Blog Archives – Page 3 of 54

Jun 09

Meet Weaver, one of the new Hyperledger Labs taking on cross-chain and off-chain operations

By Venkatraman Ramakrishna, IBM Research - India Blog, Hyperledger Labs

As enterprises and organizations increase their adoption and deployment of blockchain technology and networks, the overall complexity of systems are growing exponentially. While it’s exciting to see the expanding reach of blockchain, it also creates a host of new requirements for cross chain and off chain sharing of data, transactions and more.

At Hyperledger Global Forum (HGF) 2020 in Phoenix, one group of developers got together to share their work and create a blockchain integration tool designed to allow users to securely integrate different blockchains. They brought their project to Hyperledger Labs and, within a few months, it was approved as Hyperledger Cactus.

During this year’s HGF, three new Hyperledger Labs that are each tackling elements of cross-chain or off-chain operations are making their debuts: FireFly, Weaver and YUI. Read on to learn more about Weaver.

Meet Weaver: DLT Interoperability

By Venkatraman Ramakrishna, IBM Research – India

We are excited to announce Weaver, a project that was incubated in IBM Research. Weaver is an architectural framework with a family of protocols that enables scalable interconnectivity and interoperability between distributed ledgers while preserving core tenets of decentralization and security. This framework was motivated by the fragmentation of the blockchain ecosystem, with different flavors of permissioned blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) leading to the proliferation of independent networks managing processes of limited scope and keeping assets in silos. Weaver’s mission is to link processes and enable seamless but controlled flow of assets and data across network boundaries. It seeks to achieve this while maintaining the autonomy of the networks and the ledgers within and avoiding dependencies on trusted intermediaries.

Overview

Weaver is a general-purpose interoperability framework that provides a common set of capabilities for trustworthy information communication across ledgers, whether they belong to the same network or different networks running on different DLT stacks. Key principles that guide Weaver’s design are:

Accommodate DLT heterogeneity without favoring a particular DLT design
Allow networks to maintain their independence and collective sovereignty
Minimize coupling during cross-network interactions
Rely on common standards for cross-network protocol units
Do not require a trusted intermediary or third-party ledger
Do not require changes to existing DLT stacks
Make no security and trust assumptions on Weaver components
Treat privacy and least privilege as a first-class requirement

Weaver addresses three broad classes of use cases:

Data transfer: ledger data (state) communication with proof
Asset transfer: movement of an asset from one ledger to another
Asset exchange: atomic exchange of asset ownership in different ledgers

The protocols to realize these use cases can be abstracted into a common stack of layers akin to the OSI model, from message formats at the bottom to governance rules at the top (see diagram below).

The Weaver architecture has three major components underpinning it:

DLT-agnostic Relays with DLT-specific drivers to route cross-network requests and responses.
Interoperation modules that operate through their network’s native consensus processes, typically smart contracts or decentralized applications.
Decentralized identity framework to share and authenticate network members’ identities.

The figure below illustrates this architecture, with a typical Fabric network to the left and a typical Corda network at the right. Weaver components are marked in green, and the design of the relay is called out in detail.

Hyperledger Labs Project

The Weaver Hyperledger Labs project was launched at the end of March 2021 with specifications detailed in a set of RFCs, a framework to run end-to-end network tests for updated or new interoperation protocols, and documentation to help users understand Weaver concepts and code in more detail.

Weaver currently offers protocols for data transfers among Hyperledger Fabric and Corda networks, and asset exchanges among Hyperledger Fabric networks. We hope to expand the coverage to more DLTs with the help of the community! Please check out the project repository for useful links and references and start contributing.

Learn more about Weaver and other recent code contributions from IBM in this panel from HGF:

Panel: Hyperledger Contributions from IBM – Kelly Ryan, Rakesh Mohan, Chris Ferris, Arnaud Le Hors & Elli Androulaki, IBM (Sponsored by IBM)

For a more technical dive into the challenges of interoperability and approaches to tackles them, check out this HGF session:

Blockchain Interoperability: Challenges, Ongoing Efforts, and Potential Solutions – Vinayaka Pandit, IBM Research – India

Jun 09

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Meet FireFly, one of the new Hyperledger Labs taking on cross-chain and off-chain operations

By Steve Cerveny, co-founder and CEO of Kaleido Blog, Hyperledger Labs

Meet FireFly

By Steve Cerveny, co-founder and CEO of Kaleido

Today, we are excited to introduce you to FireFly. FireFly is a multi-party system for enterprise data flows. It provides a purpose-built system upon which to build decentralized blockchain applications. Decentralized applications are a new category of business application. They bring with them a new set of challenges to successfully build and deploy.

In particular, multi-party data flows are complex and require significant plumbing – both cross-party and internally across the stack – to run securely and reliably at an enterprise grade.

Key Ingredients of a Multi-Party System

In our experience, consortia end up trying to build a multi-party system as a side effect of implementing their enterprise blockchain use case. This results in a large amount of “reinventing the wheel” and we’ve observed that most of the resources are spent on plumbing components.

At a high level, enterprise blockchain use cases attempt to coordinate data flows and transactions across disparate, separately owned systems (ERP, mainframe, commerce, etc.). To do this end-to-end, four things are required:

the single source of truth coordination system across parties
per-member plumbing software to enable reliable, private integration to and from the coordination system
cross-org plumbing software that provides robust cross-connectivity among members alongside (1) for use when the coordination system is not suitable or not preferred as the data flow mechanism. Examples include sensitive data, low latency messaging, and large data flows
a control plane to manage all of these runtime and configuration details

We formally define a multi-party system as the set of technology, infrastructure, and management capability to enable a consortium to build and deploy a use case that includes (1), (2), (3), and (4). We observe nearly all the real world consortia that we worked with over the last six years require all of (1), (2), (3), and (4) to build and deploy an enterprise blockchain use case. It is our observation that consortia spend most of their budget on (2) and (3).

Meet FireFly

Hyperledger FireFly brings together (1), (2), (3), and (4) to offer a pre-integrated set of runtimes via a highly pluggable framework. Note that FireFly is NOT attempting to replace or invalidate any specific runtime technology, but rather pulls together multiple complementary technologies into a coherent, larger system. Indeed, many of the infrastructure runtimes FireFly relies on are separate open source projects. Industry consortia globally have been using this technology to accelerate time to value for their production solutions.

Enterprise blockchains are purpose built to deliver (1) with invaluable attributes like global ordering and finality. FireFly will support Hyperledger Fabric, Enterprise Ethereum (such as Quorum and Besu), and will investigate Corda support. (1) also includes global storage providers such as IPFS. FireFly also provides a significant amount of technology for (2) and (3) including cross-party messaging, cross-party private document transfer, and event propagation. All of these runtimes and connectors into the FireFly node. For (4), Hyperledger FireFly also provides a network map and registry that unifies all of the identity and bindings information needed.

In a FireFly network, each member of the network deploys and runs one or more FireFly Nodes. Each Node consists of a FireFly Core application, as well as its dependencies. Each dependency is abstracted from the Core by a modular plugin system, so underlying technologies, such as the database for example, can be changed if necessary.

To jumpstart the community around FireFly, the contributors held a virtual event to introduce the Lab and demo its capabilities:

About the author:

Steve Cerveny is co-founder and CEO of Kaleido. Steve has over fifteen years of experience in emerging technologies building, launching and growing enterprise products in a variety of business and technical roles. Prior to Kaleido, he led product teams at IBM, spearheading the creation of over a dozen cloud services and managed a strategic portfolio of software products. Steve launched the industry’s first blockchain managed service, developing new commercial approaches to meet the unique enterprise demands for privacy and scalability. Steve holds his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Engineering from Case Western and an MBA degree from Duke University.

Jun 04

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

By Hyperledger Blog, Weekend Update

Welcome to the Weekend Update. Our goal with this weekly post is to share quick updates about online education, networking and collaboration opportunities and resources for the open source enterprise blockchain community.

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

Hyperledger Global Forum (June 8-10)

Hyperledger Global Forum, the premier virtual enterprise blockchain event of 2021, is next week. The agenda just gets more and more packed. New additions to the schedule include:

A fireside chat with Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, and Hyperledger’s Brian Behlendorf on the future of Ethereum and how it relates to the enterprise
A keynote panel on using blockchain in the battle against climate change with Dr. Martin Wainstein, Executive Director Open Earth Foundation, Yale Open Innovation Lab and Hyperledger Climate Action SIG; Dr. Andreas Kind, Head of Cybersecurity Technology, Siemens, and Veronica Garcia, CEO, Bitlumens

Use the discount code HGF21WKNDR for 50% off Hyperledger Global Forum registration. Go here to register.

Networking at Hyperledger Global Forum

In addition to 100+ sessions taking place over three days in two segments each day, spaced across time zones, Hyperledger Global Forum includes a dedicated networking platform and daily themes for networking breaks.

Hyperledger Training and Certification Discount

Hyperledger and Linux Foundation training have teamed up to offer 50% off the list price of Hyperledger training and certifications during the month of June!

Go here and use code HGF2021 at checkout to receive your discount.

ESGI Blockchain Day – June 8

Hyperledger’s Brian Behlendorf will offer his take on the current state of Hyperledger products and enterprise blockchain during this one day event that is part of the Blockchain Master’s program at ESGI.

Tune in here at 3:30 pm CEST on Tuesday, June 8, to catch his talk on Twitch.

A guide to building and deploying Hyperledger Fabric on the Azure Cloud Platform

Linux Foundation Training recently published part 1 and part 2 in the series “Build and Deploy Hyperledger Fabric on Azure Cloud Platform.”

Virtual Meetups – Coming up after Hyperledger Global Forum

Wednesday, June 16, at 16:00 UTC / 9:00 PDT: Hyperledger Seattle hosts “Reimagining the Public Records Validation Process using Hyperledger Fabric”
Tuesday, June 22, at 17:00 UTC / 12:00 CDT: Hyperledger Dallas hosts “openIDL – An Open Blockchain Network for the Insurance Industry”
Thursday, June 24, at 15:00 UTC / 17:00 CEST: Hyperledger Budapest hosts “Is DLT / Blockchain the right technology for CBDC uses cases?”

See the full Virtual Meetup schedule here.

Jun 02

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Why Walmart Supports Hyperledger’s Parents and Caregiver Inclusion Support: Program for Kids

By Archana Sristy, Walmart Blog, Hyperledger Global Forum

The ongoing COVID pandemic has disrupted the global workforce in many ways. While many people are getting back to work, others who are ready to work are unable to do so because they need to care for family members impacted by COVID. They’ve had to make the difficult decision to step back from their jobs or careers in order to step up and be a caregiver — oftentimes because there was no other option. For many in this situation, transitioning back to a career in tech can be difficult after an extended break.

That is why Walmart Global Tech actively looks to support organizations and activities that share in our desire to help those with engineering backgrounds reenter the workforce. In fact, Walmart Global Tech is sponsoring the Parent and Caregiver Keynote Activity Scholarship at the 2021 Hyperledger Global Forum.

A recent Fortune Magazine story reported workforce participation among women has dropped 57% and may not recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2024. We believe the technology industry needs more women, especially women of diverse backgrounds, to ensure that the technologies we develop and deploy better reflect the customers they serve. Filling this gap is particularly important in the emerging tech industry, where there is well documented gender disparity. In fact, in STEM fields, only 15.7% of engineers and architects are women. Hyperledger Global Forum presents a great opportunity for women to share new ideas and bring knowledge back to their organizations.

Sponsoring the Parent and Caregiver Keynote Activity Scholarship at the event aligns with similar programs within Walmart that create or expand opportunities for women in tech, such as our “returnship” program, Live Better U college degree program, internal “Women In Tech” community groups, sponsorship of the Women in Data Science conference, and more.

The Parent and Caregiver Keynote Activity Scholarship isn’t just for Walmart associates. It’s open to all registered attendees who are also juggling the responsibility of being a caregiver. During the premier enterprise blockchain event of the year, the program will provide engaging online activities — themed immersive mystery experiences — for children ages 5-12 so that parents or caregivers can attend the keynote activities on each day of this important global technical conference. While sponsoring childcare activities may seem a little out of place at a virtual blockchain conference, we know that even the little things like this can mean a lot, especially as associates are balancing the needs of family and career.

For more information or to register your child for the Parent and Caregiver Keynote Activity Scholarship, please click here.

Jun 01

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Meet me at Hyperledger Global Forum

By David Treat, Global Technology Incubation Lead and Global Blockchain Multiparty Systems Lead, Accenture Blog, Hyperledger Global Forum

I remember the first week of March 2020 well. It was a week filled with awkward elbow bump greetings followed by inspiring conversations and good times with some of my favorite people at the aptly named Corona Ranch. It was Hyperledger Global Forum.

In the hallway chats that ensued after my keynote, Blockchain – What’s next?, there was a common sentiment that the technology was rapidly accelerating, and sense of confidence that we could apply these technologies to prepare the world for potential disruption.

Those conversations were prescient, but who would have ever predicted just how long, broad and deep this global disruption would be?

We didn’t fully imagine what was about to transpire, and yet, with the help of collaboration and technology, we continued moving forward.

In the year since we last saw each other, we’ve made immense progress in inventing new forms of money, re-platforming financial services infrastructure, rearchitecting supply chains into resilient and secure supply networks, and pursuing self-managed digital identity.

This confirms what I know to be true: Hyperledger is at the center of the blockchain ecosystem and you all are leading the way in building real technologies and production systems the world can use to rapidly transform how business is done for massive positive impact.

The Hyperledger community has a long-standing vision for sharing infrastructure to solve real problems. If only they had already been deployed at scale when the pandemic hit. Now, the tech acceleration of the past year proves the world is ready to embrace the possibilities of the technologies we’ve been evangelizing to position most effectively for what comes next.

Hyperledger Global Forum 2021 may look a little different than years past, but the immersive virtual experience will give us the chance to engage with even more people from our global community. We’ve all weathered this massive disruption together – never have I felt more excited to reconnect with you all, build on our existing momentum to solve global problems and roadmap the technical milestones we’ll collectively sprint towards in the year ahead.

Pouring over this year’s lineup of sessions, I’m seeing the following themes come to the fore:

collaborative approaches to coinnovation and interoperability
blockchain endeavors to preserve our privacy and our planet; and,
the future of finance, supply chains and healthcare.

Here is a preview of some of the talks related to the above themes that I am particularly looking forward to attending:

(Coinnovation) How to Create Thriving Ecosystems on Thursday, June 10, at 20:20-20:50 CEST, Accenture’s Melanie Cutlan will discuss different consortium methodologies and how to forge multiparty systems so your ecosystem can thrive long term.

(Interoperability) Hyperledger Cactus Project Updates on Thursday, June 10, at 19:10-19:40 CEST, Accenture’s Peter Somogyvari and Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd.’s Shingo Fujimoto will introduce the Hyperledger project that is solving for interoperability by bridging blockchain infrastructures and constructing distributed management services.

(Privacy) Digital ID: Understanding Perceptions and Expectations on Wednesday, June 9, at 20:20-20:50 CEST, Accenture’s Christine Leong and Alissa Worley will showcase insights from new research on what it will take to drive acceptance and demand for digital identity capabilities.

(Planet) Oceans Plastics Recycling Solution using Hybrid Blockchain on Wednesday, June 9, at 09:40-10:10 CEST, Wipro Technologies’ Hitarshi Buch will demonstrate a blockchain sustainability initiative to incentivize plastic recycling ratings and change the trajectory of the estimated 86 million metric tons of plastic in our oceans.

(Finance) Digital Currency Interoperability with Messages on Thursday, June 10, at 09:40-10:10 CEST, dlt.nyc’s Vipin Bharathan will discuss digital currencies, including central bank digital currency (CBDC) and challenges with interoperability between these systems.

(Supply Chain) Rebuilding Supply Chains into Responsible Supply Networks on Thursday, June 10, at 18:40-19:10 CEST, Accenture’s Tom Fahey & Tal Viskin will explore how sustainability and conscientious consumption have become even more ingrained as top initiatives during the COVID-19 lockdown, and the blockchain-enabled supply network initiatives underway that are meeting those new demands.

(Healthcare) Trading Partner Authentication and Drug Verification in the US Pharmaceutical Supply Chain on Tuesday, June 8, at 20:50-21:20 CEST, LedgerDomain’s Ben Taylor will share the results of a peer-reviewed study that tested ATP authentication and enhanced verification using Hyperledger Fabric to ensure non-counterfeit, safe and effective pharmaceutical drugs.

I hope to see you at these sessions and networking events at Hyperledger Global Forum (June 8-10). With so much great content to choose from, you can use the search function to browse scheduled sessions by the topics that most interest you. If you haven’t registered yet, you can do so here.

As I said after last year’s Hyperledger Global Forum, for me, Hyperledger is a family. It’s a place where I can access friends, experts and colleagues. It’s a place where I can have in-depth conversations, access incredible content, platforms, and share and hear new ideas. If you’re in the blockchain space, attending Hyperledger Global Forum is absolutely essential.

You can visit with me and others from my talented team in the virtual Accenture booth, located in the Expo area. Bring your questions and we can connect live during the event. You can also learn more about Accenture’s work in this important space at Accenture.com/blockchain.

May 28

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

By Hyperledger Blog, Weekend Update

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

Hyperledger Global Forum (June 8-10)

Hyperledger Global Forum, the premier virtual enterprise blockchain event of 2021, is less than two weeks away. The agenda just gets more and more packed. New additions to the schedule include the keynote panels:

“How NFTs Are Changing the Music and Media Landscape” with Imogen Heap, musician & founder of The Creative Passport, Brendan Cooper of Panini America, Daniel Heymen of Palm NFT Studio and David MacFadyen, UCLA
“Asia Pacific CBDC Innovation, Collaboration and the Drive to Interoperability” with HE Serey Chea, National Bank of Cambodia (NBC); Sopnendu Mohanty, Monetary Authority of Singapore and Brian Behlendorf, Hyperledger

To register, go here.

Hyperledger Global Forum for Kids

Parents and caregivers took on an especially large burden this past year so we’ve partnered with Walmart Global Tech to bring special programming just for kids so attendees can watch keynotes distraction free.

To sign up a child, go here.

Hyperleger Training and Certification Discount

Hyperledger and Linux Foundation Training have teamed up to offer 50% off the list price of Hyperledger training and certifications during the month of June!

Go here and use code HGF2021 at checkout to receive your discount!

Virtual Meetups

Saturday, May 29, at 8:30 UTC / 14:00 IST: Hyperledger India Chapter hosts “Getting hands on Perun State Channels (Hyperledger Lab)”
Thursday, June 3, at 00:00 UTC / 20:00 EDT: Hyperledger Ottawa hosts “Decentralized Storage, Blockchain and the Rise of Social Machines”

See the full Virtual Meetup schedule here.

May 26

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#HyperledgerInterop: A Sampling of Production Cross-Platform Solutions and Deployments Built with Hyperledger Technologies

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth

The rapid pace of innovation in the development and deployment of blockchain technologies is creating more points of intersection for cross chain and cross application data and transaction flow. Fortunately, there is also a robust effort underway to deliver new approaches to ensuring that solutions work across platforms and protocols. Case in point: at the upcoming Hyperledger Global Forum, there will be 20 talks covering various aspects of blockchain interoperability and integration.

Below, we take a look at a sampling of use cases where Hyperledger technologies are at play in solutions that are operating in or enabling cross-platform production deployments:

Daml
Daml, a multi-party application platform created by Digital Asset, is widely used in distributed applications that deliver portability across a number of blockchain platforms, including Hyperledger frameworks: Besu, Fabric and Sawtooth. Recently, using Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum and a traditional Postgres database, Digital Asset demonstrated platform interoperability and open sourced the code to help CBDCs (and other applications that need to integrate with CBDCs) interoperate, making the digital currencies compatible regardless of the underlying technology. The code for this CBDC use case is available on Git Hub. Read more and watch the demo here.

Hala System’s Sentry

Hala Systems is using Hyperledger Fabric alongside Hedera as part of its Sentry early warning system, which helps protect 2M+ people in Syria. Hala Systems uses both Hyperledger Fabric and Hedera to manage the metadata of created media and user input produced in conflict. The hashed metadata is simultaneously written to a private blockchain built on an IBM Blockchain Platform powered by Hyperledger Fabric and to Hedera Consensus Service. Hala Systems uses the IBM Blockchain Platform to act as its internal repository, preserving additional metadata to augment the auditable hash data sent to Hedera Consensus Service. With these two sets of records, any third party can verify the information on the public ledger to match the image and, if necessary, its accompanying data stored on the private ledger.

Project Starling

Project Starling was developed to help empower organizations to securely capture, store, and verify human history. Starling represents a ground-breaking methodology in the fight against the spread of misinformation and the looming threat of deep fakes by providing open-source tools. Starling uses the latest cryptographic methods and decentralized web protocols to meet the challenges of establishing trust in our most sensitive digital records.

Jointly developed by teams at USC and Stanford, the Starling framework leverages multiple decentralized technologies including IPFS, GUN, Hyperledger Fabric, and Hedera Hashgraph throughout its process. For each piece of media captured, the framework is designed to store images on IPFS, using Filecoin, these image’s associated metadata is then stored in a permissioned Hyperledger Fabric network, securely protecting any sensitive information. For each media file, a hash of the information stored in Hyperledger Fabric is taken and recorded on the public Hedera network. By doing so, third parties are able to more readily trust the application owner and be assured no bad actor has falsified or modified results after the fact.

Join the conversation this month about developments and deployments using Hyperledger technologies to drive interoperability with #HyperledgerInterop on social channels.

Cover image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay.

May 21

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

By Hyperledger Blog, Weekend Update

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

Synchronize Virtual Series – Central Bank Digital Currency session

This year, Synchronize is taking place as a free virtual webinar series. The next session, “Central Bank Digital Currency,” is on Wednesday, May 26, at 10:00 AM ET. The panel will include speakers from ConsenSys, Digital Asset, Perkins Coie, R3 and Silvergate Back. The discussion will be moderated by Hyperledger’s Karen Ottoni.

Get more details here.

New Hyperledger Cactus tutorial videos

The Hyperledger Cactus community has created a new series of videos explaining how to set up a Cactus developer environment. The videos are the latest addition to Hyperledger library of tutorials.

See the full collection of Hyperledger tutorials here.

Hyperledger Telecom Special Interest Group Call for Proposals

The Hyperledger Telecom SIG invites partners from industry and academia to submit proposals to be considered for Guest Speaker/Solution Brief/Proof of concept/Reference Architectures. Topics of particular include the use of blockchain, distributed ledger and smart contracts technology in telecommunications, networks, Internet of Things, cloud computing and edge computing.

Get more details here.

Hyperledger Brand Survey

The Linux Foundation is running a brand survey on Hyperledger and enterprise blockchain. Input from those who aren’t on the front lines with Hyperldger is the most valuable. Whatever your line of business or professional focus, we want to hear from you.

Please go here to take this 20-minute survey.

Blockchain Talent Survey

The Blockchain Education Network (BEN) has launched a survey aimed to help the industry understand the demand for talent and the gaps in blockchain education. The survey takes 10-15 minutes to complete.

To take this survey, go here.

Case Study: How Poste Italiane brings value to loyalty with Hyperledger Besu

Learn more about how Poste Italiane used Hyperledger Besu to streamline its multibrand loyalty program in this new case study.

Virtual Meetups

Wednesday, May 26, at 16:00 UTC / 18:00 CEST: Hyperledger Madrid hosts “¿Qué es Hyperledger Aries y cómo lo usa Trinsic para proteger la identidad?” (Spanish)
Thursday, May 27, at 22:00 UTC / 19:00 BRT: Hyperledger Brazil Chapter hosts “Blockchain como ferramenta na gestão de dados da saúde” (Portuguese)

See the full Virtual Meetup schedule here.

May 20

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Developer Showcase Series: Kamlesh Nagware, Snapper Future Tech

By Hyperledger Blog, Developer Showcase

Back to our Developer Showcase Series to learn what developers in the real world are doing with Hyperledger technologies. Next up is Kamlesh Nagware, CTO Blockchain at Snapper Future Tech.

Give a bit of background on what you’re working on and how you got into blockchain

I am currently working as the CTO Blockchain at Snapper Future Tech (SFT). SFT is a global blockchain development company offering blockchain solutions development and training services and creating versatile tracing and authentication products and platforms powered by blockchain. We create various products to empower enterprises, academia and government to achieve efficiency never experienced before. An innovative technology product company, SFT is connecting global ecosystems through its suite of Trust as a Service (TAAS) products and platforms powered by blockchain.

My blockchain journey started when I was part of IBM India and, at the same time, the Hyperledger project was started by Linux Foundation. I can say proudly that I was one of the mentors in the IBM accelerator program for blockchain start-ups and mentored 10+ start-ups during early enterprise adoption. I started with Hyperledger Fabric 0.6 and have been consistently part of the Fabric community from 0.6 to 1.0 active status to first LTS release 1.4.x and now another LTS 2.2.x.

I have been closely associated with Hyperledger from its founding days. It’s been a very good experience to co-lead the Hyperledger India chapter and build the Hyperledger community in India.

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 have been part of the Hyperledger Fabric journey from 0.6 to 1.0 active status to first LTS release 1.4.x and now another LTS 2.2.x. It is always interesting to be part of the early journey of any open source project. Other than Hyperledger Fabric, I’ve used Hyperledger tools like Explorer for blockchain dashboard and Calliper for benchmarking Fabric networks.

Hyperledger has umbrella projects, great suits of projects, tools to solve different kinds of business problems. Hyperledger Indy and Aries are for solving identity management problems. In Hyperledger, other than Fabric, the most used and talked about projects are Indy and Aries. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated interest in the identity and credential solution using Indy and Aries. Immunity passports is an example of such use cases.

What do you think is most important for Hyperledger to focus on in the next year?

I think there should be more focus on cross-Hyperledger project collaboration for interoperability between different Hyperledger projects. Hyperledger Aries is a very good project for building credential solutions, but it only supports the Indy blockchain protocol. It will be fantastic to see Aries supporting other Hyperledger projects like Fabric.

What advice would you offer other technologists or developers interested in getting started working on blockchain?

Blockchain has become key technology for digital transformation strategies, but it’s not necessary to apply blockchain in every business case. Don’t try to use blockchain where it’s not required. Always follow a decision matrix for selecting use cases and the blockchain protocol that is best suited for any particular use case.

For reference, please check out this decision tree by the World Economic Forum. The decision tree is composed of a number of questions that assist in defining whether a blockchain is the correct approach for a particular business or not.

If you want to start learning blockchain, this is the right time. As a developer, start with any one blockchain protocol first and build an application. Start with the Getting Started Guide (like this one for Hyperledger Fabric), understand the protocol’s components, get a clear understanding of its smart contract, consensus mechanism, SDK/API for smart contract and client application development. You can also start with any sandbox environment like minifabric or IBM Blockchain code extension, which makes blockchain application development easy.

There are huge opportunities for open source contributions. Master one protocol and start contributing to its open source community.

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?

In the coming years, the most interesting use cases would be in sustainable supply chain, e-governance, healthcare, digital identity, CBDC (Central bank digital currency), waste management and renewable energy.

These are five use cases where I see more adoption and blockchain implementation in coming years:

Sustainable supply chain
E-Governance – citizen services, transparent government
Digital Identity – self-sovereign identity & verifiable credentials
Agriculture – traceability throughout the agri value chain
Renewable energy – carbon emission tracking, energy trading

What’s the one issue or problem you hope blockchain can solve?

With “blockchain,” the first thing that comes to mind is trust and transparency, so blockchain can solve any kind of problems where those are needed. One specific problem that I hope blockchain could solve is in bringing trust and transparency to the agri product chain in India so that farmers get fair pricing for their yields/crops.

Where do you hope to see Hyperledger and/or blockchain in five years?

Blockchain technology is evolving so I hope to see many blockchain protocols and different consensus mechanisms.

1. I believe that everyone wants to see interoperability in blockchains. By interoperability, I don’t just mean blockchains talking to each other at the protocol layer but at the smart contract level. Interoperability of governance frameworks is also very important for mass adoption.

2. I hope to see performance and transaction throughput improvements so that blockchains will be able to process transactions like card processing or UPI companies are able to do.

3. I hope to see well-defined and adopted blockchain global standards.

4. And I hope to see trusted computing meet blockchain. This could happen with Hyperledger Avalon off-chain trust protocol adoption and integration with other Hyperledger DLTs.

What is the best piece of developer advice you’ve ever received?

One of the best pieces of advice I received from Sameer Pise, Program Manager at Mphasis, is that “It is just code and written by human beings only so, if he/she can write it, then obviously you can fix it. So don’t give up until you’ve fixed it.” Another valuable piece of advice I heard from Naresh Jain, COO/Co-founder of Snapper Future Tech, is that technically everything is possible. Don’t say “NO” without trying it.

What technology could you not live without?

Agriculture? Electricity? Computer? Internet? All are connected, and we can’t live without each of them.

May 19

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Poste Italiane Turns to Hyperledger Besu to Streamline Multibrand Loyalty Program

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Besu

Poste Italiane, the Italian postal service, is one of the country’s oldest and biggest organizations with a role that extends well beyond mail and package delivery. Today, Poste Italiane is not just mail delivery but an online marketplace. The Poste Italiane website offers financial products, logistics and insurance services as well as online payments to facilitate integrated communications throughout Italy. With 158 years of history, a network of more than 12,800 post offices, a workforce of 126,000, total financial assets of €536 billion and 35 million customers, Poste Italiane is at the center of Italian commerce.

As the center of commerce and online transactions, Poste Italiane wanted to support the companies within its ecosystem with customer acquisition and retention. Poste Italiane also wanted to encourage customers to engage with its merchant partners and follow their recommendations or accept offers through them.

Poste Italiane began working with the loyalty programs in 2017 when, in partnership with SIA, it created the Extra Sconti App that enables cost savings to debit card holders that also use Postepay cards. Instead of starting with a network of big shops, it created a platform called Sconti BancoPosta that initially served over 30 thousand small merchants and soon grew to other well-known brands.

What makes Poste Italiane’s platform stand out is the creation of a single point of access to multiple loyalty schemes and formation of a loyalty point exchange. It is common for customers to log into an airline miles/rewards account only to see they’re 100 miles shy of a travel reward. The Poste Italiane solution lets customers combine points from different programs to reach the threshold required to purchase the rewards, making it a truly customer centric approach. When customers only accrue points with one merchant, the value of those points are limited.

To build this solution, Poste Italiane turned to blockchain technology, specifically, Hyperledger Besu. The system uses blockchain for digital wallets, tokens and smart contracts to deliver value for consumers and the retail partners in the system.

Customers can easily access their accounts and rewards, via a mobile app provided either by Poste Italiane or any of the partners and set up their account. After accepting the terms and conditions, a new wallet is generated. Whenever they want to use their rewards, they can create a voucher that combines points from various programs and is redeemable in the system. The collection of points is also digital – the user can generate a QRcode that represents their wallet address where the partner and merchants can transfer the points. While having a single platform makes it convenient for consumers, they can still use the designated apps from various merchants and use the Poste Italiane app to transfer their points and convert them into loyalty tokens on the platform.

Points, vouchers and any other assets that consumers collect through the partner programs in the Poste Italiane app get converted to loyalty tokens. This way, all are equal and can be moved seamlessly between partners. Thanks to smart contracts, it is possible to establish rules that allow the programmability of the tokens for the management of the entire network. Any transaction, be it earning points, exchanging them for tokens or purchasing a reward, happens through a smart contract. Using smart contracts makes the system much more trustworthy and transparent.

Hyperledger worked up with Poste Italians on a case study that details the vital role of loyalty programs in retail and how this solution works to create a differentiated experience for retail partners and consumers. Read the full case study here.