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Jan 12
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Announcing the 2023 Hyperledger Technical Oversight Committee

By Hyperledger Blog, Governance

As we turned the page to 2023, the developer community and Hyperledger Foundation Governing Board selected this year’s Technical Oversight Committee (TOC). Recent updates to the Hyperledger Foundation charter renamed the committee providing governance to the Hyperledger technical communities. The transition of Technical Steering Committee (TSC) to TOC reflects Hyperledger Foundation’s shift to a full umbrella project.

The name change was accompanied by some adjustments to the election process as well. The TOC is now composed of 11 members with all maintainers (or similar technical role in a supported project) who have been active in the past year eligible to vote for their choice among TOC nominees. The top six vote getters become TOC voting members. To ensure diversity and relevant expertise on the TOC, the Governing Board selects the additional five voting members of the TOC from among the TOC Nominees. Once the TOC is selected, its members elect a chair and vice chair.

The 2023 TOC named Tracy Kuhrt of Accenture as chair. She served as chair in the last term of the TSC as well. Arun SM of Walmart Global Tech was named vice chair. He is the first person from an end user contributing company to take a technical governance leadership role.

Read on for Tracy’s and Arun’s takes on the role of the TOC, the year ahead, what technologies they are excited about and the value they see in being part of the Hyperledger community. 

What are the key responsibilities of the TOC? Of the TOC leaders?

Tracy: The Hyperledger Foundation charter documents the stated responsibilities of the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC). In addition, the TOC has documented the expectations for the TOC members, chair, and vice chair at: https://toc.hyperledger.org/toc-responsibilities.html. In short, the TOC is responsible for oversight of the Hyperledger Foundation technical communities, including approving new proposals for project lifecycle changes, establishing community norms, workflows, or policies that are not within the scope of any single project, and resolving technical matters that affect multiple projects.

Arun: First off, all content and views solely are my own and do not represent any of my employers. Now for my take: In addition to all the points Tracy covered, this is the time to remind ourselves of the recent commitment from the Hyperledger Foundation to the community through charter changes. Hyperledger Foundation hosts a wide range of technical projects related to blockchain technology and multiparty systems. The charter changes give freedom to an ever-growing suite of projects and those who want to bring in their projects to the foundation. While TOC guides and prepares new projects to thrive in open-source, each of these projects are free to then set up a governance charter around them that best supports the project’s growth.

What are your priorities for the TOC in 2023?

Tracy: From my TOC nomination statement,

Communities are stronger when:

·  Everyone is welcome and people feel like they belong.
·  There is a diverse set of opinions.
·  We push each other out of our comfort zones.
·  We listen and learn from others (be those others in the community or outside of the community).
·  We have shared goals.

As the TOC chair, I want to be sure that the TOC is bringing their diverse voices to the conversations that we have and that we respectfully listen to each other to develop shared goals for what the TOC will be focused on in 2023 with the intent of making the Hyperledger community stronger.

Arun: My 2023’s priorities will be to bridge the voices of sister open-source community groups and encourage projects that will accelerate the technology adoption. Anything we do, I will see to it there is respect for individuals, empowerment for those who build and encouragement for new contributors.

________

Hear more from Tracy and Arun in these conversation from Hyperledger Global Forum:

________

What are some of the challenges you see in the coming year?

Tracy: There are a couple of items that came up in the last Governing Board meeting that will be topics of discussion that the TOC will need to revisit. The first is related to formalizing and documenting security practices. The TOC kicked off a security task force in December 2021. This work must continue to ensure that projects within the Hyperledger Foundation enact consistent security practices. The TOC will be instrumental in formalizing these security practices. I invite members of the Hyperledger community with a security background to bring their voices to the conversation.

The second item that was discussed with the Governing Board is how we best represent the health and status of the projects within the Hyperledger Foundation. Today our project lifecycle is one in which projects only move forward through the different stages. In past TOCs, we have talked about whether this should change and whether we should instead represent the state of a project with some form of badging to allow people to be able to quickly determine the health and status of a project. This conversation has probably happened at least once every term that I have served on the TOC. As such, I would expect that we will have this discussion again hopefully with a resolution that satisfies both the projects and the Governing Board.

Arun: All the points Tracy made as well as a few more: The year 2022 was remarkable and saw extremes at both ends. High value investments poured into the technology at the same time established business setups closed due to their working models. As with any emerging technologies, there’s a lot of noise that still needs to diminish. Only then can the true potential of the technology be seen. Academia collaboration is key to increasing awareness and bringing in the necessary research in open areas. This is an area we can look into for potential collaboration opportunities. Educating the technologists, providing them with all the information necessary to make decisions, adding best practices and security checks, curating the documentation and content for individual roles, and following standard release practices all play a key role.

What emerging technologies or trends are you excited about or see as new opportunities for growing the Hyperledger ecosystem?

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. Almost a third of our top-level projects started in Hyperledger Labs (Ursa, Cacti, Bevel, FireFly, and Solang), and I expect that we will see more in the future. Some areas that I have heard discussed as possible areas to grow the Hyperledger ecosystem include centralized ledgers, zero knowledge, and data segregation. If you have any code that you would like to contribute to the Hyperledger Foundation, please consider creating a project proposal or lab proposal.

Arun: Opportunities are plentiful within the Hyperledger ecosystem. There’s a lot we can do on multiple fronts from core technology research to leading the standards bodies and creating additional tools for easier adoption of these new technologies. There have been several tooling project proposals in the labs recently. I am personally looking forward to the collaboration that is possible across projects within The Linux Foundation umbrella, especially tapping into the expertise in CNCF . 

In addition, the identity ecosystem has found its sweet spot in Hyperledger Foundation. The mass adoption of blockchain technology is influenced by confidentiality and scalability. It is a matter of time before proposals like the Perun lab become  mainstream. There’s also space for rollup technologies. If you’re someone looking for ideas to start working on, consider developing a debugging framework. There’s a lot of potential in verification/validation.

In your experience, what is the value of being part of the Hyperledger community?

Tracy:  I have been part of the Hyperledger Community since 2015 – first as a user of Hyperledger Fabric, followed by a stint with the Linux Foundation as a Hyperledger community architect, to my current leadership roles as a Hyperledger Lab Steward, TOC member, and the TOC chair. During this time, the thing that I value most are the relationships that I have formed with other members of the community. I have learnt a lot from the interactions that I have had with each of them, including being mentored on my first code contribution, working with other community members to develop better solutions and best practices, increasing my knowledge on decentralized identity, and understanding what other people are interested in and working on within the enterprise blockchain space.

Arun: It is difficult to quantify or compare the value of being part of the Hyperledger community. The Linux Foundation has one of the best open-source processes, standards and governance. That’s of extra importance when it comes to the Hyperledger Foundation as the problem statements that the community here solves are not simple. Adding zero-trust and decentralization to the distributed computing domain is an uphill task. As you can imagine, the people we meet in everyday interactions are the finest in their domain. What more can one expect than having a group of all finest people in one place. There’s a lot to learn from everyone, be it a new contributor or an experienced maintainer of the project. I have gratitude towards all of the developers, architects, and leaders I met in the community. The energy in the community is unparalleled. It makes us strive to do more and be better than yesterday.

Here’s the full list of the 2023 Hyperledger Foundation TOC:

  • Arnaud J Le Hors, IBM
  • Arun S M (vice chair), Walmart Global Tech
  • Bobbi Muscara, Ledger Academy
  • David Enyeart, IBM
  • Jim Zhang, Kaleido
  • Marcus Brandenburger, IBM*
  • Peter Somogyvari, Accenture
  • Stephen Curran, Cloud Compass Computing*
  • Timo Glastra, Animo Solutions*
  • Tracy Kuhrt (chair), Accenture
  • Venkatraman Ramakrishna, IBM*

* New committee members

The TOC meets weekly and all are welcomed to join the conversations. To get the details on TOC calls and communication channels, go here:
https://wiki.hyperledger.org/display/TSC/Technical+Oversight+Committee+Home

Jan 11
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Hyperledger Mentorship Spotlight: Upgrade Fabric network from 1.4.x to 2.2.x using Hyperledger Bevel

By Mohit Vaish Blog, Hyperledger Bevel, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Mentorship Program

What did you work on?

Project name: Upgrade Fabric network from 1.4.x to 2.2.x using Hyperledger Bevel

Objective:

Hyperledger Bevel is an automation framework for rapidly and consistently deploying production-ready DLT platforms. This mentorship project enhances Hyperledger Bevel to perform a live upgrade of a Hyperledger Fabric network from version 1.4.x to 2.2.x and provide an operations guide to perform the steps. This project uses Ansible, Kubernetes, Helm, Hashicorp Vault and Hyperledger Fabric. 

My mentors for this project were Sownak Roy and Jagpreet Singh Sasan. Their support and guidance has been immensely helpful for implementation of this project. 

This development work has automated the steps to upgrade the Hyperledger Fabric network, which shall increase the productivity to carry out such upgrades.

What did you learn or accomplish?

Learnings:

Before the start of this project, I had a basic understanding of setting up a Hyperledger Fabric network using Docker Compose. Hyperledger Bevel provided insights on how to automate and set up a production grade Hyperledger Fabric network on Kubernetes platform in various cloud providers.

I learned how Ansible, Helm charts and Flux are tied together for this implementation. Ansible does the automation for deployment pipeline, Helm charts are the reusable packages for Kubernetes components, and Flux implements the GitOps model so that current Hyperledger Fabric Network state is available for the operator.

Accomplishments:

My mentors validated my approach and provided feedback. I learned about multiple orderer organizations in a Hyperledger Fabric network and improved the upgrade automation for such scenarios. I was able to set up the network in a local minikube environment and will be updating the Hyperledger Bevel documentation for the same. This will provide new developers who do not have a cloud Kubernetes environment to set up and learn Hyperledger Bevel.

The code can be accessed here.

The documentation is available at this link.

What comes next?

I worked primarily on SharePoint development during my career but last year started looking into blockchain technologies as it provides immense potential to bring trust to the internet. There are so many use cases in real-life scenarios that ultimately can be solved by these technologies

The productivity that blockchain solutions bring to the table will be a win-win solution for enterprises as well as customers. This is an evolving technology that is community driven and, being open source, provides opportunity for all to learn and contribute. This mentorship program provided me a similar opportunity and now, along with Linux Foundation certification, my work is noticed by employers. I wholeheartedly thank my mentors and Linux Foundation for this opportunity and wish to keep contributing to this ecosystem.

Jan 11
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Hyperledger Mentorship Spotlight: Fabric-Ethereum token bridging

By André Augusto, Ph.D. Student, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal Blog, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Cacti, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Mentorship Program, Interoperability

What did you work on?

Project name: Fabric-Ethereum token bridging

Main objectives:

  1. Review cross-chain bridges state of the art.
  2. Study and develop chaincode and smart contracts following ERC standards.
  3. Prototype a cross-chain bridge between Hyperledger Fabric and EVM-based blockchains. Hyperledger Technologies: Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Cactus.

Mentors:

  1. Imre Kocsis, assistant professor, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Budapest, Hungary.
  2. László Gönczy, assistant professor, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Budapest, Hungary.

Impact yielded from work:

This work constitutes an add-on to the existing efforts to enable interoperability between permissioned networks. Moreover, we contribute to the community by developing a cross-chain bridge between Hyperledger Fabric and EVM-based blockchains using the Secure Asset Transfer Protocol (SATP), a protocol under standardization at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

What did you learn or accomplish?

Deliverables:

  1. Create a report on blockchain interoperability solutions.
  2. Design a cross-chain bridge between a Hyperledger Fabric and a Hyperledger Besu network.
  3. Implement a prototype of the designed cross-chain bridge solution in Hyperledger Cactus.
  4. Develop an academic paper.

Issues overcome:

  1. At the beginning there were a lot of unknowns: a new area, protocols, and new technology. After all, I am glad about the final product and all the lessons learned.

Lessons learned and advice:

  1. The community is here to help. We had fruitful discussions with various members of the Hyperledger community, which proved to be valuable for the final project.
  2. The best is always yet to come. Believe me when I say things will always be better than they are at the moment — bugs appear, and sometimes we need to take a step back to take two steps forward.

Exciting technology:

  1. Hyperledger Fabric was considered the most adopted enterprise blockchain solution.
  2. Hyperledger Cactus provides the building blocks for interoperability.
  3. The integration of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) with interoperability solutions seems to be the way forward to perform identity management.

What comes next?

  • The addition of SSI in our work seems a good next step as a way to remove some assumptions made in the solution design.
  • I envision to continue working and advancing the existing interoperability research. I aim to continue contributing to Hyperledger Cactus (now Hyperledger Cacti), the Hyperledger project directed toward interoperability.
Jan 04
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Solution Brief: Self-Assessing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in Telecom

By Nikos Kapsoulis and Gordon Graham Blog, Hyperledger Fabric, Research, Special Interest Group, Telecom

The Hyperledger Telecom Special Interest Group, in collaboration with LF Networking, has just published a solution brief on the self-assessment of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in telecom. 

An SLA defines the services delivered by a provider to a client and the metrics for measuring those services. If the actual services received by the client do not meet the SLA guarantees promised by the provider, the agreement has been violated. In that case, the provider may owe the client a refund or whatever penalty is defined in the SLA. 

The solution brief includes a high-level overview of a proposed solution for self-assessing SLAs. This proposed solution uses Hyperledger Fabric blockchain technology to tackle the gray areas of conventional SLA assessment. 

This unique architecture provides a trusted and privacy-preserving network that can precisely monitor and compute SLA metrics, with full transparency for both provider and client. 

Achieving effective SLA self-assessments will benefit everyone in the ecosystem by building trust, removing friction, streamlining processes, and saving costs. 

The Problem: Lack of transparency

An effective SLA clearly defines all performance metrics and parameters. 

But in most conventional SLAs, the provider assesses their own performance using their own tools and frameworks. The client generally has no way to see how these metrics are monitored or calculated. This increases the risk of biased results that favor the provider. 

This lack of transparency means the client could well suffer from misunderstandings, missed violations, and insufficient refunds. All this undermines trust between the provider and the client. 

The Solution: Using blockchain for transparent self-assessment

This solution brief proposes a novel architecture that is based on the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework and Hyperledger Fabric Private Chaincode (FPC). As shown in the figure below, the installed Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) provides secure and private monitoring, and computation of all performance metrics governed by the SLA.

Both client and provider benefit from the presented solution, which builds trust where little previously existed. More details are provided in the full white paper. 

The scientific research performed on SLA Self-Assessment and applied to the telecom context adheres to work accomplished under the Pledger project.

The full paper is available to download here. 

_______________________________________

Get Involved with the Group

To learn more about the Hyperledger Telecom Special Interest Group, check out the group’s wiki and mailing list. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, feel free to post messages to the list.  And you’re welcome to join any of the group’s upcoming calls to meet group members and learn how to get involved. On February 9 at 9:00 am PT, the authors will be presenting the paper during the Telecom Special Interest Group call. All are welcome to join.

Acknowledgements

The Hyperledger Telecom Special Interest Group would like to thank the following people who contributed to this solution brief: Nima Afraz, David Boswell, Gordon Graham, Nikolaos Kapsoulis, Antonios Litke, Alexandros Psychas, Vipin Rathi, and Theodora Varvarigou. 

Dec 20
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#HyperledgerAsia: A Sampling of the Many Hyperledger-Powered Solutions in Action Across Asia

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Iroha

Hyperledger technologies are serving as the open source foundation for a rapidly growing range of production solutions and applications. Companies across Asia are putting Hyperledger technologies to work to boost trade, fight fraud, streamline financial transactions, authenticate data, verify identities and more. 

As part of our spotlight on #HyperledgerAsia, we’ve collected a sampling of the many Hyperledger-powered solutions reshaping how business is done in markets across Asia. Read on for details:

Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN)

GSBN was founded by eight global shipping lines and terminal operators as a not-for-profit consortium to provide one standardized source of immutable data to all users in real-time. Built using the Oracle Blockchain Platform implementation of Hyperledger Fabric in multi-cloud deployment, GSBN supports modern and efficient global trade through data exchange. GSBN rolled out its first use case, Cargo Release, over several months, beginning in China and Southeast Asia in August 2021. After the initial deployment, GSBN gained support from terminals across the globe. Cargo Release expanded its footprint into Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in March 2022. Four months later, Cargo Release launched in Latin America, starting with ports across Mexico and Panama.

GSBN is using a 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 Institution now also access Trade Finance and Electronic Bill of Lading applications, as well as Cargo Release, all enabled by trusted shipping data. Read the details in this case study.

marketsN

marketsN is a secure B2B platform from KoineArth built on the Oracle Blockchain Platform, which is powered by Hyperledger Fabric. It has been deployed by Hindalco Industries Ltd. (a subsidiary of the Aditya Birla Group) for monitoring the supply chain for outsourcing operations, including contract manufacturing with 25+ vendors (tollers) in a 4-tier supply chain network. marketsN enables them to see the inventory available at each vendor at any given point in time, replacing a three day manual process using Excel spreadsheets, many phone calls, and on-site visits, while avoiding the need for subsequent reconciliation since the data comes directly from the vendors. The solution also helps vendors to plan their own production based on shipment info to Hindalco clients, balance quantity, lower-tier supplier information, and other data on blockchain which allows them to better optimize their resources. They plan to also enable online invoice generation to automate the billing and payments cycle.

MDL (Medium Distributed Ledger)

Medium has developed an enterprise-type, high-performance blockchain solution, “MDL,”’ with an advanced core blockchain based on Hyperledger Fabric that can achieve speeds of up to 15,000 TPS. Its usability is maximized through the “MDL Manager,” which allows users to easily install, manage and monitor the blockchain.

MDL is currently being supplied to the Korea Expressway Corporation as a mutual settlement system for the tolls collected on the public and private highways in the country. Before the adoption of the blockchain-based mutual settlement system, there were more than 20,000 complaints a year about payment mismatches. Now, as a result of the new system, not only are data errors and omissions prevented but the processing performance of the system has increased. Settlement data, even in areas with high traffic volume, is now stably handled, reducing the amount of overpayment, manpower, and complaints.

Open Trade Blockchain (OTB)

Open Trade Blockchain is a cross-border trade documentation blockchain from Global eTrade Services (GeTS) that connects China & ASEAN economies It’s built on the Hyperledger Fabric-based Oracle Blockchain Platform and is used to provide security and visibility across all trade documents – helping to contain investment risk and facilitate growing trade with simplified verification procedures and data harmonization. Single-Windows or Single-Window Front-end Services can integrate with OTB to provide more value-added services for the local trade community.

This cross border blockchain-based trade platform has been extended to support collaboration across Taiwan, Singapore and New Zealand with the aim of improving the efficiency of cargoes under their Free Trade Agreement. For example, 3M Taiwan Ltd. reports that the cross border blockchain solution not only helps to reduce time for preparing and transmitting customs clearance documents from half a day to five minutes but has also solved documentation preparation challenges for Singapore exporters working remotely.

RAG Fraud Blockchain

The RAG Wangiri Blockchain was launched in March 2020 as a partnership of telcos and vendors created by Risk & Assurance Group (RAG) and Orillion Solutions with a common aim of reducing the number of wangiri fraud calls received by phone users. SORAMITSU recently joined the partnership and created a new Hyperledger Iroha-based infrastructure that can work with an expanded range of frauds. Renamed RAG Fraud Blockchain, this next-generation blockchain ledger serves as a fraud intelligence exchange where members that contribute data earn the right to access others’ data. The telcos that actively contribute their data will earn the right for continued free access, while other firms and organizations, including software vendors and law enforcement agencies, may pay for access or else be granted visibility of strictly limited subsets of the common ledger.

Secure Logistics Document Exchange (SLDE) 

The Secure Logistics Document Exchange was facilitated by the Government of India and the Ministry of Commerce & Industry with an aim to replace the physical exchange of trade documents with a secure digital platform for generation, storage and exchange of documents. Built using Aadhaar-based authentication mechanism and the Hyperledger Fabric-based Oracle Blockchain Platform as a secure ledger, it offers an audit trail for the title of ownership/authenticity of documents and provides end-to-end visibility on transfer of documents. 

The SLDE platform, developed by CargoExchange, supports an end-to-end digital trade ecosystem that includes banks, shippers, customs, freight forwarders, and export and import companies and aims to address the issues related to physical movement of logistics related documents such as slow speed, limited transparency and lack of audit trails. Using SLDE, Axis Bank has successfully executed industry-first blockchain-enabled domestic trade transactions with ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India and Lalit Pipes & Pipes Ltd. YES BANK used the system to support a deal involving Mukka Proteins, a Mangaluru-based marine product manufacturer and exporter, and Golden Beach Line (importer), an Oman-based trading company, with the forwarding agent Shipwaves Ltd. 

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.

SnapCert is built on Hyperledger Fabric and interoperable with non-Oracle Hyperledger instances that may be deployed on third-party clouds. It uses cloud infrastructure and REST APIs to build powerful products. The platform issues SSI (self-sovereign identity) credentials that follow W3C’s DID (decentralized identity) and verifiable credentials standard. It is also compliant with privacy and security compliance mandates (e.g., GDPR).

SnapCert offers secure digitization, generation, authentication, sharing, and verification of any kind of academic certificate as well as digital credentials for enterprises. 

Trust Your Supplier

Trust Your Supplier (TYS) is a next-generation cloud-based supplier management platform built on Hyperledger Fabric that accelerates supplier onboarding, lowers procurement operating costs, ensures global regulatory compliance, and provides real-time visibility of supply chain risk across an encrypted blockchain environment.   

TYS continues to expand the solution, allowing network participants to manage and monitor their suppliers across the globe. TYS was recently deployed into China and Japan, which brings the count of countries where TYS is available in Asia to 36. Additionally, suppliers in China can work in the TYS app using Simplified Chinese. 

View the full country list here: Globalization – Trust Your Supplier 

Join the conversation about the adoption and development of Hyperledger technologies across Asia on social channels with #HyperledgerAsia. 

Dec 13
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Hyperledger Solang Release v0.2.0 and what’s to come

By Cyrill Leutwiler, Lucas Steuernagel, Sean Young Blog, Hyperledger Solang

With great pleasure we announce our most recent Hyperledger Solang Release: v0.2.0 “Berlin.” This release marks an important milestone towards maturing and stabilizing our Substrate compilation target: we are leaving ink! version 3 behind us in favor of introducing compatibility with the recent ink! 4 beta release! 

Status update for our Substrate target

With the “Berlin” release, Hyperledger Solang substantially improved its compatibility with many existing Ethereum Dapps and concepts within the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem. Porting from Ethereum to a Substrate Parachain is now easier since the compiler supports almost all language constructs as Ethereum Solidity 0.8. This release represents just the beginning of a series of upcoming achievements yet to unlock for the Substrate compilation target.

Getting started with Hyperledger Solang on Substrate

Running your first Solidity contract on Substrate Parachains should be a matter of minutes. In this section we walk you through the few steps, showcasing how to use a classic Solidity example on Substrate. Namely, we are going to deploy an unmodified version of the “Voting” example contract, directly out of the Solidity documentation itself. According to Solidity documentation, the “Voting” contract example showcases a lot of Solidity’s features.

Prerequisites

To follow along, you’ll need to install Solang version “0.2.0” on your system. We offer plenty of quick installation options, including Homebrew as well as pre-built binaries for all common platforms. Please consult our documentation for instructions specific to your platform. Impatient readers may as well just use our docker option, which doesn’t require installing anything, instead.

If you want to test contracts on a local node, you’ll need to run version “0.22.1” of “substrate-contracts-node” on your local machine. Installation instructions can be found here. Again, our impatient readers may use the “paritytech/contracts-ci-linux” Docker image instead as this image contains a compatible substrate node as well (at the time of writing).

Compiling the “Voting” Solidity contract to WASM

We start with saving the source code of the “Voting” example contract into a file called “ballot.sol.”. There is no need to make any modification to the code, unless you want to tinker around a bit on your own. Now we use “solang” to compile the contract as follows:

solang compile --target substrate ballot.sol

The contract should compile without any warnings. If you prefer docker, you can use the following command instead:

docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd):/sources ghcr.io/hyperledger/solang:v0.2.0 compile -o /sources --target substrate /sources/ballot.sol

Now, inside your current working directory, a new file called “Ballot.contract” should appear, containing the web assembly BLOB together with the metadata of the contract.

Testing on a local development node

Before deploying the compiled contract to a testnet, let’s try it out on a local node. If you are in a hurry, you may as well skip this section and proceed directly with a deployment to a testnet. Start a local node on your machine using the following command:

substrate-contracts-node --tmp --ws-external -lerror,runtime::contracts=debug

Alternatively, the equivalent command for our docker users is as follows:

docker run --rm -it -p9944:9944 paritytech/contracts-ci-linux substrate-contracts-node --tmp --ws-external -lerror,runtime::contracts=debug

The odd looking “-lerror,runtime::contracts=debug” CLI option will instruct the node to use the debugging log level for the “contracts” pallet. This might come in handy as it effectively enables using the debug buffer, which allows the contract to communicate with the developer at runtime.

Deploy the contract using the contracts UI

Now head over to the contracts-UI and make sure to select ”Local Node” in the top-left corner. Then click on “Add New Contract” just below, and choose “Upload New Contract Code.” As the Contract Bundle, choose the ”Ballot.contract” file from the previous section. The node we are using comes with some special built-in accounts, which come in very handy for development purposes. The “alice” account is one of them and it is fine to use that for contract instantiation.

Image 1: Choosing the compiled contract bundle in contracts-UI

In the next section, you’ll be presented with some options for contract instantiation. Primarily, you might want to add some more “proposalName”s to our voting Ballot by clicking the big “+” button on the right side, so that we can actually choose between different voting options later. The actual values for the ”proposalName” won’t matter at this point.

Image 2: Configuring constructor arguments for contract instantiation in contracts UI

When you are satisfied with your deployment options, scroll to the bottom of the page to click on “Next” and then “Upload and Instantiate.” Under the hood, this will call the intrinsic to instantiate the contract. As the node we are using is configured to have instant block finality, the operation should succeed immediately. You’ll find your freshly deployed contract on the left side and it will look like this:

Image 3: The solidity contract deployed to a local node

Interacting with the contract

Now we can start playing with the contract by calling some of its functions. For example, try calling the “giveRightToVote()” function using the “alice” account, to entitle “bob,” “dave” and “eve” with the rights to submit a vote. You’ll notice that, if you are trying to call the ”vote()” function using an account that was not given voting rights priorly, the contract will trap and the transaction reverts as a consequence. If you did set the log level for the contracts runtime to “debug” in the previous step, you will be able to observe failed “require” statements in your local nodes terminal output. You will find a message like this when trying to submit a “vote()” using a non-entitled account as the caller:

2022-12-07 18:45:46.496 DEBUG tokio-runtime-worker runtime::contracts: Execution finished with debug buffer: Has no right to vote

Deploying to a testnet

Finally, let’s see how we can deploy our ballot contract to the “Rococo” live testnet, turning it into a usable Dapp. For this we are going to use the polkadot JS browser extension to create some accounts. So make sure to install that in your browser if you don’t already have it.

Creating test accounts

While our local node conveniently provided us with accounts charged up with balance out of the box, this won’t be the case on any “real” network. Instead we will create dedicated accounts. Even though you could reuse any pre-existing value-bearing Accounts from polkadot.js for this experiment, it is considered best practice to always use dedicated throw-away accounts for any development purposes. In your browser, open the polkadot JS extensions and use “Create new Account,” accessible by clicking on the big  “+” button on the top right side.

Once you successfully created a new account, in the polkadot JS extension, click on the ”gear” sign on the top-right corner and choose “Substrate” under “DISPLAY ADDRESS FORMAT FOR.” This will make polkadot JS to represent your Account ID in the correct address format used on “Rococo.” Naturally, deploying and calling any contract on-chain will cost some value, which is “ROC” tokens in the case of Rococo specifically. You can get some “ROC” tokens for free as follows:

1. Visit the Rococo faucet channel on matrix here.
2. Copy your Account ID in the “Substrate” address format and send the following command inside the Rococo faucet channel: “!drip YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS:1002” (the “:1002” appended to your address is important).
3. A bot will respond to you shortly, confirming your balance. After a short while, you should also be able to confirm your balance by visiting the polkadot JS apps using this link.

If something does not work out, you can find more detailed instructions related to the Rococo faucet here.

Deploying the contract to rococo

We are almost there! Back inside the contracts UI, you can switch to the “Contracts (Rococo)” network using the dropdown menu in the top left corner. Once connected, you are good to use your freshly created account, loaded up with some “ROC” tokens, to deploy the contract. From now on, instantiating your contract and interacting with it works in exactly the same way as on the local node.

Image Image 4: The solidity contract deployed to the contracts parachain on Rococo

Many congratulations! You have just successfully deployed your first Solidity Dapp to a substrate parachain ✨

What’s next for Substrate

Primarily, we aim to fully support cross-call support between contracts written in ink! and Solidity. At the time of writing, it is only possible to call Solidity contracts from the ink! side in a rather bare-bones way. By implementing all missing primitives and supporting interfaces for bidirectional calls between ink! and Solidity, interacting with both worlds eventually will become a natural thing to do for smart contract authors targeting Substrate-based parachains.

A future goal will be to provide Solidity contracts direct access to chain extensions. This will open up a variety of immense benefits. For example, it is the building block for accessing randomness through verifiable random functions without calling into an oracle contract. Ultimately, support for chain extensions will enable using XCM within Solidity contracts. So stay tuned for the future!

Hyperledger Solang brings Solidity to many blockchains

Hyperledger Solang is designed to bring Solidity support to many blockchains. In addition to introducing compatibility with ink! v4, this release contains many small fixes and improvements.

A brief Solana update

On the Solana side, we are focusing on Anchor integration. Our goal is to have this finished by the next Solana Foundation hackathon so that participants can build their projects using Solidity. We still need to generate Anchor IDLs from Solidity contracts and integrate Anchor discriminators with Solang so that Rust contracts can call Solidity and vice versa. Recent breaking changes made the compiler incompatible with previous versions, but we are progressively updating the existing tooling until we switch to Anchor client side libraries.

We are looking forward to hearing from you!

If any blockchain would like to add Solidity to its list of supported smart contract languages, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us. We are excited to help anyone interested in integrating with Hyperledger Solang. As we mature our existing compilation targets, any form of feedback is highly appreciated. Try out Solang now and let us know how you get on!

Nov 16
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GSBN Builds Global Trade Operating Platform with Hyperledger Fabric as the Foundation

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Fabric, Supply Chain

Read the full case study here.

Global trade is systemically important to the world’s economy. In 2021, it represented $28.5 trillion. Yet, it hasn’t evolved along with the digital transformation of other industries.

Perhaps that’s because evolution seems like an insurmountable task. Processes are complex. Documents and information flow continuously — but asynchronously — between parties across the globe. Many processes still rely on paper and legacy systems. 

This lack of digital, on-demand data makes it difficult for the shipping sector to respond to global events, like the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 or the supply chain disruptions in 2021. In short, existing global trade processes aren’t efficient nor resilient enough.  

GSBN, a not-for-profit backed (and governed) by a collection of major shipping lines and global terminal operators, set out to create the trusted data sharing infrastructure needed for efficient, digital and resilient global trade. To do so, GSBN built a new global trade operating platform using Hyperledger Fabric as the foundation. 

The initial launch of GSBN centered around a Cargo Release offering aimed at improving shipping container turn-around time, reducing port congestion and pollution. Since its launch in March of 2021, more than 10,000 customers have used Cargo Release to get real-time updates on over 1 million shipments.

In September 2021, GSBN formed the Trade Finance Advisory Group with Bank of China (Hong Kong) Limited (BOCHK), DBS Bank and The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (HSBC) to develop digital solutions to help improve the financing process for banks. To break barriers in data sharing that were hindering financing approvals for trade companies, especially SMEs, GSBN created an application for consent collection. It allows banks to source data directly from shipping lines so they can verify information based on a single source of truth.

The third application for GSBN is electronic bills of lading (eBL). In June 2022, IQAX eBL application, built on top of GSBN, obtained approval by the International Group of P&I Clubs. The eBL application provides a digital channel for all parties to access real-time data on the shipping process. It also guarantees the security, accuracy, and authenticity of data. And it ensures the data on the blockchain network is traceable to a single source. This application has already been adopted by three shipping lines and one bank.

The Hyperledger Foundation team worked with GSBN on a case study that details the business and technical drivers and decisions that went into the creation of GSBN as well as key results to date. It also lays out how GSBN, as CTO Edmund To puts it, “will expand the global trade ecosystem by creating bridges to new market participants like banks, FinTech’s, and other consortia and launching new solutions.”

Read the full case study here.

Nov 15
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Announcing Hyperledger AnonCreds: Open Source, Open Specification Privacy Preserving Verifiable Credentials

By Stephen Curran, Maintainer, Hyperledger AnonCreds Blog, Hyperledger AnonCreds, Identity

AnonCreds, the most commonly used Verifiable Credential (VC) format in the world*, is now a Hyperledger project. Ledger agnostic and with a formal open specification, AnonCreds continues to evolve as a mature verifiable credential format with unique privacy-protecting capabilities. As a Hyperledger project, AnonCreds will have support to grow its code base and community on a global level with technical governance that fosters best open development and security practices.

As the Internet transitions to allowing people, organizations, and things to have greater control over the sharing of their credentials, protecting privacy is of paramount concern.

Hyperledger AnonCreds—short for “Anonymous Credentials”—is a type of VC that adds important privacy-protecting ZKP (zero-knowledge proof) capabilities to the core VC assurances. A core element of the Hyperledger Indy project for more than five years, AnonCreds is a mature, complete model and interactions set, with extensive support across Hyperledger Aries frameworks.

The creation of this project signifies the continued healthy evolution of an open source software project that was once monolithic and is now a set of well-defined independent components. 

Hyperledger AnonCreds is ledger-agnostic and client-agnostic. It is not tied to Hyperledger Indy or Aries. This makes it usable with other verifiable data registries/ledgers and verifiable credential client stacks. As a result, important  privacy-protecting capabilities become available to a much broader audience, and the underlying cryptography can evolve without affecting the features above it.

Additional benefits of using Hyperledger AnonCreds include:

  • Avoidance of identifiers: No correlatable identifiers are required in presenting data to a verifier. Correlatable identifiers may be applied in a use case specific manner.
  • Verifier assurances: Credentials are bound to the holder, so verifiers know that credentials presented together were all issued to the holder providing the presentation.
  • Minimal data sharing: Data to be shared by a holder to a verifier is minimized through the use of selective disclosure and ZKP predicates

Flexible formatting: Credentials and presentations can be formatted in the W3C VC Data Model standard format.

AnonCreds has joined the Hyperledger ecosystem with over 25 sponsors. The project consists of:

  • The AnonCreds Specification, managed by the Hyperledger AnonCreds Specification Working Group and with the potential of being submitted to an appropriate Standards organization
  • Ledger/Verifiable Data Registry-agnostic, open source code implementations of the AnonCreds specification, suitable for use with Hyperledger Aries and non-Aries agents
  • Guidance for creating ledger-specific AnonCreds Methods to write and resolve AnonCreds objects for specific ledgers
  • Documentation on AnonCreds suitable for all audiences, from business audiences to cryptographers
  • A test suite to verify adherence to the AnonCreds specification and the interoperability of AnonCreds implementations.

Next steps include evolving the existing AnonCreds Rust implementation to be friendlier to VDRs/ledgers other than Indy, wrapping up the v1.0 specification, and gaining compliance with the W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model Standard.

If you’re interested in learning more about AnonCreds start with the Hyperledger AnonCreds project page. From there you can find how to join project discussions on Discord, add yourself to the project mailing list, find the AnonCreds repositories on GitHub, and join the AnonCreds Working Groups.

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

*Source: godiddy.com combined “sov” (Indy) network volume

Nov 10
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Process Transformation for Public Services Driven by Blockchain

By Gopikrishnan Konnanath, Senior Vice President, Global Head – Engineering Services and Blockchain, Infosys, and Srikanth Challa, Senior Director, Blockchain, Infosys Blog, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Indy

Several government departments around the world are keen to offer their citizens seamless interactions and engaging experiences, akin to those in the private sector. 

The public sector is often riddled with manual processes, time-consuming verifications, legacy systems leading to low transparency and high costs. Over the years, digitalization has alleviated some of the challenges, but rising threats on privacy, data security coupled with the increasing legislations that enshrine the right-to-be-forgotten such as Europe’s GDPR or California’s CCPA pose new challenges for leaders serving in the public sector.

In the future, we will witness a monumental shift in what citizens will come to expect from their governments – nothing short of how they experience retail or banking in their life. While this digital transformation has already begun in the public sector, technologies such as blockchain are essential foundations that will power the next generation of citizen experiences. Blockchain and, more broadly, distributed ledger technologies will create a core of trust, transparency, and immutability that  breaks down information silos, reducing  cost all while vastly enriching the citizen experiences.

Infosys is proud to have been part of the transformation that is driving change in the public sector. We are happy to share a couple of examples where Infosys brought our strong capabilities in blockchain to help clients reimagine citizen experiences.

  1. Blockchain helps reimagine public records validation for Riverside County California

Riverside County California relied heavily on security paper and wet signatures to establish ‘trust’ and authenticate records. Citizens often had to wait for the physical copies of verified documents to reach them by post, which led to delays. In addition, easy access to numerous online tools increased the incidence of fraud, making it challenging to verify proof-of-records and physical documents, which was done manually. 

Infosys Public Services helped create a blockchain-based digital records fulfillment solution for Riverside County’s Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Office. Built on the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework, the new platform can seamlessly verify and authenticate several types of digital records (like land records, births, marriages, and deaths). The solution also bypasses physical paper records by issuing digital documents when a citizen or entity requests them, thereby providing an e-commerce-like experience. The blockchain solution will help Riverside County California achieve cost savings, faster turnaround time, and enhanced customer service.

Read the full case study to see how Riverside County authenticates and delivers digital records with 100% trust to citizens.

  1. Blockchain streamlines professional license issuance and verification for the State of Rhode Island

The Department of Business Regulation (DBR) in the State of Rhode Island chose to pilot a blockchain solution for identity validation, which is a pre-requisite for issuing licenses. The department used paper-based applications to issue nearly 200,000 licenses annually. This led to high operational inefficiencies, greater costs, and a poor citizen experience. 

DBR partnered with Infosys Public Services (Infosys) for its proven expertise in transforming government processes and implementing blockchain technology. Infosys implemented a blockchain-based identity and credential management solution using Hyperledger Indy and Hyperledger Aries that can quickly and securely validate an individual’s credentials. The solution is built on the Self-Sovereign Identity Model where citizens are the custodians of their data (i.e., personal data is stored on citizen mobile wallets, not on the blockchain). Instead, the blockchain stores the information needed to cryptographically validate the citizen’s credentials, which is shared with other parties. This solution can be easily adopted by other departments within the state paving the way for greater adoption across the entire state.

Read the complete case study to see why blockchain was the right solution for the State of Rhode Island.

Beyond the buzz, blockchain is proving to be a beneficial technology in the real world across banking, insurance, retail and other industries. Governments around the world are not sitting on the sidelines but jumping mainstream into this disruptive technology to drive citizen-centered governance.

To learn more about how Infosys leverages blockchain technologies to build reliable, trusted and sustainable ecosystems for governments and other organizations, go here.

Nov 07
Love0

Introducing Hyperledger Cacti, a multi-faceted pluggable interoperability framework

By Peter Somogyvari (Accenture), Jagpreet Singh Sasan (Accenture), Izuru Sato (Fujitsu), Takuma Takeuchi (Fujitsu), Venkatraman Ramakrishna (IBM), Sandeep Nishad (IBM), Krishnasuri Narayanam (IBM), Dhinakaran Vinayagamurthy (IBM) Blog, Hyperledger Cacti, Interoperability

In a Hyperledger first, the community has merged two systems (architectures as well as code bases) to create a new project. Hyperledger Cacti is a multi-faceted interoperability platform that draws on the cutting-edge technical features of Hyperledger Cactus and Weaver, a Hyperledger Lab, and provides a clear path forward for users of both technologies.

Hyperledger Cacti is a pluggable interoperability framework to link networks built on heterogeneous distributed ledger and blockchain technologies and to run transactions spanning multiple networks. Cacti was motivated by the observation that the blockchain/DLT ecosystem is fragmented into several independent networks built on a diverse set of DLTs, many of which are permissioned, but which cannot afford to remain isolated from each other, limiting the scale and utility of their business processes (smart contracts and “dapps”) and trapping their assets in silos.

Consider a trade logistics network (like TradeLens) that maintains bills of lading for shipments on its ledger. These bills are necessary to fulfill letters of credits’ payment obligations on a trade finance network (like Marco Polo), but without an institutionalized mechanism to share a bill of lading with proof of authenticity between the two networks, the trade finance network will have to depend on untrustworthy shippers, who are incentivized to supply fake bills in order to get payment. In another scenario that is increasingly common and salient in the DeFi world, financial instruments and currency accounts (e.g., Central Bank DIgital Currency, or CBDC) are maintained on different ledgers. But this state-of-affairs will inhibit trading, and limit the utility of these networks as well as the DLTs they are built on, unless mechanisms to atomically exchange, say, a security on one network for digital currency tokens on another, are institutionalized.

Extrapolating from these examples and others that are commonly encountered by enterprises and business consortia, we can identify the need for networks to interoperate for the purposes of sharing ledger state, moving assets across network boundaries, and exchanging assets atomically. But, because there are cogent privacy, autonomy, and performance reasons for a large number of such networks to co-exist, such interoperability must be enabled without forcing them all to coalesce into a single global chain or subscribe to a single global settlement chain.

Hyperledger Cacti provides an interoperability solution that does not require the networks’ respective chains to coalesce into one “chain to rule them all.” It also does not require the creation of yet another settlement chain and consensus protocol to which existing networks must subscribe. Instead, Cacti allows networks to preserve autonomy of decision-making while conducting cross-network transactions on a need basis. In effect, Hyperledger Cacti scales decentralized trust above and beyond the confines of a single network without requiring networks to merge or integrate, in effect enabling a network-of-networks, as illustrated in the figure below using samples of DLT networks and cross-chain operations. 

A core design tenet of Hyperledger Cacti is that it does not require modification to any existing DLT stack, and operates purely at the contract- and-application layers (or Layer 2). This allows Cacti to be used not only for networks built on existing DLTs but potentially for DLTs that have yet to emerge. The initial release of Hyperledger Cacti will provide interoperability and connectivity features to varying extents for the following nine DLTs. (Interoperability support for other DLTs will be added to the future roadmap of the project.)

  • Hyperledger Besu
  • Hyperledger Fabric
  • Hyperledger Indy
  • Hyperledger Iroha
  • Hyperledger Sawtooth
  • R3 Corda
  • Go-Ethereum
  • Quorum
  • Xdai

The Cacti architecture builds on the pre-existing architecture of both Hyperledger Cactus and the Weaver Labs frameworks, merging components having similar or identical functionality and aggregating distinct components to offer several features that span a wide spectrum of trust and usability. The Cacti plugin architecture will enable the coexistence and maintenance of different feature/protocol implementations which can be selectively activated on demand with minimum configuration overhead. Users can customize the level of decentralization they require using a combination of the Node Server inherited from Cactus and a pluggable network-centric relay (or gateway) inherited from Weaver. The figure below illustrates how distributed applications running on distinct ledgers can trigger cross-network transactions either from a centralized Node Server or in a peer-to-peer manner using relays. The applications can be deployed in a standalone legacy manner or be “plugged into” the Node Server; developers and administrators may choose the option that fits their requirements better. All cross-relay communication protocols implemented in Cacti will be DLT-agnostic and comply with emerging standards. 

Core interoperability features of proof validation and lock management can be performed using either designated validator pools or with smart contracts and DApps installed in the core networks themselves; users may select these options depending on the level of trust they require and correspondingly, the level of administrative overhead they are willing to accept. Cacti will offer these features and the ability to select and activate them through a common (and comprehensive) client SDK and API. To provide a foundation for interoperability across heterogeneous DLTs, Cacti will maintain a pool of DLT- and version-specific connectors or drivers that will act as entry points for operations in a given ledger that must occur in the context of a multi-ledger transaction.

To learn more, join us Monday, November 14, from 11am-2pm EST for the “Blockchain Interoperability with Hyperledger Cacti” hands-on workshop. To register, go here. 

To get involved in the Hyperledger Cacti community, connect with us on Discord. All are welcome!

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