Hyperledger Fabric Archives – Hyperledger Foundation

Jan 18

Hyperledger Mentorship Spotlight: Enable Kubernetes Operators support for Fablo

By Great Umegbewe Nwebedu Blog, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Labs, Hyperledger Mentorship Program

What did you work on?

Project name: Enable Kubernetes Operators support for Fablo

Hello, I’m Great Umegbewe. I am currently a sophomore studying Computer Science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. During the fall of 2022, I had the chance to work on Fablo, a Hyperledger Lab, as part of the Hyperledger Mentorship Program. I was mentored by Jakub Dzikowski and Piotr Hejwowski and found the experience to be both valuable and enjoyable. This blog post will share some of my insights from this experience.

Fablo is a simple tool to generate a Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network from a config file and run it on Docker. Its main goal is to provide a super-easy start with Hyperledger Fabric. It uses a declarative approach to define components in a network, in a single file named fablo-config.json. This where users can define channels, chaincodes, organizations and engines (Docker or Kubernetes). Before I came in, only Docker was supported as an engine. I worked on adding support for Kubernetes.

Example of a fablo-config.json file

{
  "$schema": "https://github.com/hyperledger-labs/fablo/releases/download/1.1.0/schema.json",
  "global": {
    "fabricVersion": "2.4.0",
    "tls": false,
    "engine": "kubernetes",
    "peerDevMode": false
  },
  "orgs": [
    {
      "organization": {
        "name": "Orderer",
        "domain": "orderer.example.com"
      },
      "orderers": [
        {
          "groupName": "group1",
          "type": "solo",
          "instances": 1
        }
      ],
      "tools": {}
    },
    {
      "organization": {
        "name": "Org1",
        "domain": "org1.example.com"
      },
      "peer": {
        "instances": 2,
        "db": "LevelDb"
      },
      "tools": {}
    }  ],
  "channels": [
    {
      "name": "my-channel1",
      "orgs": [
        {
          "name": "Org1",
          "peers": [
            "peer0",
            "peer1"
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "chaincodes": [
    {
      "name": "chaincode1",
      "version": "0.0.1",
      "lang": "node",
      "channel": "my-channel1",
      "directory": "./chaincodes/chaincode-kv-node"
    }
  ]
}

What did you learn or accomplish?

Before the mentorship, I had previous experience working with Kubernetes and Bash, but none with Hyperledger Fabric. This mentorship helped me learn about Hyperledger Fabric and its components. It also taught me a whole lot about open source software and how the work of a maintainer isn’t that easy.

Hats off to Jakob Dzikowski and Piotr Hejwowski. They are really amazing maintainers and mentors.

To contribute to Fablo, I needed to learn how Fablo worked and understand Hyperledger Fabric. Again my mentors were very helpful with this.

I initially started by defining the various components on yaml’s with the images of peers, CAs, etc. This worked in one direction, but was daunting and had several problems. Luckily, Hyperledger had a Kubernetes Operator hlf-operator with a kubectl plugin that managed all aspects from the deployments, statefulsets and persistent volumes. With this abstraction what was left is to:

Write the shell scripts wrapped around the operator plugin to accommodate the required components (channels, chaincodes, CAs, peers).
Add support for Kubernetes engine in the fablo-config.
Template the shell scripts.
Create a snapshot and unit testing.

What comes next?

This has been a valuable experience. I was really challenged and my skills have improved so much. For the foreseeable future, I will continue working on Fablo and other open source projects. Big thanks to my mentors. Hopefully, I will become a maintainer for Fablo too.

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:

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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!

Sep 28

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#HyperledgerIdentity round-up: A cross section of production digital identity solutions built using Hyperledger technologies

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Indy, Hyperledger Ursa, Identity

Verifying identities and information in a digital world is critical for establishing trust. But there are issues of privacy as well as efficiency, scale and accuracy in models that rely on centralized data collectors and databases.

The adoption of a new generation of digital identity solutions that leverage decentralized technologies such as distributed ledgers and verifiable credentials is accelerating. And Hyperledger technologies are playing a major role in this transformation.

Read on for a cross section of the many Hyperledger-powered solutions that are in production now. For other examples, check out these past #HyperledgerIdentity round-ups:

IBM Digital Health Pass

IBM Digital Health Pass, built on Hyperledger Fabric, offers a multi-credential verifier that organizations can use to manage and execute their verification policies for COVID-19 and vaccination status in a way that balances the privacy of the individual with the requirements set by the organization and local health authorities. With IBM Digital Health Pass, organizations can verify multiple types of health credentials, such as Good Health Pass, IBM Digital Health Pass, Smart Health Card and EU Digital COVID Certificate. Privacy is central to the solution, where the verifier application minimizes the personal data that is ever displayed to the user through the execution of business rules and it never lets any personal data leave, or be stored in, the verifier app.

Indicio Network

The Indicio Network is a collection of four professionally-staffed, enterprise-grade public-permissioned ledgers that provide a neutral, independent, and reliable network for the exchange of verifiable credentials. MainNet, DemoNet, TestNet, and TempNet are all Hyperledger Indy-based networks with nodes operating on five continents—and a growing number of node operators. The Indicio Network is one of the networks that can support Indicio Proven, a complete suite of decentralized identity components for authenticating and sharing high value data in a privacy-preserving way using verifiable digital credentials. Built on Hyperledger Aries and Hyperledger Ursa, as well as AnonCreds and DIDComm, Proven is designed to make implementing and using these open source codebases simple, providing users with a fully-owned solution that’s easy to integrate with existing systems, to innovate on, and to scale.

IDUnion

IDUnion, the European identity verification network created as part of the “Secure Digital Identities Showcase” funding project, brings together public institutions, government agencies, private organizations, associations, educational institutions and other stakeholders from various fields to enable a fundamentally new, secure digital infrastructure for the verification of identity information. In August, 2022, IDUnion spun off Sociedad Cooperativa Europea (SCE) to operate the production network for credential verification.

The IDUnion network, which is built on Hyperledger Indy, enables the clear verification of individuals, companies and institutions while allowing people and organizations to manage their identity information by themselves and to decide when they want to share this information and with whom. It has a decentralized structure and stores no personal data – not even as a hash. In order to protect privacy right from the start, all personal data is stored on the user’s end device. Users have a choice of wallets for storing and presenting credentials to third parties as required. Credentials are issued, verified and stored using open standards to ensure interoperability. Hyperledger Aries is the framework for managing the credentials.

NHS Covid-19 Digital Staff Passport

In 2019, the NHS was preparing to pilot a digital passport project that would allow staff to carry their HR and other records as credentials on their phones as a long-term plan to make it easier to transfer from one facility to another. When the pandemic hit, this went from a pilot to a production deployment quickly. The NHS Covid-19 Digital Staff Passport rolled out in summer to support swift and efficient staff movement between NHS organizations in response to the response health emergency. The COVID-19 Digital Staff Passport provided a solid legal framework for staff to be temporarily deployed into other NHS organizations with evidence available that checks have been completed before staff move. As laid out in the pilot, the information was transferred securely by the staff member as verified credentials stored on their own smartphone, putting them in control.

This staff passport used the Sorvin Network, which is built on Hyperledger Indy, to verify the digital credentials, and the Evernym (now Avast) Connect.me digital wallet app, which is powered by Hyperledger Aries, Indy and Ursa, to enable staff to store and share their credentials.

The NHS is now gearing up to roll out the next generation of its Digital Staff Passport, which will streamline transfers and staff movements through the NHS.

OrgBook BC

OrgBook BC is a searchable public directory of organizations registered in British Columbia, Canada, provided by the BC Government’s Ministry of Citizens’ Services. OrgBook BC provides verified data, including legal names and DBA names, business numbers, BC registration status and select licensee and permits, for more than 1.4 million organizations. All of the information in the OrgBookBC is received, stored, verified and displayed using the latest digital trust technologies.

OrgBookBC uses verifiable credentials to ensure that information about organizations are digitally signed by the entity that issues it. Issuers are public sector organizations that hold information about businesses, issue licenses or permits or certify processes. That electronic signature stays with the data throughout its life in OrgBook and is validated before its is display on the website.

OrgBookBC is part of an overall commitment to digital trust technologies by the Government of British Columbia. In addition to deploying Hyperledger Aries, Indy and Ursa, the team there is leading much of the open source development for those projects. Read more on the Government of BC’s investment in verifiable credentials and digital wallet technologies here.

Digital Identity updates from Hyperledger Global Forum

At Hyperledger Global Forum 2022, there was a range of business, technical and demo sessions focused on digital identity, including:

Bringing Trustworthiness in Industrial Device Lifecycle using Verifiable Credentials – Marquart Franz & Saad Bin Shams, Siemens AG

Findy Agency — Highway to Verified Data Networks – Laura Vuorenoja & Harri Lainio, OP Financial Group

Digital Identity Using the vLEI – Christoph Schneider, Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF)

Blockchain, Biometrics and Geo-Location: Lessons Learned from the Implementation of Innovative Technologies at the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund – Dino Cataldo Dellaccio, United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund & Shashank Rai, United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC)

Hosted Discussion: Rhode Island Leads on Digital Identity Solutions with Hyperledger – Liz Tanner, State of Rhode Island & Jim Mason, DTCC

Last Mile Problem in Self-Sovereign Identity – Biometric Authentification and Device Independent Wallet for Hyperledger Indy – Non Kawana & Ken Naganuma, Hitachi, Ltd.

Workshop: How To Build a Self-Sovereign Identity Agent With Hyperledger Aries Framework JavaScript – Timo Glastra & Berend Sliedrecht, ANIMO & Jakub Koci, ABSA

Join the conversation about blockchain-based identity technologies and solutions with #HyperledgerIdentity on social channels. For a hands-on introduction to the market and technologies, join the free four hour Build Your Identity Solution Using Hyperledger Aries workshop. Or, for a more business level introduction, sign up for the free Getting Started with Self-Sovereign Identity (LFS178x) online course from Linux Foundation Training & Certification.

Jun 30

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#HyperledgerPayments: Applications Making Financial Transactions Easier, Faster and More Accessible

By Hyperledger Blog, Finance, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Iroha, Hyperledger Sawtooth

Bitcoin, Ethereum and other altcoins have sparked a range of investments, industries and even emotions. However, there is a fast-growing array of digital currencies and electronic payment systems that are focused specifically on leveraging distributed ledger technologies to make fundamental financial transactions easier, faster and more accessible both at the wholesale and retail level. As this recently released ebook details, central banks around the world are exploring ways to leverage different Hyperledger DLTs to introduce Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). However, there is #HyperledgerPayments action happening on a number of fronts and leveraging a mix of Hyperledger technologies.

Below, we highlight a few of the Hyperledger-based applications that are already in the market, rewriting the rules for how money and value are delivered, stored and spent. This sampling showcases the global reach of both Hyperledger technologies and blockchain payment systems:

Bakong

Sponsored by the National Bank of Cambodia, the country’s central bank, Bakong is the first retail payments system in the world using blockchain technology. Built on Hyperledger Iroha, Bakong delivers value for customers, merchants and banks. Individuals can now transfer money and buy from merchants with a simple smartphone app. Merchants gain a fast, cashless, and secure payments system. And banks can do interbank transfers at much lower cost.

Bakong was developed by Soramitsu and, after a soft launch in 2019, now has nearly 40 financial institutions (and counting) using the system. The project was also designed to promote financial inclusion for the country’s large number of unbanked citizens. Any citizen of the country can open a Bakong account, even if they don’t have a traditional bank account. The more than 500 merchants that accept Bakong can be viewed in a map inside

Byacco

Soramitsu also created a local payment system for the University of Aizu, Japan, based on Hyperledger Iroha – technology that was originally developed within the walls of the University. Byacco is an app that students use to add and access digital money to pay local goods and services, split bills at the university cafeteria and stationary shop and send and receive money with a low (1 ¥) fee.

Kate Coin

KBC bank in Belgium has introduced blockchain-based Kate Coin to customers using its KBC Mobile app. Powered by Hyperledger Fabric, Kate Coins are issued to customers as loyalty rewards. To start, the Kate Coins can be used to pay for banking and insurance services. However, the goal is to scale up its use through partnerships with business customers and other third parties that want to reach KBC Mobile app users, first in Belgium and then across the HBC group.

Twig

To help drive the circular economy, UK-based Twig has created a system that allows consumers to turn their pre-owned electronics, clothes and other goods into cash. Users are paid for their goods via Hyperledger Sawtooth-based Twig Pay, where they can see incoming payments and tap into the cash for purchases and transfers.

Join the conversation about solutions and applications in the financial service market with #HyperledgerPayments on social channels. For a deeper dive, join us at Hyperledger Global Forum 2022, September 12-14 in Dublin, Ireland. Sessions will include:

A Hyperledger Fabric-based Programmable Money Platform – Robert van Donge, IntellectEU & Dirk Hermans, KBC Group

Hosted Discussion: Private Credit on Blockchain – Anshuman Asthana, Marketnode

Saudi Aramco, Procure to Pay Eco-System – Ali Safri, Avanza Innovations & Abdullah M Askari, Saudi Aramco

US Digital Currency: Opportunities, Challenges and Strategies – Jim Mason, DTCC

Hands-on-Workshop: Moving Central Bank Digital Currency from Conception to Reality with Hyperledger Technologies – Elli Androulaki & Angelo De Caro, IBM

Cover photo by mohamed_hassan from PxHere

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