Hyperledger Besu Archives – Hyperledger Foundation

Jan 13

Hyperledger Mentorship Spotlight: Support NFT standards in Weaver for cross-network asset operations

By Micky Yun Chan Blog, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Cacti, Hyperledger Mentorship Program, Interoperability

What did you work on?

Project name: Support NFT standards in Weaver for cross-network asset operations

Mentors:
Dhinakaran Vinayagamurthy, IBM Research
Venkatraman Ramakrishna, IBM Research
Krishnasuri Narayanam, IBM Research
Sandeep Nishad, IBM Research

The aim of the Weaver lab (a Hyperledger lab this now part of Hyperledger Cacti) is to ensure smooth interoperability of assets between blockchain networks. During this mentorship, I had the pleasure of implementing different ERC asset standards interoperability for Weaver with the possibility to ensure future interoperability.

The three token standards are ERC-20, ERC-721 and ERC-1155. ERC-20 are the most common fungible token standard, while ERC-721 is standard for non-fungible token commonly known as NFT. ERC-1155 is a hybrid standard of ERC-20 and ERC-721. ERC-1155 acts like a token factory that allows you to create multiple tokens in a single smart contract.

There are three main components for weaver-interoperability for Hyperledger Besu.

Besu-SDK
Solidity contract
Besu-CLI

Protobuf implementation in interoperability contract:

In order to support protobuf, we decided to use the Solidity protobuf library. It is a library that can automatically generate encoder and decoder for serialized protobuf messages in Solidity. Then we ran into the issue that converting types is difficult for Solidity. In the end, we used assembly in Solidity to convert strings to address, etc. This is far from optimal, but we did it as a tradeoff between using more gas and interoperability.

Implementation of scalability in interoperability contract:

In order to ensure ease of implementation and future standard interoperability, an interface has been defined for which every standard has to extend it. This ensures the interoperability contracts can handle any future standard. The interoperability interface consists of two functions: approve and transfer. The interface uses the token contract as an intermediate to transfer assets between users and manage asset contracts. The motivation behind is to ensure compatibility with any asset type. In other words, the interoperability contract can handle any asset if they implement such an interface.

Other implementation:

Update in BESU-CLI and BESU-SDK and additionally testing for ERC20, ERC1155 and ERC721.

What did you learn or accomplish?

During this mentorship I have learned that there are many design tradeoffs such as the one we made in the implementation of the interoperability contract. While one protobuf message can adapt to different and future asset standards due to compatibility issues, three different types of protobuf messages are used. Moreover, I learned how to use protobuf as an exchange format.

What comes next?

There are things that could be refactored in the interoperability Solidity contract. For example, currently three different types of protobufs (Non Fungible, Fungible, Hybrid) are being used in the lockAsset function. Ideally, we could use a single type of protobuf for this purpose, but, in order to use this, we need to update protobuf in other types of blockchain such as Hyperledger Fabric and Corda. Additionally asset exchange tests between Corda, Hyperledger Besu and Hyperledger Fabric could be set up.

Jan 11

Love0

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:

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

Mentors:

Imre Kocsis, assistant professor, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Budapest, Hungary.
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:

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

Issues overcome:

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:

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.
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:

Hyperledger Fabric was considered the most adopted enterprise blockchain solution.
Hyperledger Cactus provides the building blocks for interoperability.
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.

Oct 12

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LACChain introduces permissioned public blockchain ecosystem built on Hyperledger Besu to Latin America

By Hyperledger Blog, Governance, Hyperledger Besu

Read the full case study here.

Permissionless public blockchains are accessible to anyone, but they’re often unsuitable for heavily regulated institutions, like banks or public-sector initiatives. Permissioned private blockchains offer what permissionless public ones lack, but they also cost a lot to develop and maintain, making them hard to scale. Yet blockchain remains the ideal solution for many use cases.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) struggled to find the balance by using different networks for different projects. But this variety came with other issues, like compliance, technical support, and accountability. These challenges prevented IDB’s pilot projects from expanding into enterprise-level projects.

IDB Lab is the innovation laboratory for IDB. It set about finding solutions to the problems of regulatory compliance, support, and governance. As it looked into the problem, IDB Lab noticed similar struggles throughout Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Organizations were looking for an alternative to permissionless public and private blockchain networks to deploy their solutions.

Permissioned public networks—combining the benefits of the other blockchains without their drawbacks—seemed like the answer. Successful networks already existed in the EU, and IDB Lab thought it could develop one for LAC. In March 2019, with support from a global alliance for developing blockchain in Latin America and the Caribbean, IDB Labs funded a project to create LACChain, a permissioned public blockchain infrastructure in an effort to build a scalable and sustainable network for the LAC region…and beyond.

Now, LACChain, which is built using Hyperledger Besu as an enterprise Ethereum client, has become the world’s largest public permissioned network with 15 countries participating in the ecosystem. It has over 190 nodes and supports more than 60 projects, including 40 that impact financial and social inclusion. And there is a strategy for long-term orchestration of the network via the not-for-profit LACNet.

The Hyperledger Foundation team worked with LACChain on a case study that details the goals and approach for creating the network. The behind the scenes look at launching LACChain also delves into the technology and governance planning behind the project as well as results to date and plans for growth for this network.

Read the full case study here.

Oct 05

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Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group (CA2SIG) wins The Hyperledger Challenge 2022!

By Hyperledger Blog, Climate, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Bevel, Hyperledger Cacti, Hyperledger Fabric, Special Interest Group

The Hyperledger Climate Action and Accounting Special Interest Group (CA2SIG) has just taken first place in the Hyperledger Challenge 2022 for its prototype for Reducing Methane Leakage and Flaring with Supply Chain Tokens.

The Hyperledger Challenge 2022 took into careful consideration the following factors:

1. Technology advancement and research objectives
2. Impact to the blockchain ecosystem
3. Value addition through social benefits
4. Process followed to build an open-source community around the proposed project
5. Activities outside the Hyperledger community to build the ecosystem
6. Bring in innovation in the marketplace
7. Headway into the community that is not represented well within the ecosystem.

This Hyperledger Challenge 2022 award follows the recent announcement of another award from IBM’s 2022 Call for Code Green Practices Accelerator, where the CA2SIG team also took first place for its prototype.

“The team would like to thank the Hyperledger Challenge 2022 team for supporting our project. These recent wins/awards provide our team with added momentum and validation for the solution we are developing and the larger problem we seek to solve. Moving forward our focus is on marketing our solution to the energy industry and helping to scale auditing services, crucial to achieving climate targets by mid century. ” – Bertrand Rioux, Director, Two Ravens Energy & Climate Consulting

This prototype, which is built using Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Bevel and Hyperledger Cactus, represents an important step towards creating an open climate accounting system that can be used to decarbonize corporate supply chains. By building a solution that can provide a free flow of trusted environmental data, we can create a more efficient marketplace that can unlock the power of green finance, consumer demand and government regulation to work together to decarbonize corporate supply chains. `

Click the CA2SIG One-Pager to learn more. We also invite you to visit the Climate Action and Accounting Wiki or join one of our bi-monthly meetings to learn about the different opportunities to get involved!

Apr 06

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Call for Applications: 2022 Hyperledger Mentorship Program

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Bevel, Hyperledger Cacti, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Indy, Hyperledger Mentorship Program, Hyperledger Ursa

Want to jump start a career in blockchain development? Ready to build hands-on skills developing leading-edge open source technologies? Looking to work directly with mentors who are invested in you and your work? Then the Hyperledger Mentorship Program is for you.

Now in its sixth year, the Hyperledger Mentorship Program provides a structured and guided learning opportunity for anyone, at any career stage, looking to get started in the open source movement. With full and part time options, fully remote work and a stipend, the projects are designed to be a pathway to becoming a contributor to the Hyperledger community that work for students, people in career transition and anyone else who wants to develop or sharpen their knowledge of cutting-edge blockchain technologies. Applications are now open.

This year, the Hyperledger Mentorship Program has grown to 30 planned part and full-time projects covering a range of technologies, challenges and technical difficulty levels and includes non-development projects such as Ecosystem Analysis and Developer Marketing. Each project is designed and proposed by active members of the Hyperledger community. Those who propose the projects serve as the mentors and work closely with their mentees on developing a project plan, setting milestones and solving problems. Mentees can expect regular evaluations and feedback. For more about the program, including the schedule and stipend details, go here.

Over the last five years, more than 70 mentees have completed Hyperledger Mentorship projects. Each of these mentees have made concrete contributions to Hyperledger projects and built important connections in the community. Some, like Bertrand Rioux, have gone on to become mentors themselves:

“I was accepted into the Hyperledger mentorship program last year after seeking a community to help advance my professional goals of developing software for climate action. I was fortunate to find a diverse group of mentors that helped me build the knowledge and skills I needed to effectively contribute to the Hyperledger open source community and to have the opportunity to develop technical expertise in a field I was actively working in. In addition to delivering a secure identity management solution for a Hyperledger Fabric Network, I started contributing my own ideas to the open source operating system for climate action. As a result, I am now taking a leadership role in the community. In addition to serving as mentor in this year’s program, I proposed a project on reducing waste emission in the oil & gas industry that was accepted.” – Bertrand Rioux, Independent Energy Consultant and Mentor for the Multiple Data Integration to Hyperledger Fabric Climate Accounting Network project

To learn more about the Hyperledger Mentorship experience and outcomes, check out these spotlights on last year’s projects with highlights from both the mentors and mentees.

Read on for descriptions of some of the projects planned for this year:

Multiple Data Integration to Hyperledger Fabric Climate Accounting Network

The Hyperledger Labs blockchain-carbon-accounting project includes a Hyperledger Fabric network for recording the carbon and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions that cause climate change. Since there are many activities that cause such emissions, the network is designed to accept data from multiple sources of measurements. In this project, we will demonstrate integrations from measurement sources with blockchain networks by integrating the ThoughtWorks cloud computing emissions calculator, the NREL OpenPath mobile application, and other web- and mobile-based API’s sources to turn instrumented readings into emissions measurements. It will leverage previous projects involving Hyperledger Cactus, Vault security engines, and client security for Hyperledger Fabric.