It has been over two years since we had a chance to get together in person and connect with Hyperledger community members from all over the world. Since Hyperledger Global Forum 2020, there have been hundreds of opportunities to meet online in calls and during virtual events, but those virtual interactions are just not the same as connecting with someone in real life.
The “hallway track” of a conference – the time in between sessions and other parts of the formal schedule where you walk around and meet new people and reconnect with friends and colleagues – is often people’s favorite part of an event. This informal opportunity to engage is what has been so hard to reproduce virtually (the Zoom breakout rooms, 2D and 3D online spaces and other attempts were worth trying but just aren’t as effective) so we are really looking forward to this part of Hyperledger Global Forum (HGF) this year.
To help people connect at HGF (#HyperledgerForum), we’re trying something that has been used in community events that Mozilla has run in the past. These community events were helpful in bringing people with similar interests together. For instance, you may be really interested in what is happening with blockchain in the telecom industry or you may want to speak in Spanish to someone about what is going on with deployments in Latin America, but you don’t know who to speak with as you’re walking around the event.
In order to help you find the right people to connect with, we’ll be setting up a Community Fair in the Expo Hall. The Fair will have a series of table tops manned by people from different parts of the community who are interested in meeting and talking with you. This will include people from our Special Interest Groups who are implementing Hyperledger projects in a range of different industries, people from our Regional Communities who are traveling in from all over the world, and people from our Working Groups who are exploring technical questions about distributed ledgers.
The goal of HGF is to create an event where community members from around the world can meet, align, plan and hack together in person. The sessions, workshops and other parts of the formal agenda will be very useful to help you do just that. We hope that the Community Fair will be another great addition to the formal part of the agenda.
Groups planning to participate in the Community Fair:
Regional Chapters
Brazil Chapter
India Chapter
Latinoamerica Chapter
Japan Chapter
Special Interest Groups
Climate Action and Accounting SIG
Telecom SIG
Financial Markets SIG
Media and Entertainment SIG
Working Groups
Learning Materials Development WG
Performance and Scale WG
Identity WG
Community Events
Hyperledger Challenge winner
Registration details for HGF are here. We hope you’ll join us and make the most of the Community Fair. Its goal is to make it easier for our community members to make valuable connections and find people and resources that align with their interests and needs, regardless of where they are in their enterprise blockchain journey.
We are just weeks away from gathering in Dublin, Ireland, for Hyperledger Global Forum 2022. The hard-working programming committee has put together a packed agenda with a line-up of business and technical talks and panels as well as workshops, demos and more.
There will be more than 100 speakers covering everything from DLT operations to the future of NFTs & tokenomics and from the Metaverse to interoperability. Below are just a sampling of the topics and sessions on tap for the largest global gathering of the Hyperledger community, taking place September 12-14:
Back to our Developer Showcase Series to learn what developers in the real world are doing with Hyperledger technologies. Next up is Daniel Bluhm, Software Engineer at Indicio.
Give a bit of background on what you’re working on and how you got into blockchain
I am currently working on Hyperledger Aries Cloud Agent – Python and other agent implementations. I spend most of my days working on agents and protocols. I first got into blockchain at the Sovrin Foundation where I got my start as an associate software engineer. I was actually around at the founding of the agent ecosystem, back when we all collaborated in the Hyperledger Indy Agent Working Group. I was one of the first implementers and continued working with it as the community grew. Eventually it snowballed into the Hyperledger Aries project.
What Hyperledger frameworks or tools are you using in your projects? Any new developments to share? Can you sum up your experience with Hyperledger?
I really like where things are going with the Aries Cloud Agent – Python repo, driving towards more pluggability and making it so we can extend functionality without changing the core project itself. I am also excited to get did:indy method support into Hyperledger Indy, as well as multi-ledger support in ACA-Py.We already have reads down, so now we’re just working on the writes.
What do you think is most important for Hyperledger to focus on in the next year?
We have a really diverse and thriving community in the Hyperledger Aries space; what we really need going into 2022 is a push for greater adoption of the technology and getting it into the hands of people who aren’t engineers. I would also really like to see a focus on encouraging more interaction with the Hyperledger Indy project, especially after seeing how positively this affects our work with Hyperledger Aries.
What advice would you offer other technologists or developers interested in getting started working on blockchain?
The biggest piece of advice I could give is to not be afraid to step in, contribute, and break stuff. It doesn’t matter if your pull request isn’t perfect.The maintainers of the project will work with you to get it right.
As Hyperledger’s projects continue to mature, what do you see as the most interesting technologies, apps, or use cases coming out as a result?
The technologies that are most interesting to me are the ones that allow us to use multiple different technologies at the same time – which is exactly what we’re striving for in Hyperledger Aries. This enables us to take advantage of the strengths of one technology – be it blockchain, communication, protocol, crypto suite, or something else – and use those strengths to shore up the places where another technology might fall short. Beyond that, anything that makes it easier and more efficient for the end user will be a huge step in the right direction.
What’s the one issue or problem you hope blockchain can solve?
The biggest problem that I would like to see blockchain solve is power imbalances. This applies across the board, to finance, representation in government, data used and collected by big orgs, and other scenarios we just haven’t thought up yet. I’d like to see blockchain enable individuals to have a say in how they are treated and be more self-deterministic – they should have at least some level of control over what’s running their lives.
Where do you hope to see Hyperledger and/or blockchain in five years?
I would like to see Hyperledger and blockchain technology in general in the hands of real people. They don’t necessarily need to be aware that they are using a blockchain. In fact, I think there are some really good arguments to the contrary. But it should be a positive influence in their lives as it is used day to day. I would like to see the blockchain space settle down, drop some of the hype, and just be used for what it’s good at.
What is the best piece of developer advice you’ve ever received?
No one gets it right on the first try. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, break tests, crash CI/CD pipelines, or push broken code. Don’t do it intentionally, of course, but the faster you can get at shortening the “experience a failure, find the problem, implement the fix” cycle, the faster you’ll learn and master your code. In short, don’t be afraid to break stuff. Just give it a shot and learn from the result.
When a problem or change needs to be made in the future, the developer then can see what your thought processes were for writing the code you did.
What technology could you not live without?
I could not live without Git. Without it it would be nearly impossible to get any code written and submitted. It’s part of my everyday workflow and even crucial in my hobby projects.
About half a year before we started Animo Solutions, my co-founders and I discovered Hyperledger Aries Framework JavaScript, an open source JavaScript/TypeScript framework designed to create interoperable self-sovereign identity solutions. At the time we were just getting acquainted with the concept of SSI. Just the idea that we could use TypeScript to build made our lives so much easier and the tech so much less daunting. It turned into one of the building blocks of our company, and I would end up becoming a maintainer and strong advocate of Hyperledger Aries Framework JavaScript. Now, after two years of hard work by the community, we’re excited to announce the 0.2.0 release of the framework. In this article, I’ll take you through what this newest release entails and why it will change the way self-sovereign solutions are built.
Hyperledger Aries Framework JavaScript (AFJ) is a framework written in TypeScript for creating interoperable self-sovereign identity (SSI) solutions. The framework has two main focus points. It aims to be as accessible as possible for any developer whether new or experienced in the world of SSI. It is also designed specifically for multi-platform development, so both server-side and mobile solutions can be built with the framework.
The framework has gained a lot of momentum lately. The community has been growing quickly with various governments and organizations stepping in. Our current contributor count is 37, and the working group calls now have around 10 active participants (as opposed to the two we had two years ago). The potential of the framework has become clear to developers other than us (the fanatics). For example, at Animo we recently received funding from the EU NGI eSSIF-Lab initiative to lift the framework to the next level regarding mobile development options.
The new Hyperledger Aries Framework JavaScript release (0.2.0) contains some incredible steps forward. Especially in our goal to make the framework AIP 2.0 compliant. AIP 2.0 compliance will not only ensure the framework supports the latest standards and protocols, but it will also greatly increase interoperability and make it more useful outside of the Hyperledger Indy ecosystem. Specifically, this release contains:
Full support for the out of band and did-exchange protocols
Postgres wallet support
Previously the framework only supported SQLite. This addition ensures the framework is better suited for cloud infrastructure.
Wallet import/export support
This addition enables users to migrate their wallet data to and from other Hyperledger Indy-based wallets.
Pickup protocol v2 for better control over interactions with the mediator
Support for the issue-credential-v2 protocol
The issue credential and present proof v2 extend the framework with the ability to support multiple credential and proof formats. Instead of adding a separate API for the v2 protocols, we have put a lot of effort in designing a single, easy-to-use API that works with both versions and is extensible for later versions in the future. In the next release we’ll be adding support for the present proof v2 protocol.
Credential revocation and revocation notifications for holders and verifiers
This allows holders to prove that a credential hasn’t been revoked and verifiers to verify this. The revocation notifications allow the holders to be informed about the fact that one of their credentials has been revoked, rather than discovering this when trying to present proof.
Full did:peer support
A generic DID resolver that currently supports did:key, did:web, did:sov and did:peer.
An upgrade assistant to help users update their wallets to newer versions of the framework
As the framework evolves over time, some of the underlying data structures may change. With the upgrade assistant, we aim to make it as easy as possible for users to migrate.
We’re already working hard on version 0.3.0 that will, just like the 0.2.0 release, be packed with new features such as support for the W3C Verifiable Credential Format and BBS+ Signatures 2020, making the framework fully AIP 2.0 compliant.
Check out the 0.2.0 release here and the update instructions here. For general documentation, please seearies.js.org.
If you’re interested in Hyperledger Aries Framework JavaScript and its developments, we recommend you join the working group call (07:00 MT / 14:00 UTC on zoom) and check out the GitHub repo. If you want to discuss building a solution with the framework, feel free to reach out to me at karim@animo.id.
Bitcoin, Ethereum and other altcoins have sparked a range of investments, industries and even emotions. However, there is a fast-growing array of digital currencies and electronic payment systems that are focused specifically on leveraging distributed ledger technologies to make fundamental financial transactions easier, faster and more accessible both at the wholesale and retail level. As this recently released ebook details, central banks around the world are exploring ways to leverage different Hyperledger DLTs to introduce Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). However, there is #HyperledgerPayments action happening on a number of fronts and leveraging a mix of Hyperledger technologies.
Below, we highlight a few of the Hyperledger-based applications that are already in the market, rewriting the rules for how money and value are delivered, stored and spent. This sampling showcases the global reach of both Hyperledger technologies and blockchain payment systems:
Bakong
Sponsored by the National Bank of Cambodia, the country’s central bank, Bakong is the first retail payments system in the world using blockchain technology. Built on Hyperledger Iroha, Bakong delivers value for customers, merchants and banks. Individuals can now transfer money and buy from merchants with a simple smartphone app. Merchants gain a fast, cashless, and secure payments system. And banks can do interbank transfers at much lower cost.
Bakong was developed by Soramitsu and, after a soft launch in 2019, now has nearly 40 financial institutions (and counting) using the system. The project was also designed to promote financial inclusion for the country’s large number of unbanked citizens. Any citizen of the country can open a Bakong account, even if they don’t have a traditional bank account. The more than 500 merchants that accept Bakong can be viewed in a map inside
Byacco
Soramitsu also created a local payment system for the University of Aizu, Japan, based on Hyperledger Iroha – technology that was originally developed within the walls of the University. Byacco is an app that students use to add and access digital money to pay local goods and services, split bills at the university cafeteria and stationary shop and send and receive money with a low (1 ¥) fee.
Kate Coin
KBC bank in Belgium has introduced blockchain-based Kate Coin to customers using its KBC Mobile app. Powered by Hyperledger Fabric, Kate Coins are issued to customers as loyalty rewards. To start, the Kate Coins can be used to pay for banking and insurance services. However, the goal is to scale up its use through partnerships with business customers and other third parties that want to reach KBC Mobile app users, first in Belgium and then across the HBC group.
Twig
To help drive the circular economy, UK-based Twig has created a system that allows consumers to turn their pre-owned electronics, clothes and other goods into cash. Users are paid for their goods via Hyperledger Sawtooth-based Twig Pay, where they can see incoming payments and tap into the cash for purchases and transfers.
Join the conversation about solutions and applications in the financial service market with #HyperledgerPayments on social channels. For a deeper dive, join us at Hyperledger Global Forum 2022, September 12-14 in Dublin, Ireland. Sessions will include:
Back to our Developer Showcase Series to learn what developers in the real world are doing with Hyperledger technologies. Next up is Dr. Yunxi Zhang, Tech Architecture Delivery Associate Manager at Accenture.
Give a bit of background on what you’re working on and how you got into blockchain
I’ve been working on a number of blockchain projects across various blockchain platforms for diverse business cases since I joined Accenture. I am fascinated by the core blockchain technology, which was invented as a main technical product of bitcoin. I look forward to helping our clients better understand how blockchain could potentially shift their businesses to be more productive. My main motivation for working with blockchain is to help clients leverage this technology to achieve their goals.
What Hyperledger frameworks or tools are you using in your projects? Any new developments to share? Can you sum up your experience with Hyperledger?
Hyperledger Aries is currently the main framework I’m working on in my project. I’ve used Hyperledger Fabric in earlier projects as well.
We’ve successfully built up a demo by using Hyperledger Aries to demonstrate how Self-Sovereign Identity credentials could help simplify an entire process from credentials issuance, presentation and verification to make a business process more efficient and productive.
Overall, I’ve found the documentation of Hyperledger Aries to be always evolving to include the up-to-date key design principles as well as both technical and business benefits. For Aries, there are even online courses available that introduce the big picture first. If people would like to know more low-level details, there is abundant documentation available in the repo. It’s common for the documentation to be a bit behind the technology. To deal with this challenge, the open community is very responsive to new joiners, listening to us patiently and reacting to any questions and issues raised. This helped me delve into Aries in a short period of time. Once I have a very good understanding of how the technology works, I’m glad I can contribute back to Aries in different aspects.
What do you think is most important for Hyperledger to focus on in the next year?
Hyperledger Foundation should focus on providing updates on how the more mature Hyperledger technologies are being leveraged in different production environments. Any technical architecture design examples could be shared in each repo to help boost the technical architects and developers to try them, so we can reuse these designs, help improve them and contribute back to them. This could facilitate the pace of the adoption for each Hyperledger technology even more.
What advice would you offer other technologists or developers interested in getting started working on blockchain?
Hyperledger technologies are built upon the basic concept of how blockchain works, but they each implement it in its own ways to provision enough flexibility for different use cases. The nature of blockchain is very complex as it is comprised of different areas of technologies such as cryptography and distributed systems. It would always be beneficial to developers to grasp this foundational knowledge prior to starting to use Hyperledger technologies.
As Hyperledger’s projects continue to mature, what do you see as the most interesting technologies, apps, or use cases coming out as a result?
I see use cases related to decentralized Identity and self-sovereign identity being some of the most interesting and popular business areas in the future. Hyperledger Aries and Hyperledger Indy are already contributing to making this happen more easily.
What’s the one issue or problem you hope blockchain can solve?
Due to blockchain’s innate intricacy, the application of it is not always straight forward. Even developers or architects with many years of experience find it a challenge to design and use blockchain within the underlying infrastructure and system architecture around them. So, to have a PaaS service of blockchain (not only including the underlying blockchain network, but common architecture on top of it) to quickly enable technicians to use them quickly could further boost its application in all aspects.
Paper pushing. It’s synonymous with tedious, slow processes. Yet often, the pushed paper is vital to a company’s business. And contracts are especially important paper.
But digitizing a contract process isn’t as simple as it sounds. As the contract moves between parties, there’s a risk of tampering. Or mismanaging version control.
Many companies continue to use paper for their contracting processes to maintain security and trust. The procurement divisions of Hitachi, Ltd. were no different.
Hitachi is a Japan-based global technology organization. It focuses on digital innovation in the mobility, smart life, industrial, energy and IT sectors. The company has 873 companies across more than 100 countries with 380,000 employees worldwide.
At such a scale, Hitachi’s procurement divisions process thousands and thousands of contracts every month. That’s a lot of paper. That’s also a lot of time managing that paper.
Hitachi’s Service Delivery Division develops tools to help increase business efficiencies. It saw this as a perfect use case. Ultimately, an improved procurement process would help companies within the Hitachi group and their clients.
The team set about creating a secure contract management system. For eight months, they worked with procurement personnel to develop the solution. First, they needed to understand the paper process as it was working. The team considered how the process could be more efficient while also keeping the security and integrity of the documentation in place.
They chose Hyperledger Fabric, an open source blockchain framework from Hyperledger Foundation. Hitachi had already created blockchain-backed frameworks on Hyperledger Fabric in its financial and industrial areas, so the team members knew it could provide the advanced security needed for critical document processing.
The procurement division of Hitachi’s head office tested the new paperless, blockchain-backed, Electronic Signature Service (ESS). This division manages the contracts with 2,000 business partners.
It began digitally processing all new contracts in July 2021. Under the old paper-pushing method, the division processed about 333 cases per month. Now it is processing at least 400 contract cases per month — a 20% increase. And though they’re processing more cases, they’re doing them in less time than before. Division personnel now have time to focus on other important tasks like investigation, negotiation, and engaging with new contract companies.
The Hyperledger Foundation team worked with Hitachi on a case study that details the goals, approach and results of implementing this blockchain-backed, paperless procurement solution as well as plans to roll it out to all the procurement divisions. These divisions manage the 3,500 companies contracting with the Hitachi Group.
Hyperledger Ursa is a shared cryptographic library used to avoid duplicating cryptographic related code. The library is an opt-in repository (for Hyperledger and non Hyperledger projects) to place and use crypto.
Broad deployment of digital identity will depend on strong security to deliver the high levels of assurance required in many consumer transactions with their governments, their financial institutions, and other trusted organisations.
Leading advancements in decentralized identity, several originating in Canada, rely on the Hyperledger family of technologies. As such, Hyperledger Ursa is a central component depended upon to provide the security overlay for decentralized identity.
Rooted in a “trust but verify” mindset, several Canadian public sector entities and Interac (Canada’s interbank network) sponsored a project at the Digital Identity Laboratory of Canada (IDLab) to perform a security and cryptography code review of Hyperledger Ursa (full report is available here).
Those commissioning this project deemed it important to have an arms-length third party assessment of this foundational component of the Hyperledger family to understand the risks (if any) being assumed with the deployment and use of Hyperledger-base technology in the domain of decentralized identity.
Overview of Hyperledger Ursa library code review scope:
A code review that examined:
Entry points
Coding standards
Data storage and transfer
APIs and their security
Third party library usage
Programming language issue
Logic flaws
Cryptography best practices including examination of:
Cryptography and key management
Entropy
Best practice cryptography usage
The review did not include an assessment of the cryptographic algorithms foundation themselves, or their suitability. Examination was limited to assessment of sound implementation within Ursa.
Following the code review and the findings documented, the IDLab team worked closely with key Ursa contributors and the Hyperledger Foundation community to review and assess results. As a result, a number of enhancements were identified to address report findings.
Ultimately, the exercise concluded that Ursa provides a solid security footing for projects dependent on the Hyperledger family of technologies applicable to digital identity.
Review findings summary:
In general, the review noted a few relatively minor security defects, some implementation guidance, and some general observations for library improvement.
These can be briefly described as follows:
Minor build issues
Cautions to consider when building, primarily with third party libraries or integrations
Minor issues related to lack of support for message augmentation
Minor issues related to subgroup validation
An issue related to public key validation
For those interested in the full report, please have a look here. You can also learn more by viewing this webinar:
If you have any questions about Hyperledger Ursa, you can engage with the community on the Hyperledger Foundation’s Discord server for Ursa. If you want to learn more about IDLab, please visit www.idlab.org.
Revue de code Hyperledger Ursa
Hyperledger Ursa est une librairie cryptographique partagée utilisée pour éviter la duplication du code lié à la cryptographie. La librairie est un répertoire opt-in (pour les projets Hyperledger et ceux qui ne le sont pas) pour placer et utiliser la cryptographie.
Le déploiement à grande échelle de l’identité numérique dépendra d’une forte sécurité afin de fournir les niveaux d’assurance élevés requis dans de nombreuses transactions des consommateurs avec leurs gouvernements, leurs institutions financières et d’autres organisations de confiance.
Les principales avancées en matière d’identité décentralisée, dont plusieurs proviennent du Canada, reposent sur la famille de technologies Hyperledger. En tant que tel, Hyperledger Ursa est un composant central sur lequel on compte pour fournir la couche de sécurité pour l’identité décentralisée.
Dans un esprit «de confiance et de vérification» (en anglais, trust but verify), plusieurs entités du secteur public canadien et Interac (le réseau interbancaire du Canada) ont parrainé un projet au Laboratoire d’identité numérique du Canada (IDLab) pour effectuer une revue de code de sécurité et de cryptographie d’Hyperledger Ursa (le rapport complet est disponible ici, en anglais seulement).
Les initiateurs de ce projet ont estimé qu’il était important d’avoir une évaluation indépendante par un tiers de ce composant fondamental de la famille Hyperledger pour comprendre les risques (s’il y en a) assumés avec le déploiement et l’utilisation de la technologie basée sur Hyperledger dans le domaine de l’identité décentralisée.
Aperçu de la portée de la revue de code de la librairie Hyperledger Ursa :
Une revue de code qui a examiné :
Les points d’entrée
Les standards de programmation
Stockage et transfert de données
Les interfaces API et leur sécurité
Utilisation de librairies de tiers
Problèmes de langage de programmation
Défauts de logique
Les meilleures pratiques en matière de cryptographie, y compris l’examen :
De la cryptographie et la gestion des clés
De l’entropie
Des meilleures pratiques en matière d’utilisation de la cryptographie
L’examen n’a pas inclus une évaluation de la fondation des algorithmes cryptographiques eux-mêmes, ni de leur aptitude. L’examen s’est limité à l’évaluation de la bonne mise en place dans Ursa.
Après l’examen du code et la documentation des résultats, l’équipe d’IDLab a travaillé en étroite collaboration avec les principaux contributeurs d’Ursa et les membres de la communauté de l’Hyperledger Foundation pour examiner et évaluer les résultats. En conséquence, un certain nombre d’améliorations ont été identifiées pour répondre aux conclusions du rapport.
Ultimement, l’exercice a conclu qu’Ursa fournit une base de sécurité solide pour les projets qui dépendent de la famille de technologies Hyperledger applicables à l’identité numérique.
Résumé des conclusions de l’examen :
En général, l’examen a relevé quelques défauts de sécurité relativement mineurs, quelques conseils de mise en place, et quelques observations générales pour l’amélioration de la librairie.
Celles-ci peuvent être brièvement décrites comme suit :
Problèmes mineurs de construction
Précautions à prendre lors de la construction, principalement avec des librairies ou des intégrations de tiers
Problèmes mineurs liés à l’absence de prise en charge de l’augmentation des messages
Problèmes mineurs liés à la validation des sous-groupes
Un problème lié à la validation des clés publiques
Pour ceux qui souhaitent consulter le rapport complet, veuillez cliquer ici. Vous pouvez également en savoir plus en visionnant le webinaire ci-dessus (en anglais).
Si vous avez des questions sur Hyperledger Ursa, vous pouvez vous adresser à la communauté sur le serveur «Discord server for Ursa». Si vous souhaitez en savoir plus sur IDLab, veuillez consulter le site www.idlab.org.
Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) has the power to transform economies — connecting people, governments, businesses, and organizations locally and globally through technology that could not have been imagined even 20 years ago, and with more advances on the way.
Experimentation is central to answering any question, especially one with as many stakeholders, variables, and “unknowns” as CBDCs. Without open source development and collaboration between stakeholders, each will have to invest significant resources to build code independently and will have no way to avoid duplicating efforts or mistakes.
To achieve success, we must experiment, question, interrogate, and evaluate without fear of failure. We must share information openly and freely across borders, industries, and institutions to create a rich dataset that drives innovation and decision-making.
That’s why we are thrilled to announce that Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS), Hyperledger Foundation and The Digital Dollar Project (DDP) are joining forces to create an open community dedicated to experimentation, information sharing, and discussion around CBDCs, ensuring that central banks that decide to embark upon researching or deploying CBDCs are doing so with the best available secure technology.
Each organization’s unique community will contribute to building a neutral place to collaborate, use, share, and build technologies that advance the exploration of CBDCs. Our aim is to bring together a global forum of practitioners and stakeholders to engage in open collaboration and development and to forge private-public partnerships for experimenting, sharing knowledge, and working together on open standards and research.
In 2016, a team at SORAMITSU envisioned a universal blockchain framework. They began work on Iroha with the aim of creating a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platform that would be user-friendly, yet robust enough to work with various use cases in any industry, while providing complete client libraries, simple architecture, and easy-to-comprehend entities. In short, Iroha is both a framework and a poem that became a Japanese syllabary, ordered and beautiful.
In the six years that have passed, Iroha was contributed to the Hyperledger Foundation, and the project has evolved immensely. When Hyperledger Iroha v1 was released, it was with the goal of being a flexible private blockchain ledger and to help flatten the DLT learning curve. Hyperledger Iroha v1 was to be like digital epoxy, moldable into whatever was needed, but once solidified — rock solid and reliable. The project was a resounding success, achieving what was originally planned and far beyond.
The world of technology flows extremely fast, and by the time everybody talks about an idea, it’s already too late to implement it. “In our world, who can stay gold forever?” as the second line of the Iroha poem states. The Hyperledger Iroha community has taken a forward-looking stance with the successor to Iroha v1. We anticipate what the world of tomorrow will need in a blockchain ledger. We intend to be the “the great mountain of Uwi,” of which the third line of the same poem speaks, accumulating the Karma of human beings and moving beyond it.
We thus proudly present to you a sneak peek at Hyperledger Iroha v2.
Hyperledger Iroha 2’s main goal is to embody the ideal of Kaizen: eliminate the excessive, preserve the unambiguously good. Iroha 2 is designed as a modular system that’s easy to reason about. You can deploy it as a toll-free intermediate ledger in a Hyperledger Cactus consortium, or you can use it as a standalone ledger with transaction fees. It can just as easily connect to parity Substrate networks and provide Byzantine fault-tolerant governance. But Iroha doesn’t need to be cumbersome. It only asks you questions when no reasonable default can be assumed. It can be as simple and as complex as you choose to make it.
The second iteration of Hyperledger Iroha is close to being production-ready, but far from feature complete. It comes with its own bespoke execution model that can be optimized for parallel execution, something which few, if any, ledgers currently allow. Both elastic-supply currencies as well as NFTs are supported, and accounts are allowed to be identified both as a familiar name@domain as well as a verbose but cryptic SS58 address.
Another goal of Hyperledger Iroha 2 is to become the blockchain that would be more than capable of working with a greater variety of use cases while still being lightweight and easy to use. Iroha 2 has been developed in Rust, and will allow blockchain developers to connect to public networks, to Substrate networks; to collect or not collect transaction fees; to choose what assets to mint and how to use them.
In short, with Hyperledger Iroha 2 it is possible to build the type of network that would work best for you: be it a simplistic network that will only allow to create and transfer simple assets, or an elaborate system with reputation, connection to public networks, offline transactions, and complex assets.
Join the Hyperledger Iroha v2 Community
You can try out Hyperledger Iroha 2 right now, with the help of our Tutorial, which is still a work in progress, but already shows you many features of Iroha 2; such as the creation of basic systems, Iroha Special Instruction or WASM events, as well as usage of Iroha through different languages such as Java, Rust, JavaScript, Python 3 or simply through a CLI.
Now Hyperledger Iroha 2 is hitting a major milestone. We are releasing the 5th preview-release, which will be supported for the following six months. This will allow developers to start using Iroha 2 to design their products and get a preview of some of the innovative functions that are coming soon.
Monthly preview-releases have been available since January 2022. The May 2022 release is different, though. The long-term support provided to this particular version is intended for early adopters to build up their projects. We shall, of course, forge ahead and break things, but the preview release № 5 will remain unchanged (save for security and bug fixes) for at least half a year. In addition to the main peer binary (written in Rust), we will also release the accompanying JavaScript, Kotlin and Java SDKs so that any complex projects that require a stable base can be built.
Our ongoing goal is to keep growing the community – and as always, everyone is welcome at our bi-weekly meetings and in our dedicated Discord chat; especially anyone who wants to build the best blockchain technology with us, and anyone who would like to use it. Every contribution idea will be considered. Let us work together on the future of Hyperledger Iroha!
