities for a market that is typically inaccessible except to more wealthy investors.

BBX leverages the Hyperledger Sawtooth blockchain technology to fractionlize bonds, make trading highly transparent and more cost effective. Settlement on BBX is on a T+0 basis, that is within seconds instead of the normal two-day settlement cycle, thereby reducing counterparty settlement risks for investors.

BondEvalue continues to engage more member participants such as Taurus Wealth Advisors, the leading fee-based, multi-family wealth management firm in Singapore, and Amstel, an institutional fixed-income broker with operations across Asia and Europe. BondEvalue is also expanding its footprint with a joint venture partnership in Mexico. The company’s goal is to empower a more diverse pool of investors and introduce them to institutional-grade opportunities in the bond market through its cutting-edge blockchain solution.

Global Shipping Business Network

Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN), headquartered in Hong Kong, is a neutral trade data utility platform whose members include container carriers and terminal operators/ports that handle one in three containers worldwide. It is built on a Hyperledger Fabric-based permissioned blockchain with strong data governance where only authorized parties are granted the right to contribute and consume shipping related data. By leveraging immutability of the blockchain and data field level privacy through cryptography, participants in the supply chain such as terminals, carriers, shippers, freight forwarders, truckers, customs and financial institutions, can collaboratively design and enable industry wide, end to end, solutions. The platform was developed using Oracle Blockchain by CargoSmart and is operated by IQAX.

[markets]^N

Developed by KoinEarth and deployed using Hyperledger Fabric on Oracle Blockchain, [markets]^N is a secure B2B platform that’s used by India-based Hindalc, the world’s largest aluminum rolling company, to get a higher degree of visibility into its inventory and supply chain and enforce its SLAs with service providers. This includes tracking and monitoring of purchasing orders, shipments and invoices in real-time, in coordination with its suppliers.

Mindtree’s Digital Health Passport for Travel

Post-pandemic passenger air travel is constantly evolving due to border restrictions and COVID-related mandates. The need of the hour for airlines is to have a comprehensive and adaptive solution that informs and educates travelers, airline staff, airport authorities and government in real-time about COVID test requirements, safety protocols, vaccines and other regulations. Mindtree’s Digital Health Passport for Travel solution, which is built using Hyperledger Fabric blockchain technology, promises to do exactly this and thereby make post-pandemic global airline travel seamless, hassle-free, and safe.

MiFix Gateway

KrypC partnered with New Street Technologies to implement a blockchain marketplace for lending built on Hyperledger Fabric. MiFix Gateway is a distributed private network where participating financial institutions can access qualified leads and compete for customers seeking loans. Lenders view the credit score and personal information of each lead and offer competitive loans based on this information. MiFix provides a single platform where banks can earn revenue from loan disbursements and customers can obtain the most competitive rates while maintaining complete control of their data.

MiFiX connects remittance providers and banks to reduce interest rates. Though there have been efforts made by banks and financial institutions to provide affordable loans to rural parts of society, the last mile cost of collecting the loan pushes the cost to beyond affordable levels. By connecting the remittance companies in various corridors and lending institutions in India through a blockchain network, MiFiX is facilitating the sharing of remittance and loan information in a trusted and immutable fashion eliminating the collection cost.

SnapCert

SnapCert is a blockchain-based Credential Authentication platform for universities, colleges and institutes. Offered as a SaaS platform by Snapper Future Tech, SnapCert equips education customers to issue and verify credentials on a blockchain, ensuring no fraudulent credentials can be issued in their name.

Customers include Kushal, a social organization that trains unskilled labour under Indian government National Skill Development program. With SnapCert, verifiers can get real-time verification of Kushal credentials directly from the primary source of the data simply using the last four digits of the credential holder’s Aadhaar id and the name. The solution solves the problem of misplaced paper credentials and reduces the trust deficit by providing easy access to credible credentials that prove the holder’s construction training. It also helps Kushal manage long term record keeping for the skilled workers, connect stakeholders that need the data and increase transparency and ease of doing business.

SnapCert is built using Oracle Blockchain, which is powered by Hyperledger Fabric.

Secure Logistics Data Exchange

The Secure Logistics Data Exchange (SLDE) platform was launched by the Ministry of Commerce of India to digitize the generation, exchange, and compliance verification of 36 document types commonly used by banks, customs, freight forwarders, exporters, importers, and transport operations. The SLDE platform, which runs on the Hyperledger Fabric-based Oracle Blockchain, is a solution to replace the present manual process of generation, exchange and compliance of logistics documents with a digitized, secure and seamless document exchange system It was developed by CargoExchange in conjunction with a number of banks (ICICI, Axis Bank, State Bank of India and HDFC Bank) and the ministry’s Logistics Division.

Tech Mahindra Document Solution

Tech Mahindra, in collaboration with a partner, has built a SaaS platform allowing companies to securely share sensitive documents with anyone within or outside the organization. Supported on Hyperledger Fabric, the platform enables mortgage companies, banks, accounting firms, and others to safely share their customers’ PII, IP, and sensitive information with co-processing entities in compliance with GDPR, CCPA privacy regulations.

Tech Mahindra is implementing the solution for the China division of a leading global manufacturer of consumer dispensing packaging and drug delivery devices. In the current engagement, Tech Mahindra will enable the customer to classify and securely share sensitive documents within or outside the organization with the help of advanced encryption, policies and immutable audit logs that are traceable on blockchain. Our solution will make information tamper-proof, and hack-proof thereby enabling our customer to transact with integrity and confidence with all internal and external stakeholders.

Nov 22

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Hyperledger Foundation Community Training: Accelerate your decentralized identity skills with two free Hyperledger Indy and Hyperledger Aries workshops

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Indy

Hyperledger Indy and Hyperledger Aries are two of the popular open source repositories that can help propel development of decentralised identity products and services. Aries is a toolbox of several blockchain-agnostic repositories that allow for trusted online peer-to-peer interactions based on decentralized identities and verifiable credentials. The project grew out of work that was happening in Indy to create technologies for managing decentralized identity. Aries was moved to graduated status by the TSC in February 2021. Indy graduated in 2019 and provides a specific blockchain purpose-built for identity.

Seeing the growth in interest for these two projects, Hyperledger Foundation has partnered with member company Indicio and its team of deeply experienced developers and architects to develop this free, multi-course curriculum to help developers and architects gain a deeper understanding of decentralized identity, with a deep dive into Aries and Indy. Registration and preparation information can be found on this Workshops page.

These two four-hour, beginning level hands-on workshops provide opportunities to install and run the Indy and Aries components just like you would if you were making a real Indy-based network or Aries-based application. They introduce the necessary Git repos as well as how to use the Indy Command Line Interface (Indy CLI), run the Aries toolbox and create and issue a verifiable credential. They also introduce some current projects using Aries and Indy to help you accelerate your understanding of decentralized identity and build the skills necessary to successfully make changes to the underlying code with hands-on guidance to develop your own projects.

About the courses

Build Your Identity Solution Using Hyperledger Aries
Thursday, January 20, 2022
8 AM to noon Pacific

The first in the Hyperledger Foundation Community Workshop series, Intro to Decentralized Identity is a four hour online course to introduce the core concepts and principles of decentralized identity. As you progress, you’ll learn how to use a Hyperledger Indy-based network, be introduced to the Indy CLI, and install and run the Aries toolbox to create, issue, and verify a verifiable credential.

Topics also include:

Decentralized identity concepts and principles
The verifiable credential data model
Decentralized identity ecosystem
Introduction to network tools indyscan and SelfServe
Intro to Indy CLI and how to use the CLI to access a network
What Aries is
Install and run Aries Toolbox
Create connections and issue a credential
How to verify credential

Hyperledger Indy Technical Deep Dive
February 3, 2022
8:00 AM to noon Pacific

The second in the series is a four-hour course that advances your skills related to Hyperledger Indy node code and the Indy SDK. It also covers the commonly used cryptography libraries contained in Hyperledger Ursa, the Plenum ledger and how to interact with and change the repositories and code.

Topics also include:

Install and build with Indy SDK
Introduction to libindy, indycli etc
Indy VDR (replacement for Indy-SDK)
Making changes to Indy node code
Build and IndyTest the changes locally
How to get involved in the community further with chats, helplines, and meetings

Both courses do have several must-have prerequisites, including the installation of docker, installation of Indy-CLI, installation of rust, and the download of important repositories. This can be done independently, or you will have the opportunity to connect with instructors during pre-course office hours on a dedicated helpline.

These new courses are the first community workshops offered by the Hyperledger Foundation for free in an effort to expand the use, contributions, and maintainer community of Hyperledger Indy and Aries. Recordings of the courses will be made available at the conclusion of the instructor-led events.

Registration for the free course is limited to 100. Registration links and further information about the prerequisites and course materials can be found at https://wiki.hyperledger.org/display/events/Workshops.

Nov 19

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Weekend Update: This Week’s Round-up of Remote Blockchain Learning Resources

By Hyperledger Blog, Weekend Update

Welcome to the Weekend Update. Our goal with this weekly post is to share quick updates about online education, networking and collaboration opportunities and resources for the open source enterprise blockchain community. This week’s edition is a double issue, covering events over the next two weeks as many will be offline over the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.

If you have suggestions for resources or events that we should spotlight in a future Weekend Update, let us know here using #HLWeekendUpdate.

Hyperledger In-depth: An hour with Tech Mahindra

Physical art, media or any other physical asset in the real world has a value attached to it which is tangible however a digital asset has no value even as of today. Further there is no way to verify an original digital version. This is where blockchain and NFTs come to the forefront. Join Rajesh Dhuddu from Tech Mahindra for a discussion on “Demystifying NFTs: Introduction, Applicability and Use Cases” to learn more about how blockchain is powering the next generation of digital collectibles and enabling digital asset owners to monetize their assets. Blockchain further helps with instant verification of authenticity, provable ownership, traceability, immutability, peer-to-peer trading, and the ability to create provably-unique collectibles, powered by Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

Tune in on Thursday, November 25, at 10:30 AM CET. For more information and to register, go here.

Blockchain Expo Europe

The Blockchain Expo series will return to the RAI, Amsterdam, on November 23-24. There will be a virtual edition of the event as well on November 30 and December 1.

The show will bring together key industries from across the globe for two days of top-level content and discussion across four co-located events covering Blockchain, IoT, Cyber Security & Cloud, AI and Big data.

On November 30, at 11:40 AM CET, Daniela Barbosa, Hyperledger Foundation Executive Director, will share her take on “What’s Next for Enterprise Blockchain.” And on December 1, Emiliano Vernini of Poste Italiane will be part of the keynote panel “2022 – The year for digital assets?” taking place at 10:50 AM CET.

Hyperledger Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group Guest Presentation: Building A Trustworthy, Transparent and Traceable Ecosystem to Safeguard Nature

Join the Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group for a talk by Walid Al Saqqaf of Rebalance Earth on “Building A Trustworthy, Transparent and Traceable Ecosystem to Safeguard Nature.” Since the Kyoto Agreements in 1992, there has been a growth in carbon offsets that have been plagued by a lack of transparency, double counting, lack of standards and middlemen out to make a quick buck. This talk will reframe the conversation on how we can simultaneously tackle climate change, biodiversity loss and poverty by building a global platform for valuing and funding a living nature. Join us to find out how innovative technologies like blockchain, AI and IoT can work in partnership with nature tech to safeguard nature.”

For more information on the meeting, which is Tuesday, November 30, at 8:00 AM PST, go here.

Hyperledger In-depth: An hour with Splunk

Security monitoring of Hyperledger Fabric networks requires ingesting and aggregating ledger, log, and metric data from many sources. It can be a challenge to correlate this data with system and network data to alert on indicators of suspicious behavior. Christoper Cordi from Splunk will lead this session on “Hyperledger Fabric Security Monitoring.” He will discuss how to collect and act on Hyperledger Fabric data to minimize downtime and reduce the meantime to detect and respond to incidents. He will also provide a current Hyperledger Fabric threat landscape and real-world example of how to detect a Denial of Service attack.

Tune in on Wednesday, December 1, at 10:00 AM PST. For more information and to register, go here.

Hyperledger Telecom Special Interest Group Guest Presentation: Roaming Agreements

Join the Telecom Special Interest Group for a talk “Use of NLP and DLT to Enable the Digitalization of Telecom Roaming Agreements.” Santiago Figueroa-Lorenzo from CEIT, Spain; Ahmad Sghaier Omar from Blockchain Foundry, Canada; Noureddin Sadawi from the University of London and SoftLigh Tech, U.K.; and Mohamed Elshrif, Post Doc Researcher at Hamid Ben Khalifa University, Qatar, will share their work on this project, which was part of the Hyperledger Mentorship Program. During the project, they built an MVP for automating the drafting and negotiation processes for telecom roaming agreements using Hyperledger Fabric. In the first phase, the project addressed how to use NLP to extract main features from a number of telecom agreements drafts. Specifically, creating a model that represents the text of the roaming agreement into standard clause text, variables, text variation and custom text. The second phase addressed building the chaincode and the backend and frontend pieces of the MVP to show a simple demo of how this can work.

For more information on the meeting, which is Thursday, December 2, at 9:00 AM PST, go here.

Virtual Meetups

Saturday, November 20, at 5:00 UTC / 10:30 IST: Hyperledger India Chapter hosts “Blockchain Stories 2021 – Part 2”
Wednesday, November 24, at 17:00 UTC / 18:00 CET: Hyperledger Budapest hosts “Atomic cross chain swap between Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum”
Thursday, November 25, at 9:00 UTC / 18:00 JST: Hyperledger Tokyo hosts “11月25日オンライン開催 Hyperledger Tokyo Meetup” (Japanese)

See the full Virtual Meetup schedule here.

Nov 18

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Hyperledger Fabric Security Threats: What to Look For

By Christopher Cordi, Software Engineer, Splunk. Blog, Hyperledger Fabric

Hyperledger Fabric is designed to enable secure collaboration between multiple organizations operating with limited trust. Despite the security improvements Hyperledger Fabric provides, deployments still require careful configuration and monitoring to ensure that they are operating securely. In this post, we will examine different types of threats that Hyperledger Fabric operators should consider and discuss how to mitigate them.

As a permissioned blockchain, Hyperledger Fabric’s network threats differ from popular permissionless chains. For example, 51% attacks and network partitioning attacks are not as significant of a threat on permissioned networks because users are known, their activities can be monitored, and access is managed by access control lists. Some of these attacks are common to all distributed systems like Denial of Service (DoS) or consensus manipulation. Other attacks target specific components in a Hyperledger Fabric network, such as the Membership Service Provider (MSP).

Denial of Service: DoS attacks disrupt the network’s availability and are a threat to any distributed system. Many different attacks can result in denial of service, which makes it difficult to proactively prevent. This risk can be mitigated by collecting performance metrics, such as transaction throughput and latency, to detect compromised availability early on.

Consensus Manipulation: Attacks on the network consensus include DoS and transaction reordering attacks. Hyperledger Fabric currently only utilizes Crash Fault Tolerant (CFT) consensus algorithms, meaning it cannot tolerate any malicious actors. There is ongoing work on Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) algorithms, which will be able to tolerate up to ⅓ of the network being malicious. Regardless of the consensus algorithm used, early detection of malicious behavior can mitigate this threat. Logging threat indicators, such as leadership elections and transaction latencies, is critical for detection.

MSP Compromise: A compromised MSP can be a significant Fabric-specific threat. The MSP is able to modify access control to the network and, if malicious, could deny service and perform sybil attacks. The MSP may be compromised by a rogue insider or through private key theft, which may only be detectable after exploitation. To mitigate this risk, it is important to follow best practices with key management. Logging MSP actions, such as certificate creation and revocation, can help detect malicious behavior in case of compromise. Alerting based on that logging results in early identification and remediation.

Smart Contract Exploitation: While the cost of smart contract attacks is easier to quantify in cryptocurrencies, where there is measurable monetary loss, such attacks in Hyperledger Fabric can compromise business logic and network performance. In addition to ordinary programming logic bugs, common errors can also stem from inappropriately handling concurrency or nondeterminism. To mitigate this risk, smart contracts should be designed with security in mind at the onset by following a secure software development life cycle framework. Before deploying, smart contract security should be assessed with smart contract analysis tools like the Hyperledger Lab Chaincode Analyzer to detect potential risks. For more sensitive applications, consider an external security audit or formal verification. Finally, the performance and usage of the smart contract should be monitored once deployed in order to detect anomalous behavior.

Proactive measures to mitigate these security threats are only part of a secure deployment. It is just as important to continuously monitor the performance and security of the network. Many of these threats can only be detected by correlating data across the blockchain network, organization infrastructure, and threat intelligence providers. It can be a challenge to ingest and act on this large amount of diverse data, so be sure to account for scalability and analytic capabilities when securing your environment.

For more details on how to collect and act on Hyperledger Fabric data to minimize downtime, reduce the meantime to detect and respond to incidents, tune into my webinar on Hyperledger Fabric security monitoring on Wednesday, December 1, 1:00 pm EST.

Nov 12

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Weekend Update: This Week’s Round-up of Remote Blockchain Learning Resources

By Hyperledger Blog, Weekend Update

If you have suggestions for resources or events that we should spotlight in a future Weekend Update, let us know here using #HLWeekendUpdate.

Hyperledger In-depth: An hour with ConsenSys – Part three of a series on Hyperledger & Ethereum

ConsenSys is hosting a three-part webinar series focused on educating attendees on various use cases of Ethereum Mainnet and Hyperledger Besu. The series, “Hyperledger & Ethereum: Who Put Peanut Butter in my Jelly?” will go into detail on public mainnet deployments, including interoperability and security challenges to keep in mind. It will also cover DeFi and NFTs as well as recent technical developments.

Tune in for the third session, “NFTs: A new milestone to be achieved for blockchain adoption?” on Tuesday, November 16, at 8:00 AM PST. For more information and to register, go here.

Fireside Chat: Wharton Executive Education “the Economics of Blockchain and Digital Assets” program with Dr. Cathy Barrera

In a preview of the Wharton Executive Education “The Economics of Blockchain and Digital Assets” course, the program director, Dr. Cathy Barrera, founding economist at Prysm Group, will join Hyperledger Foundation Executive Director Daniela Barbosa for a fireside chat. Speakers will also include James Edwards from Soramitsu and Emiliano Vernini from Poste Italiane who will discuss their deployments of Hyperledger technologies, which will be covered as case studies in the course.

Go here for more details on the session, which will take place on Wednesday, November 17, at 11:00 AM EST.

Case Study: Splunk correlates data across all datasets—including Hyperledger Fabric

Learn more about how Splunk has added Hyperledger Fabric data into the enterprise visibility mix and how that helped S&P Global introduce a new, secure blockchain-based content management system in this new case study.

Virtual Meetups

Saturday, November 13, at 5:00 UTC / 10:30 IST: Hyperledger India Chapter hosts “Blockchain Stories 2021 & Hyperledger India Chapter 3rd Anniversary”
Thursday, November 18, at 23:30 UTC / 18:30 EST: Hyperledger Princeton hosts “Blockchain Employment Series: How to Market Yourself for Opportunities”

See the full Virtual Meetup schedule here.

Nov 11

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Splunk Adds Hyperledger Fabric Data Visibility into Mix, Powers New Blockchain-Based Content Management Solution for S&P Global

By Hyperledger Blog, Finance, Hyperledger Fabric

Read the full case study here.

Large organizations have always struggled to get visibility into their data. Frequently, data comes in many sources and formats while also being siloed across the organization. DLTs add ledger data and metadata to the mix.

Similarly, consortiums need to interoperate with each other. Yet organizations often use disparate tools for logs, metrics and tracing. All these are deployed on different clouds or on-prem. Then they build their own tools to take data from the ledgers and put it into a SQL database. Consortiums may include competitors who don’t trust one another, so they don’t want to share data. But, if no one shares data, it can be challenging to determine if an organization has a problem or if it lies in the network.

Splunk, a company focused on removing barriers between data and action, took on this challenge by creating open source solutions that allow the ingestion of ledger data and corresponding metadata while correlating with other data sources.

Splunk’s customers include 92 Fortune 100 companies. Meeting their needs was critical so Splunk asked a lot of questions. They learned that many customers used Hyperledger Fabric, and it was fairly straightforward to ingest that DLT data. Splunk pulls in data without caring about structure, schema, or form so there was no need to format Hyperledger Fabric data before ingestion.

The next questions were about what they could do with the Hyperledger Fabric data. Users could analyze and correlate blocks and transaction data with other data they had in Splunk. But conversations with customers revealed they wanted more, including chaincode events, metrics, and, most recently, private data collections.

Initially, Splunk focused on uses from an IT perspective. Then the focus shifted to security. Customers wanted to know what else they could do to secure their infrastructure. Keeping it up and running was important, but so was making sure nothing would compromise their Hyperledger Fabric environment

One of those interested customers was S&P Global, which delivers data, research, and credit ratings, among other things, to governments, companies, and individuals. In 2019, it was entering a new region. S&P took this opportunity to explore modern technologies and new ways of doing business. It decided to build a content management solution from scratch with innovative technology and security.

Splunk’s Hyperledger Fabric-based applications caught S&P’s attention. Leveraging the Fabric data in Splunk meant S&P could now get user interactions and metadata—like who uploaded documents or modified documents and when. S&P developed applications to retrieve that metadata and present it to the user for document searches. This opened up possibilities for providing an audit trail.

The resulting solution, S&P Global Secure Vault, is multi-cloud, multi-tenant, and secure, and it is ready to scale to multiple regions and multiple participants. In the solution, S&P uses Splunk for three primary areas. The first is infrastructure monitoring on the operations of different components. The company wants to make sure the system stays healthy and the right teams are alerted if there’s an issue. The second is visibility into the events happening within the blockchain network. And third is business activity monitoring, which includes searching for document metadata.

Hyperledger worked with Splunk and S&P Global on a case study that details this blockchain-based secure content management system and how the companies partnered to add visibility into business transactions, making them indexable and searchable. It also delves into Splunk’s commitment to open source software and plans for helping customers that use Hyperledger Fabric get even more from their data.

Read the full case study here. For more details on security monitoring of Hyperledger Fabric data, tune into the Wednesday, December 1, webinar with Christoper Cord of Splunk.

Nov 10

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Staff Corner: The Importance of Executive Education in Driving Enterprise Blockchain Growth

By Executive Director at Hyperledger Foundation and General Manager, Blockchain, Healthcare and Identity for the Linux Foundation Blog, Hyperledger Foundation Staff Corner

One of the biggest barriers to growth for the blockchain industry is the talent gap for developers with the right skills and training. Recognizing the coming demand, Hyperledger Foundation, in partnership with the Linux Foundation Training, has worked for years on developing a robust and growing set of enterprise blockchain training and certifications for developers.

*Daniela Barbosa, Hyperledger Foundation Executive Director*

The classes range from a series of free “Blockchain Basics,” which aim to help professionals learn, explore, and evaluate how blockchain technologies can help them meet their professional goals, to a series of professional developer and administrator training courses and certifications.

Over 200,000 people have taken the free courses, which include introductions to blockchain use cases and Hyperledger technologies in general as well as classes focused on Hyperledger Indy, Hyperledger Aries and, added most recently, Hyperledger Besu. The advanced classes are for professionals looking to master Hyperledger blockchain technologies, especially Hyperledger Fabric. Completing these classes are a stepping stone passing the exams to become a Certified Hyperledger Fabric Administrator or a Certified Hyperledger Fabric Developer. The classes and the certification exams are available in both English and Japanese.

Companies looking to expand the skill set of their developer teams can also turn to the network of Hyperledger Training Partners. Individuals who want to add to their resumes can dive into our community as contributors. The Hyperledger Learning Materials Development Working Group is a good starting point for those looking to get involved. Books like the recently released Hands-On Smart Contract Development with Hyperledger Fabric V2: Building Enterprise Blockchain Applications published by O’Reilly can be a valuable leg up as well.

However, as the recent Hyperledger Brand Survey highlighted, the mainstream adoption of blockchain by enterprises also requires training that specifically serves business leaders. Blockchain technologies are driving new business models, reshaping industries and changing the flow of information and money around the world. C-level executives and senior management need to become fluent in the technology to define and redefine their businesses. Hyperledger Foundation is as committed to advancing executive education as it is to developer training.

We are kicking off our efforts to partner with top educators on content targeted to business leaders by sponsoring the Wharton Executive Education “The Economics of Blockchain and Digital Assets” online certification. Our Hyperledger community is also contributing to the course work. The curriculum includes case studies on deployments by two Hyperledger Foundation members:

Soramitsu’s Bank of Bakong CBDC project, built using Hyperledger Iroha
Poste Italiane’s new generation of digital identity services, which is powered by Hyperledger Besu

To learn more, please join my Fireside Chat on Nov. 17th 11am ET with Dr. Cathy Barrera, Blockchain Program Director, The Wharton School, as well as James Edwards from Soramitsu and Emiliano Vernini from Poste Italiane. We will be discussing the business drivers, requirements and results from these two case studies in a preview of the type of content this program will feature.

If you have other ideas on how Hyperledger Foundation can provide training and learning opportunities, please reach out to marketing@hyperledger.org

Watch Recorded Fireside Session

Nov 09

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Welcome to the 2021-2022 Technical Steering Committee

By Hyperledger Blog

Each year, the Hyperledger technical community holds an election to select a new Technical Steering Committee (TSC) from the community at large. The main objective of the TSC is to drive technical governance for the projects and technologies hosted by the Hyperledger Foundation. The 2021-2022 TSC was just elected and that group of 15 members, in turn, voted in the chair and vice chair for the group.

This year, the TSC will be led by Tracy Kuhrt, Associate Director, Blockchain and Multiparty Systems Architecture, Accenture (chair) and Danno Ferrin, Principal Software Engineer, Hedera (vice chair). To kick off their tenure in these roles, we asked Tracy and Danno to weigh in on goals, opportunities and technologies they have their eyes on for the next year. Here’s what we learned:

Q) What are some of the goals you have for the TSC/community for the year ahead?

Tracy: Communities are stronger when we listen and learn from others. Last year, during the TSC one of our initiatives was “breaking down the silos.” In addition to the discussions held in the community, the 2021-22 discussed some actionable items:

sponsoring a project that ties together different projects to encourage cross-pollination and showcasing the different projects within the Hyperledger Foundation
sharing the cool technology that is coming out of our different projects
attending meetings in the community that we would not otherwise attend

Communities are also stronger when everyone is welcome, and people feel like they belong. In addition, we need a diverse set of opinions. We hear from many of our projects that they would like to have more contributors. Contributions are not just writing code. There is a need for many different skill sets, including (but not limited to) writing documentation, filing issues when you find something wrong in the code or the documentation, blogging about your experience with one of the projects, and answering questions that others have.

Q) What’s the most important role that TSC plays in guiding the development efforts for Hyperledger?

Danno: The most important role that I see is that the TSC provides project oversight to the various projects in the Hyperledger Foundation. And these projects exist on a wide spectrum of maturity. They vary from a Hyperledger Labs project, where there may be one dedicated developer implementing their bright idea, all the way to Hyperledger Fabric, which has multiple sub-projects supporting the main DLT. We should make sure these projects are functional, see to it they are healthy, and to provide them the feedback they need to hear to help them grow.

Q) What are some of the challenges the TSC faces in the next year? Opportunities?

Danno: When Hyperledger was first formed, there were very few enterprise capable DLTs on the market, and none that had received wide adoption. Fast forward to today and five of the six projects that have graduated are all enterprise capable DLTs, so I feel that space is fairly well filled out. The challenge is growing out the ecosystem beyond these base level enabling technologies. The sixth graduated project, Hyperledger Aries, is a good example of a project that works past the base layer. In this case, it works with enabling verifiable credentials. I think the challenge the TSC faces is how do we nurture and create more projects like this that provide the frameworks, tools, and libraries needed to support the DLTs and multi-party systems at the core of the ecosystem

Q) Are there emerging technologies or challenges you see as opportunities for new projects?

Tracy: As a Hyperledger Lab Steward, I am among the first to see some of the interesting things that the community is thinking about and developing. We have multiple top-level projects (Ursa, Cactus, and the yet to be named blockchain automation framework) that came out of Hyperledger Labs, and I expect that we will see more in the future. I recently put together a word cloud on the different labs, and there are labs that are focused on interoperability, development tools and SDKs, operations, deployment, management tools, and applications. People are looking to make using and operating blockchain networks easier as well as integrating those blockchain networks into their existing systems or other ecosystems.

Are there any project milestones coming that you are watching with interest?

Danno: Even though I don’t work in the consensus portions of Hyperledger Besu anymore, I have my eye on the APIs being used to enable “the merge” on Ethereum Mainnet. The mainnet team at ConsenSys in their role as Ethereum core developers are working on an RPC API where the consensus is maintained by a separate process rather than in Besu itself. I think there is a great opportunity for a new contributor to leverage that work and either write a bridge service or modify Besu itself so that enterprise instances of Besu can use RAFT and other external consensus managers.

Here is the full list of TSC members:

Angelo De Caro, IBM
Arnaud J Le Hors, IBM
Artem Barger, IdeaDLT*
Arun S M, Walmart
Bobbi Muscara, Ledger Academy
Danno Ferrin (vice chair), Hedera
David Enyeart, IBM
Grace Hartley, ConsenSys
Hart Montgomery, Fujitsu
Jim Zhang, Kaleido*
Kamlesh Nagware, Snapper Future Tech*
Nathan George, Kiva
Peter Somogyvari, Accenture*
Tracy Kuhrt (chair), Accenture
Troy Ronda, SecureKey

*New to the TSC for 2021-2022.

Find out more about their background here.

The TSC meets weekly and the calls are open to all. See the schedule, agenda and more here.

Nov 05

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Weekend Update: This Week’s Round-up of Remote Blockchain Learning Resources

By Hyperledger Blog, Weekend Update

If you have suggestions for resources or events that we should spotlight in a future Weekend Update, let us know here using #HLWeekendUpdate.

Hyperledger Performance and Scale Working Group Guest Presentation: Fast-HotStuff Consensus Protocol

Join the Performance and Scale Working Group for a talk by Mohammad Jalalzai from UBC on “Fast-HotStuff Consensus Protocol.” The HotStuff protocol is a recent breakthrough in Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus that enjoys both responsiveness and linear view change. It creatively adds an additional round to classic BFT protocols (such as PBFT) using two rounds. Despite its great advantages, HotStuff has a few limitations. First, the additional round of communication during normal cases results in higher latency. Second, the current version of HotStuff is vulnerable to certain performance attacks. This talk will cover a proposed new two-round BFT protocol called Fast-HotStuff, which enjoys responsiveness and efficient view change that is comparable to linear view change in terms of performance. Fast-HotStuff has lower latency and is more robust against the performance attacks that HotStuff is susceptible to.

For more information on the meeting, which is Tuesday, November 9, at :00 AM EST, go here.

Hyperledger In-depth: An hour with Poste Italiane

Learn how Poste Italiane is embracing SSI to develop the new generation of digital identity services that will help citizens to preserve their privacy while using online services. In this session, Emiliano Vernini and Rosario De Chiara of Poste Italiane will provide a deep dive into the technological solution, the UX and a possible business model.

Tune in on Wednesday, November 10, at 9:00 AM EST. For more information and to register, go here.

Agri-D CONVENTION

Agri-D 2021 CONVENTION is a one day online conference and exhibition dedicated to blockchain and DLT in agriculture and the food supply chain. Registration is free for the conference, which is taking place on November 12. Sessions will include a panel on “Supporting the Future Towards Ethical & Resilient Food Systems” moderated by Hyperledger Foundation’s Julian Gordon with panelists Anthony Day from IBM, Levine Naidoo from IBM Sterling, Marieke de Ruyter de Wildt from The New Fork, and Srivatsa Sreenivasarao fromTraceX. In addition, there will be discussion on “DLT Innovation & Digital Transformation in the Agri-Food Sector” with Karen Ottoni of Hyperledger Foundation as well as Poojah Sanghvi from Accenture, Linda Goetze from Blockchain Chamber of Commerce, and Dr. Milly Perry of DAO 4 DAO Institute.

For more information, go here.

Virtual Meetups

Tuesday, November 9, at 17:00 UTC / 10:00 MST: Hyperledger Denver hosts “Rapid Blockchain development with SIMBA QuickStart and Hyperledger”
Thursday, November 11, at 16:00 UTC / 17:00 CET: Hyperledger Berlin hosts “Introduction to Hyperledger projects and the Perun lab”
Thursday, November 11, at 17:00 UTC / 12:00 EST: Hyperledger Washington DC hosts “Hyperledger Fabric Deployment on AWS, IBM, and Oracle platforms”

See the full Virtual Meetup schedule here.

Nov 03

Love0

The Pathway to Becoming a Hyperledger Maintainer

By Timo Glastra, Co-Founder & Software Engineer at Animo and Hyperledger Aries Maintainer Blog, Hyperledger Aries

When I first came across Hyperledger Aries, I was still a student at the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht. I had never contributed to open source, and only minimally understood how the process of contributing and maintaining even functioned. Now, only two years later, my company (Animo) specializes in building SSI solutions using Hyperledger Aries and other SSI technologies, and I am one of the core contributors to a lot of the open source libraries built on top of it.

In this blogpost I’m going to share what it’s like to be a maintainer for the Hyperledger Aries project. You’ll learn how you can start contributing and maybe even set yourself on a path to becoming a maintainer.

The ecosystem

Hyperledger Aries provides standards and protocols focused on holding and exchanging verifiable credentials, but it is much more than that. Hyperledger Aries provides the foundation for peer-to-peer interactions, exchange of verifiable credentials and secure messaging. It provides standards through the so-called Aries RFCs and has open source implementations in Go, JavaScript, Python, Rust and .NET.

Aries uses DIDComm for a secure messaging protocol, but DIDComm is a lot more than just a way to exchange credentials. Once you start getting a sense of the enormous potential of DIDComm, it’s difficult not to get excited. Aries provides you with an agent that helps you manage your digital interactions, just like your browser helps you interact with the web.

At Animo, we’re leveraging Aries at the core of almost all of our projects. We contribute to several open source frameworks, develop applications on top of these frameworks and build end-to-end solutions using verifiable credentials. For example, we recently started a pilot with the Centre for Emergency Control Room Innovation that leverages DIDComm for secure communication and exchange of location between the emergency call centre staff and a qualified volunteer. Although we are involved with several Aries frameworks, we have a particular expertise in (and fondness for) Aries Framework JavaScript (AFJ).

We use AFJ for most of our projects. We’ve contributed a lot to it because, simply put, we saw the potential of the framework and someone needed to do the work to get it there. Being a maintainer of a project means more than just contributing code.It means you’re responsible for the overall direction and vision of the project. Maintainers concern themselves with the roadmap, the place of the project within the ecosystem and coordination of working group efforts and calls. On a more operational level, there’s also a lot of reviewing pull requests, addressing github issues, answering questions on Rocket.Chat and writing documentation. If this sounds time consuming, that’s because it is. But putting in the effort is essential to creating long lasting, structurally sound code that can be freely used by anyone to build amazing things.

Contributing to a project hosted by Hyperledger, specifically, means you get a lot of the needed infrastructure other projects might not have. There is a wiki for meeting notes, a Zoom account for our meetings, GitHub repos, unlimited CI minutes, a chat platform, and assistance from the Hyperledger staff when needed.

Becoming a maintainer

I can recommend that every developer be involved with open source, and every company invest in open source software. Open source software provides the foundation for almost all software in the world, and is essential for a world where self-sovereign identity becomes a standard.

Besides, working on open source software can be a really good learning experience. You get to work with some of the greatest minds of the industry on the future of digital identity. Maintaining and contributing to Hyperledger, and open source in general, has been really valuable for me. There is something magical about how open source works, and how we can work together towards a shared goal, even if you’re halfway across the world.

I can imagine that sounds a bit intimidating. Luckily, you don’t have to start out this way. You can start the way we all do, by quietly listening to working group calls until you find something you want to participate in. Once you decide you’d like to become a contributor or a maintainer, you’ll find that communities will be happy to help you get started.

Here are some of my personal tips to get involved with a Hyperledger project. I’ve used the AFJ community as an example throughout.

Attend working group calls – Working group calls are the perfect place to introduce yourself and show your ambition to contribute to the project. This is also the place to stay up to date on the current and planned work of the project. (AFJ Meetings)
Get familiar with the codebase – Even though it can be daunting and hard to make sense of a project at first, it is important to get familiar with the project. You should make it as easy as possible for maintainers to review your initial PR and get it merged! (AFJ Repository)
Answer questions on Rocket.Chat – Help other people get started with the project and answer their questions! You learn a lot by finding answers to other people’s questions. And also don’t hesitate to ask questions yourself. There are a lot of people with very specific domain knowledge eager to answer your questions. (Aries Channel, AFJ Channel)
Look at open issues – Knowing what to work on can be complex when getting familiar with a new project. Github issues often describe missing features or bugs, which can be a great way to find the first item to work on. In AFJ, we currently have more than 70 open issues, all waiting for someone to pick them up. (AFJ Open Issues)
Read about the topic – Read about the topics that underpin the project. For SSI, I recommend reading the Self Sovereign Identity book. If you’re ready to get a bit more in-depth, I recommend to start reading the Aries RFCs. These are fundamental for contributing to any Aries project.

My best advice is to experience it yourself. Even the smallest pull request is valuable to a project and can give you the confidence to keep going. And, before you know it, you’re the maintainer of a project yourself.

If you have any questions, or if you’d like to make contributing to open source software your job, you can reach me at timo@animo.id. We’re always looking for motivated and ambitious people to join our team and are always happy to help new contributors get started.