Hyperledger Fabric Archives – Hyperledger Foundation

Nov 30

Hyperledger in Action Across Asia

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth

It’s #HyperledgerAsia month, so we are spotlighting the fast-growing adoption and deployment of Hyperledger technologies throughout the region. Companies across Asia are driving a nonstop stream of innovative new enterprise blockchain implementations ranging from global shipping networks and international digital health passports to training certification and secure document solutions.

Read on for just a sampling of the solutions at work across Asia powered by Hyperledger technologies. And join the conversation using #HyperledgerAsia on social channels.

BondbloX Bond Exchange

Singapore-based BondEvalue broke through barriers when it unveiled the world’s first blockchain-based bond exchange that allows investors to trade BondbloX Bond Exchange (BBX) – $1,000 fractions of traditional wholesale bonds. This leads to better access and better diversification opportunities for a market that is typically inaccessible except to more wealthy investors.

BBX leverages the Hyperledger Sawtooth blockchain technology to fractionlize bonds, make trading highly transparent and more cost effective. Settlement on BBX is on a T+0 basis, that is within seconds instead of the normal two-day settlement cycle, thereby reducing counterparty settlement risks for investors.

BondEvalue continues to engage more member participants such as Taurus Wealth Advisors, the leading fee-based, multi-family wealth management firm in Singapore, and Amstel, an institutional fixed-income broker with operations across Asia and Europe. BondEvalue is also expanding its footprint with a joint venture partnership in Mexico. The company’s goal is to empower a more diverse pool of investors and introduce them to institutional-grade opportunities in the bond market through its cutting-edge blockchain solution.

Global Shipping Business Network

Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN), headquartered in Hong Kong, is a neutral trade data utility platform whose members include container carriers and terminal operators/ports that handle one in three containers worldwide. It is built on a Hyperledger Fabric-based 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 institutions, can collaboratively design and enable industry wide, end to end, solutions. The platform was developed using Oracle Blockchain by CargoSmart and is operated by IQAX.

[markets]^N

Developed by KoinEarth and deployed using Hyperledger Fabric on Oracle Blockchain, [markets]^N is a secure B2B platform that’s used by India-based Hindalc, the world’s largest aluminum rolling company, to get a higher degree of visibility into its inventory and supply chain and enforce its SLAs with service providers. This includes tracking and monitoring of purchasing orders, shipments and invoices in real-time, in coordination with its suppliers.

Mindtree’s Digital Health Passport for Travel

Post-pandemic passenger air travel is constantly evolving due to border restrictions and COVID-related mandates. The need of the hour for airlines is to have a comprehensive and adaptive solution that informs and educates travelers, airline staff, airport authorities and government in real-time about COVID test requirements, safety protocols, vaccines and other regulations. Mindtree’s Digital Health Passport for Travel solution, which is built using Hyperledger Fabric blockchain technology, promises to do exactly this and thereby make post-pandemic global airline travel seamless, hassle-free, and safe.

MiFix Gateway

KrypC partnered with New Street Technologies to implement a blockchain marketplace for lending built on Hyperledger Fabric. MiFix Gateway is a distributed private network where participating financial institutions can access qualified leads and compete for customers seeking loans. Lenders view the credit score and personal information of each lead and offer competitive loans based on this information. MiFix provides a single platform where banks can earn revenue from loan disbursements and customers can obtain the most competitive rates while maintaining complete control of their data.

MiFiX connects remittance providers and banks to reduce interest rates. Though there have been efforts made by banks and financial institutions to provide affordable loans to rural parts of society, the last mile cost of collecting the loan pushes the cost to beyond affordable levels. By connecting the remittance companies in various corridors and lending institutions in India through a blockchain network, MiFiX is facilitating the sharing of remittance and loan information in a trusted and immutable fashion eliminating the collection cost.

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.

Customers include Kushal, a social organization that trains unskilled labour under Indian government National Skill Development program. With SnapCert, verifiers can get real-time verification of Kushal credentials directly from the primary source of the data simply using the last four digits of the credential holder’s Aadhaar id and the name. The solution solves the problem of misplaced paper credentials and reduces the trust deficit by providing easy access to credible credentials that prove the holder’s construction training. It also helps Kushal manage long term record keeping for the skilled workers, connect stakeholders that need the data and increase transparency and ease of doing business.

SnapCert is built using Oracle Blockchain, which is powered by Hyperledger Fabric.

Secure Logistics Data Exchange

The Secure Logistics Data Exchange (SLDE) platform was launched by the Ministry of Commerce of India to digitize the generation, exchange, and compliance verification of 36 document types commonly used by banks, customs, freight forwarders, exporters, importers, and transport operations. The SLDE platform, which runs on the Hyperledger Fabric-based Oracle Blockchain, is a solution to replace the present manual process of generation, exchange and compliance of logistics documents with a digitized, secure and seamless document exchange system It was developed by CargoExchange in conjunction with a number of banks (ICICI, Axis Bank, State Bank of India and HDFC Bank) and the ministry’s Logistics Division.

Tech Mahindra Document Solution

Tech Mahindra, in collaboration with a partner, has built a SaaS platform allowing companies to securely share sensitive documents with anyone within or outside the organization. Supported on Hyperledger Fabric, the platform enables mortgage companies, banks, accounting firms, and others to safely share their customers’ PII, IP, and sensitive information with co-processing entities in compliance with GDPR, CCPA privacy regulations.

Tech Mahindra is implementing the solution for the China division of a leading global manufacturer of consumer dispensing packaging and drug delivery devices. In the current engagement, Tech Mahindra will enable the customer to classify and securely share sensitive documents within or outside the organization with the help of advanced encryption, policies and immutable audit logs that are traceable on blockchain. Our solution will make information tamper-proof, and hack-proof thereby enabling our customer to transact with integrity and confidence with all internal and external stakeholders.

Nov 18

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Hyperledger Fabric Security Threats: What to Look For

By Christopher Cordi, Software Engineer, Splunk. Blog, Hyperledger Fabric

Hyperledger Fabric is designed to enable secure collaboration between multiple organizations operating with limited trust. Despite the security improvements Hyperledger Fabric provides, deployments still require careful configuration and monitoring to ensure that they are operating securely. In this post, we will examine different types of threats that Hyperledger Fabric operators should consider and discuss how to mitigate them.

As a permissioned blockchain, Hyperledger Fabric’s network threats differ from popular permissionless chains. For example, 51% attacks and network partitioning attacks are not as significant of a threat on permissioned networks because users are known, their activities can be monitored, and access is managed by access control lists. Some of these attacks are common to all distributed systems like Denial of Service (DoS) or consensus manipulation. Other attacks target specific components in a Hyperledger Fabric network, such as the Membership Service Provider (MSP).

Denial of Service: DoS attacks disrupt the network’s availability and are a threat to any distributed system. Many different attacks can result in denial of service, which makes it difficult to proactively prevent. This risk can be mitigated by collecting performance metrics, such as transaction throughput and latency, to detect compromised availability early on.

Consensus Manipulation: Attacks on the network consensus include DoS and transaction reordering attacks. Hyperledger Fabric currently only utilizes Crash Fault Tolerant (CFT) consensus algorithms, meaning it cannot tolerate any malicious actors. There is ongoing work on Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) algorithms, which will be able to tolerate up to ⅓ of the network being malicious. Regardless of the consensus algorithm used, early detection of malicious behavior can mitigate this threat. Logging threat indicators, such as leadership elections and transaction latencies, is critical for detection.

MSP Compromise: A compromised MSP can be a significant Fabric-specific threat. The MSP is able to modify access control to the network and, if malicious, could deny service and perform sybil attacks. The MSP may be compromised by a rogue insider or through private key theft, which may only be detectable after exploitation. To mitigate this risk, it is important to follow best practices with key management. Logging MSP actions, such as certificate creation and revocation, can help detect malicious behavior in case of compromise. Alerting based on that logging results in early identification and remediation.

Smart Contract Exploitation: While the cost of smart contract attacks is easier to quantify in cryptocurrencies, where there is measurable monetary loss, such attacks in Hyperledger Fabric can compromise business logic and network performance. In addition to ordinary programming logic bugs, common errors can also stem from inappropriately handling concurrency or nondeterminism. To mitigate this risk, smart contracts should be designed with security in mind at the onset by following a secure software development life cycle framework. Before deploying, smart contract security should be assessed with smart contract analysis tools like the Hyperledger Lab Chaincode Analyzer to detect potential risks. For more sensitive applications, consider an external security audit or formal verification. Finally, the performance and usage of the smart contract should be monitored once deployed in order to detect anomalous behavior.

Proactive measures to mitigate these security threats are only part of a secure deployment. It is just as important to continuously monitor the performance and security of the network. Many of these threats can only be detected by correlating data across the blockchain network, organization infrastructure, and threat intelligence providers. It can be a challenge to ingest and act on this large amount of diverse data, so be sure to account for scalability and analytic capabilities when securing your environment.

For more details on how to collect and act on Hyperledger Fabric data to minimize downtime, reduce the meantime to detect and respond to incidents, tune into my webinar on Hyperledger Fabric security monitoring on Wednesday, December 1, 1:00 pm EST.

Nov 11

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Splunk Adds Hyperledger Fabric Data Visibility into Mix, Powers New Blockchain-Based Content Management Solution for S&P Global

By Hyperledger Blog, Finance, Hyperledger Fabric

Read the full case study here.

Large organizations have always struggled to get visibility into their data. Frequently, data comes in many sources and formats while also being siloed across the organization. DLTs add ledger data and metadata to the mix.

Similarly, consortiums need to interoperate with each other. Yet organizations often use disparate tools for logs, metrics and tracing. All these are deployed on different clouds or on-prem. Then they build their own tools to take data from the ledgers and put it into a SQL database. Consortiums may include competitors who don’t trust one another, so they don’t want to share data. But, if no one shares data, it can be challenging to determine if an organization has a problem or if it lies in the network.

Splunk, a company focused on removing barriers between data and action, took on this challenge by creating open source solutions that allow the ingestion of ledger data and corresponding metadata while correlating with other data sources.

Splunk’s customers include 92 Fortune 100 companies. Meeting their needs was critical so Splunk asked a lot of questions. They learned that many customers used Hyperledger Fabric, and it was fairly straightforward to ingest that DLT data. Splunk pulls in data without caring about structure, schema, or form so there was no need to format Hyperledger Fabric data before ingestion.

The next questions were about what they could do with the Hyperledger Fabric data. Users could analyze and correlate blocks and transaction data with other data they had in Splunk. But conversations with customers revealed they wanted more, including chaincode events, metrics, and, most recently, private data collections.

Initially, Splunk focused on uses from an IT perspective. Then the focus shifted to security. Customers wanted to know what else they could do to secure their infrastructure. Keeping it up and running was important, but so was making sure nothing would compromise their Hyperledger Fabric environment

One of those interested customers was S&P Global, which delivers data, research, and credit ratings, among other things, to governments, companies, and individuals. In 2019, it was entering a new region. S&P took this opportunity to explore modern technologies and new ways of doing business. It decided to build a content management solution from scratch with innovative technology and security.

Splunk’s Hyperledger Fabric-based applications caught S&P’s attention. Leveraging the Fabric data in Splunk meant S&P could now get user interactions and metadata—like who uploaded documents or modified documents and when. S&P developed applications to retrieve that metadata and present it to the user for document searches. This opened up possibilities for providing an audit trail.

The resulting solution, S&P Global Secure Vault, is multi-cloud, multi-tenant, and secure, and it is ready to scale to multiple regions and multiple participants. In the solution, S&P uses Splunk for three primary areas. The first is infrastructure monitoring on the operations of different components. The company wants to make sure the system stays healthy and the right teams are alerted if there’s an issue. The second is visibility into the events happening within the blockchain network. And third is business activity monitoring, which includes searching for document metadata.

Hyperledger worked with Splunk and S&P Global on a case study that details this blockchain-based secure content management system and how the companies partnered to add visibility into business transactions, making them indexable and searchable. It also delves into Splunk’s commitment to open source software and plans for helping customers that use Hyperledger Fabric get even more from their data.

Read the full case study here. For more details on security monitoring of Hyperledger Fabric data, tune into the Wednesday, December 1, webinar with Christoper Cord of Splunk.

Nov 02

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A Hands-on Approach to Growing the Blockchain Talent Pool

By Igor Ioshpa, Norilsk Nickel Blog, Education, Hyperledger Fabric

One of the biggest barriers to growth for the blockchain industry is the availability of developers with the right skills and training. At Norilsk Nickel, we are tackling that problem directly with the Blockchain Master’s Program, which we launched in 2019 in partnership with MIPT and IBM.

Norilsk Nickel is constantly introducing and using advanced engineering technologies, and it is therefore logical that the company has focused its attention on blockchain technologies. In addition, working with students is one of the most important areas of the company’s activities. This has become the background for creation of a Blockchain Master’s Program in cooperation with the major technology players leading in their respective fields.

The Blockchain Master’s Program is based in the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, which is among the Russian technical universities regularly included in the top international rankings. MIPT is always interested in the development and implementation of educational programs in new promising areas. Educational programs at MIPT embrace numerous high-tech areas in partnership with Russian and international industrial companies.

One of the challenges in creating the Master’s Program was the fact that this was essentially the first Russian full-fledged educational program entirely dedicated to Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT). The best experts in the market, from Russia and beyond, have been involved in the development of this educational course. Since all of them are practicing experts, the curriculum is updated on an ongoing basis taking into account the latest technology developments as well as business expectations. All our lecturers work in the fields they teach for leading companies, mainly in the IT sector.

The primary task of the Master’s Program is not only to educate the students but also to enable them to gain real practical experience. Therefore, it was not easy to create a balanced curriculum. We aimed to combine both theoretical and practical disciplines to provide students with the most relevant knowledge as well as skills that will assist them in pursuing a successful business or academic career.

Our Hyperledger Fabric course, a cornerstone of the curriculum, provides the students with detailed information about the modular architecture of the Hyperledger Fabric platform and its capacities for creating blockchain applications. Given the fact that Hyperledger Fabric is the de facto standard for the enterprise blockchain platforms, the study of this subject takes two full semesters. As a result of the training, students create their own Hyperledger Fabric projects helping to solve relevant application tasks.

One of Norilsk Nickel’s key education goals is supporting talented students. That’s why all applicants who have successfully passed the entrance tests can study free of charge. The Blockchain Master’s Program provides for paid internships as well, so any student who is serious about studying can get an offer as early as after the first academic semester. Meanwhile, the student can be engaged in both business projects and scientific and research activities. Norilsk Nickel, as a major industrial player, is committed to providing all interested students with the opportunity to build their career path concurrently with the study on the basis of real projects or scientific inquiries.

Over the three years of the Master’s Program existence, we have witnessed vertical growth of the number of potential applicants, which indicates the importance of having such programs. To meet the demand, we made a decision to double the intake of students this year.

We have also revised and adjusted the curriculum to make the program as relevant as possible, based on the development of technologies and the requests formed by the business environment.

We actively participate in various events both within and outside MIPT to demonstrate our expertise in blockchain technology. Such events enable the students and the IT community to understand the relevance and importance of this technology and help us to make it more understandable for a wider audience.

To grow the Blockchain Master’s Program further, we plan to strengthen the level of scientific research to compete with top technical academic institutions around the world. We already have reached some preliminary agreements for this expanded focus.

For more information about the program, please visit website https://blockchain.mipt.ru/en.

Cover image: Pxfuel

Oct 28

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A Look at Hyperledger-Powered Financial Services Solutions in Action

By Hyperledger Blog, Finance, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Firefly

It is #HyperledgerFinTech month, so we are spotlighting solutions where Hyperledger is at work across the finance service market. Read on for details on applications and solutions leveraging a mix of Hyperledger technologies to invent and reinvent a range of services, including eKYC, insurance claims processing, accounts reconciliation, specialty trades and more:

AnaMeen

AnaMeen is a multi-organizational eKYC solution from Ahli Fintech involving Jordan Ahli Bank and Zain Jordan, a mobile telecom provider. This eKYC-as-a-Service, built on the Oracle Blockchain Platform (OBP), aims to remove the friction in the current KYC and onboarding process challenges faced by all banks and financial institutions and to provide greater financial inclusion for all Jordanians. It delivers an enhanced and secure customer experience, with a 10-day account opening process now made instantaneous. Ahli Fintech leverages augmented intelligence and deep learning technologies to verify the identity of the AnaMeen users’ government-issued identity documents. It collects the four-signature specimens of the users and verifies the client signature on file during a verification video-call with an AnaMeen agent. Customers verify their information and their identity is matched based on their facial biometrics during the video-call. Each customer’s identity is uploaded to a smart contract on OBP to verify and endorse it, storing it in the “Meen World” immutable ledger distributed across the permissioned blockchain network. The solution, which is powered Hyperledger Fabric, enables self-sovereign instant KYC data sharing, with full control in the users’ hands in full compliance with international data protection and data privacy standards. It is accessible via the “Meen World” eKYC-as-a-Service partner portal, where entities can request access and users can grant access in order to use the services provided by these entities, including instant digital onboarding with subscribed banks.

The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative

The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative is the risk management and insurance industry’s first enterprise-level blockchain consortium that brings together experts and developers to advance insurance-specific use cases via Canopy 3.0, a custom blockchain architecture running on Kaleido that leverages Hyperledger FireFly.

A major source of inefficiency in the life & annuity insurance industry is that life insurers lack a single source of truth for processing death benefits and claims. For all participants, the multiple handoffs between systems and people increase time, cost, and risk.

The Mortality Monitor project, a blockchain-based technology solution led by RiskStream Collaborative, offers a single source of digital decedent information required to process a claim. Instant notification helps carriers proactively identify potential deaths more quickly, reducing the burden on the beneficiary, and shortening the cycle time.

NPLUS

Sydema has implemented NPLUS, a digital and independent platform that makes the exchange of non-performing loans (NPLs) simple, reliable and secure. This transaction platform provides an exchange where banks and investors can trade NPLs based on standardized data templates, which helps to increase transparency and liquidity in this process. It also reduces the wide bid-ask spreads on NPLs, thus contributing to a faster clean-up of bank balance sheets. NPLUS uses an independent blockchain solution developed by Mangrovia on the Hyperledger Fabric-based Oracle Blockchain Platform so that the tracking and storage of loan portfolio and collateral data is referenceable on the marketplace and NPL trading operations are transparent and persistent.

Public Mint

Public Mint is the first fiat-native public blockchain that allows people, companies, applications and banks to interact in frictionless new ways around money. Prior to Public Mint, transactions required banking and exchange off-ramps, meaning there was no such solution offered by payment providers that was blockchain compatible or that enabled instant settlement in fiat. Public Mint, which is built on Hyperledger Besu, is an open blockchain blended with an API platform that allows fiat money to get all the benefits of a cryptocurrency, minus the volatility and complexity. People and businesses from all over the world are free to build all kinds of fiat-based applications and services on top of Public Mint, fueled by money as we know it – without the limitations of traditional banking rails.

SECURUS

Supermoney has introduced SECURUS, a specialist insurance product that addresses key issues in insurance accounts reconciliation between the customers, brokers, insurer, and re-insurers. It is an end-to-end finance and accounts reconciliation solution incorporating underwriting and claims functions. Using tokenization to create and manage accounting of real-world payment flows across multiple siloed systems, the Oracle Blockchain Platform-based network covers MGAs, brokers, and underwriters. It enables ingestion of data from multiple systems, provides Bordereau reports on money flows related to premiums paid or claims with real-time updates, and partner contracts, including commission rates. Built with Hyperledger Fabric at its core, SECURUS significantly reduces the effort and cost of manual reconciliation and avoids human errors or fraud impacting regulatory compliance, reinsurance accounting and profitability.

Symbridge

Symbridge is a blockchain-based digital asset exchange for institutional and accredited investors. Built on Hyperledger Fabric’s open-source protocol, Symbridge’s advanced technology leverages the enhanced security, immutability, and externally-verifiable state integrity of blockchain and combines it with a high-performance trading environment. The core advantages are better transparency, tighter security, greater accuracy, reduced cost and more efficient trading. Building on Hyperledger Fabric allows Symbridge to have a decentralized validation network without sacrificing performance. Learn more about our validation network powered by Hyperledger Fabric.

TradeAssets

TradeAssets is a digital platform for banks that automates the process of trade finance risk origination and distribution. It enables institutions to buy and sell bank risk assets while retaining some of the bilateral aspects of their current process. KrypC has helped TradeAssets implement a Hyperledger Fabric-based blockchain in its online portal for securing assets. The portal is now live and provides a single point of access for the sale and purchase of assets. Banks can communicate to a large ecosystem of connected institutions to efficiently match the appetite of sellers with buyers. The entire process is quick and convenient, and all communications are secured through the portal.

TradeAssets provides robust security, complete transparency, and immutable trust and consensus between all parties.

Join the conversation about solutions and applications in the financial service market with #HyperledgerFinTech this month on social channels. Or get involved with the Capital Markets or Trade Finance Special Interest Groups.

Cover image by Bicanski on Pixnio

Oct 24

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Managing a Modern Cityscape: How Tech Mahindra Digitized the Land Registry for Abu Dhabi with Hyperledger Fabric

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Fabric

Read the full case study here.

Abu Dhabi is one of the richest cities in the world, boasting modern architectural wonders from the first circular skyscraper to the dramatic Etihad towers to the world’s farthest leaning tower. This 375 square mile cityscape is a modern marvel, and managing it requires extensive real estate transactions and records.

Starting from selling a piece of land to constructing a building or residential complex to selling the units to managing tenancy, there are a multitude of steps involved in creating a land deed record and the process can span up to six years to complete. So when Abu Dhabi City Municipality (ADM) set out to digitize processes for the Department of Urban Planning & Municipalities, they made the land registry the starting point.

With its experience in building enhanced blockchain-based, customer-centric systems within its public sector practice, Tech Mahindra was tapped to bring the city’s paper-based real estate records into the modern era.

To create an end-to-end solution that utilizes automated transactions for sharing and viewing deeds, the Tech Mahindra team knew blockchain technology would play a major role in Abu Dhabi’s digital transformation. With the help of Smart Dubai, the government organization facilitating Dubai’s citywide smart transformation, and the Dubai Future Foundation, a government organization focused on blockchain, Tech Mahindra compared various distributed ledger technologies that could scale to match the multi-tenant and growing needs of the ADM’s complex land registry. In the end, the team selected Hyperledger Fabric.

With the new digitized registry, stakeholders can trust that they are working with the most current and validated information because of blockchain’s smart contracts and immutable records, which also eliminate the susceptibility to lost or stolen documents or fraud. While all members on the blockchain can interact with one another and access the same documents on the ledger, each member can also establish a separate, private relationship with another in-network entity and maintain transactional isolation through Hyperledger Fabric’s channels feature.

This solution is deployed using the multi-tier architecture ADM’s Smart Hub, a web-based application that the city’s citizens already use to electronically perform various municipal activities such as reserving a spot in a parking lot, acquiring permits to public spaces for gatherings, or paying bills. Launching on Smart Hub eliminated the need to educate and onboard the public on a new platform and allowed Tech Mahindra to put more attention towards the back-end infrastructure.

Hyperledger worked up with Tech Mahindra on a case study that details the back-end work, including both the business flow and system architecture, supporting this solution as well as plans for expanding it to support wider digitization of government services.

Read the full case study here.

Oct 19

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we.trade Turns to Hyperledger Fabric for Cross-Industry Digital Trade Finance Platform

By Hyperledger Blog, Finance, Hyperledger Fabric

Leverages open source blockchain and smart contracts to streamline trade finance process, drive growth for businesses and revenue opportunities for banks

Read the full case study here.

In 2019, the Stockholm-based sustainable shoe company Flattered AB needed to re-examine its trade relationship with its suppliers in Spain. In order for Flattered to secure specialty materials such as chrome-free leather and vegan alternatives that are key to the brand’s eco-friendly mission, the company was required to make upfront payments for all its supplies.

But with long-lead production cycles that stretch over a year, Flattered faced an unsustainable gap between costs and income, which significantly impacted cash flow at the company.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) such as Flattered AB represent 90% of the businesses and 50% of the employment worldwide, according to the World Bank. And yet SMEs traditionally do not have access to bank guarantees, invoice financing, or credit insurance to help maintain and scale their businesses. Instead, SME owners are left to navigate a laborious paper-based process to account for their international transactions with no protections against late invoice payments, fraud, or managing pre-payments.

Now with the growing urgency for seamless, transparent, and traceable transactions amid the global pandemic, improving access to trade finance has proven to be more vital for economic recovery and a more effective public health response around the world.

This is where we.trade steps in. As the world’s first enterprise-grade, blockchain-enabled trade finance platform, we.trade offers a safe and more reliable platform for buyers and sellers to trade globally using distributed ledger technology and smart contracts.

Through a joint venture between seven European banks, we.trade was established as an independent company based in Ireland in 2017. Today the company is owned by 12 banks, technology leader IBM, and global commercial credit and business information provider CRIF with shareholders from institutions such as CaixaBank, Deutsche Bank, Erste Group, HSBC, KBC, Nordea, Rabobank, Santander, Societe Generale, UBS, and UniCredit. In 2019, the company brought we.trade technology to market under a SaaS model and has already onboarded 16 banks across 15 countries onto the platform.

Until the launch of we.trade, the universal solution for open account trading or documentary trading was to use paper. But the slow process led to a lot of replication, with business owners filling out the same documents for different trade partners and leaving themselves more susceptible to forgery and human error.

With we.trade, companies can operate with digitized versions of once manual business processes to ensure signatures, contracts, and trade financing agreements can be virtually linked and effortlessly executed.

The challenge to launching a network like we.trade is convincing competing and disparate stakeholders in the trade finance ecosystem to join the same platform. It is impossible to entrust all transaction data to one party. So we.trade recruited IBM as its engineering partner to build a solution using Hyperledger Fabric, one of the blockchain platforms hosted by the Linux Foundation.

With Hyperledger Fabric’s modular blockchain architecture, we.trade was able to prioritize privacy and customize its platform with selected features such as transaction isolation among selected parties in the blockchain and off-chain data storage.

Now with we.trade, SMEs can secure and finance their trade transactions without having to be an expert in trade finance or blockchain. But the real revolutionary component of we.trade is the ability to issue event-based payments based on conditions agreed upon in smart contracts on the blockchain.

Through we.trade, companies receive access to risk mitigation and financing services that are not readily available to them while banks create new revenue-generating services. The entire ecosystem is available in a real-time, user-friendly digital platform that leads to shorter trade cycles and improved working capital.

Hyperledger worked up with we.trade on a case study that details the business and tech drivers for this digital platform as well as the role of open source software and governance in its launch, growth and plans for scaling from here.

Read the full case study here.

Oct 06

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Developer showcase series: Matt Zand, author and HashFlow CEO

By Hyperledger Blog, Developer Showcase, Hyperledger Fabric

Back to our Developer Showcase Series to learn what developers in the real world are doing with Hyperledger technologies. Next up is Matt Zand, CEO of HashFlow and co-author of Hands-On Smart Contract Development with Hyperledger Fabric V2 by O’Reilly Media

Give a bit of background on what you’re working on, and let us know what was it that made you want to get into blockchain?

I started an IT company in Maryland in 2010. Since then I gradually moved from custom web development to mobile app development services. In 2019, I started exploring blockchain technology and mastered all of its concepts and platforms. In 2020, I decided to write a book on Hyperledger Fabric V2, which came out last week. Beside my book, I have designed several blockchain course curricula and course materials for companies like O’Reilly Media as well as done several blockchain projects for our clients at HashFlow. Lastly, I have done several public speaking sessions in the Hyperledger community in North America and Europe.

What project in Hyperledger are you working on? Any new developments to share? Can you sum up your experience with Hyperledger?

NFT for financial products with Hyperledger Fabric, asset tokenization for digital banks with Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum, B2B NFT in music industry, a SaaS product for customer loyalty management, healthcare payment system, an ICO product and an internet-connectivity reward system for the telecom industry just to name a few. In addition, my book covers several projects done on Hyperledger Fabric.

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

My advice is to start exploring blockchain concepts and its use cases. Then, try to map a blockchain solution to an existing business problem. In this step, you learn how to design a blockchain system as a solution architect. Finally, pick a platform (e.g., Hyperledger Fabric or Ethereum) and build a demo of your product. After you finish and launch your first blockchain application, you would be able to gradually dig deeper into more advanced blockchain implementations.

What are the main differences between developing blockchain applications in Hyperledger or Ethereum?

While working as CEO at HashFlow, I advise and architect different blockchain solutions based on client requirements and other considerations such as choice of cloud provider, performance, availability, and interoperability. Thus, the choice of platform comes after we design the project architecture. As a rule of thumb, private enterprise performance-sensitive applications are being built with Hyperledger Fabric, whereas public applications like utility tokens are best suited with Ethereum.

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

The most important thing Hyperledger can focus on is increasing the number of transactions per second. It would also be great to have Hyperledger tools and libraries that are currently at incubation stage become active.

As Hyperledger’s incubated projects start maturing and hit 1.0s and beyond, what are the most interesting technologies, apps, or use cases coming out as a result from your perspective?

Hyperledger Transact is a really interesting product. We need methods for quickly creating distributed ledger technology (DLT) applications.

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

Blockchain is going to solve many problems. However, I am looking forward to seeing more enterprise blockchain projects moving forward from the PoC stage to production.

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

I hope to see a robust and prevalent acceptance of Hyperledger DLTs among enterprise projects. Also, I like to see more collaboration on projects like Hyperledger Besu where public and private blockchain developers would be able to collaborate.

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

Spend more time on architecting a solution thoroughly than developing it.

What technology could you not live without?

The Internet.

Sep 07

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How Thales and DigiCert enhance cybersecurity for Hyperledger Fabric-based networks

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Fabric

In 2019, 7.9 billion data records were breached. And, yet, 39% of companies aren’t using robust data security measures because deployment complexity is a barrier. Still, security is not a nice-to-have feature. It’s not an opt-in. It’s a must. No one will buy your solution if they cannot trust it.

So, are DLTs the answer to your cybersecurity concerns?

DLTs promise a lot: immutability, transparency, and auditability. Once the network achieves a consensus and information is put on a ledger, users can trust what they’re seeing is identical to what was approved as “truth.” And, if the data is encrypted, only users who are approved will be able to see it. In these ways, DLTs secure data.

However, as with any storage solution, blockchains are not immune to compromise. They are not, by themselves, 100% secure. Blockchains are only one part of an entire system—what happens before the consensus and what happens after data is retrieved has nothing to do with DLTs.

To be secure, blockchain and DLT solutions must still meet standard cybersecurity practices and requirements. Key management—making sure that keys are kept confidential, their integrity is protected, and they are always readily available—is critical.

Understandably, key management is a constant challenge for companies. They don’t have just one set of keys to secure or a few documents to protect. Enterprises can generate many hundreds of key pairs an hour—and each key contains from 2048 to 3072 bits.

With remote employees and partners, multiple devices accessing networks, and secure email and document exchange, enterprises authenticate identities, encrypt data, and verify the integrity of documents and communications countless times a day.

That’s a lot of information to manage and secure. It requires a robust platform for certificate, key, and identity management; and it requires a way to generate, manage and store the private keys.

And this is where DigiCert and Thales come together with a joint solution for authenticating and managing the identity of blockchain and DLT users and devices. Simply put, DigiCert secures devices with keys and Thales secures those keys. And together they serve to secure solutions built on Hyperledger Fabric.

To start, a client creates an account within DigiCert’s platform, which allows the client to issue publicly and privately trusted certificates. Then they use DigiCert’s API to integrate it with Hyperledger Fabric and replace the native CA (Certificate Authority). From that point, clients can use Thales Luna HSM (Hardware Security Modules) as a strong foundation of digital trust.

Though the integrations are separate now, the companies aim to have a single product with one point of contact for key pairs and certificates.

Hyperledger worked up with Thales and DigiCert on a case study that details how their joint solution incorporates critical levels of security into the blockchain, increasing the integrity of solutions built using Hyperledger Fabric. It also delves into the challenges of identity authentication and management with the increasing deployment of IoT devices and distributed networks and includes details on key management best practices.

Read the full case study here. For more details, tune into the Wednesday, September 15, discussion with Blair Canavan of Thales on increasing cybersecurity for Hyperledger Fabric.

Jul 29

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Enterprises Can No Longer Take Shortcuts with Climate and Social Impact, and Distributed Ledgers Provide Proven Accelerators for Change

By Anthony Day, Blockchain Partner, IBM Blog, Hyperledger Fabric, Supply Chain

One of the few benefits we have seen emerge from the recent COVID-19 pandemic is an amplification of focus and desire for accountability around corporate and government sustainability, or “ESG” (Environmental, Social and Governance) metrics.

However, sustainability must move beyond commitments and transition into action. Sustainable action. Sustainable from process, technology and commercial standpoints; and helping those in a position of power (who have not traditionally been used to prioritising investments based on ESG metrics) to make difficult choices to drive action.

Furthermore, as we look at “earth system” trends like CO2 emissions, surface temperature, ocean acidification, tropical forest loss and many others we see exponential increases in harm and damage over recent years. In other words, acceleration.

Speaking of action, if we are to make any dent in these exponential trends, we need to aim for a more profound impact than incremental improvements to individual corporate metrics such as a10% reduction in plastic packaging, 15% increase in use of recycled materials or move to hybrid vehicle fleets. Aiming higher and working together across entire value chains is key and so is creating systems that enable collaboration, tracking, reporting and remuneration. The latter is important as businesses must remain commercially sustainable, or we will not see participation and investment amongst small and medium-sized enterprises..

Despite what some vendors say , there is no “single app” that addresses the wide spectrum of sustainability requirements as the use cases are varied and more will emerge.

Many corporations are embarking on internal “data gathering” exercises to assess their Scope 1 emissions (direct emissions from owned or controlled sources) so they can have a fact base from which to then take action in a couple of years. Often they are quietly hoping Scope 3 emissions (other indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain) will go away. In my opinion, this approach is far from the immediate and meaningful “action” needed to drive change.

At the core, we need to enable more connected supply chains from which we can develop and co-create applications that share, automate, track and integrate with a multitude of different processes and IT systems.

Blockchain and distributed ledgers have proven themselves to be appropriate architectures for these multi-party platforms as they bring together identity, standards, automation of activity, aggregation of data, scalability, transparency and, importantly, incentivisation. That’s a lot more than just a “fancy data store.”

We can re-use or take inspiration from existing multi-party systems that are already addressing known climate and social issues, work together as networks of companies to have greater impact. And we can start today, not in two years’ time when we’ve completed our internal data audit.

Here are some examples of where distributed ledgers, and Hyperledger Fabric in particular, are already being used to address ESG issues that are cross-industry, cross-border and can be used as impact accelerators.

Waste Reduction – Nearly half of all fruit and vegetables produced globally are wasted each year (source: United Nations): IBM Food Trust originated as a platform for managing food safety, but the data stored on the platform across farmers, transport companies, manufacturers and retailers allows for more granular tracking of freshness, dwell time, conditions in storage and transit, which can be used to optimise distribution, reduce waste, and even extend shelf life.
Material Circularity – Production of materials we use every day account for 45% of the CO2 emissions (source: EuroParl): Plastic Bank has created a circular economy platform around collection, processing and sale of “Social Plastic” to large manufacturers, with a focus on empowerment and financial reward for collectors in developing countries. Mitsui and Asahi Kasei have also recently announced development of DLT-based circularity marketplaces to record, track and incentivise their suppliers and customers to increase re-use of plastic and chemical feedstock and provide transparency to regulators where taxation of imported plastics is coming into force.
Social Impact – Almost half of consumption-related emissions are generated by just 10% of people globally (source: Project Drawdown): Farmer Connect has its origins in traceability of commodities such as coffee and cocoa and provision of self-sovereign identity applications for farmers. Interestingly, Farmer Connect is using its “first mile” digitisation expertise to bring customers (and brands) closer to social impact projects in developing countries and enable crowdfunding of local projects.
Renewable Energy Consumption – Share of renewables in global electricity generation was 29% in 2020 (source: IEA): Renewables present an opportunity for low-cost, abundant energy but have challenges in scaling, particularly in balancing supply and demand. Equigy is a multi-country “crowd balancing” platform comprising energy companies in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy. Equigy uses blockchain technology to access, via aggregators, new sources of electricity from the owners of consumer-based devices and is working towards incorporating use of decentralised storage with private or commercial vehicles and batteries.
Carbon Capture – In practice, some sectors will simply not be able to achieve net-zero emissions without carbon capture (source: IEA): Newlight Technologies recently launched a range of “regenerative, carbon-negative” fashion products made from air-captured carbon, and with the origin of the carbon capture and authenticity of individual products stored and traceable on a distributed ledger. While manufacture of sunglasses is not analogous to all sectors, the ability to track, certify and share material properties in increasingly regulated supply chains is becoming a critical core competence and can be a further step towards scaling voluntary carbon markets.

The important factor here is not that blockchain applied to these domains solved a problem but rather that these climate and social issues are multi-party problems that require entities, activities and processes to be supported by technology to drive and sustain change.

Hopefully, in this article we have demonstrated that the problems are clear, real and addressable; that multi-party collaboration platforms are feasible to implement; and that there are technology accelerators available to enterprises and governments that are proven and scalable. So there should be no further cause for inaction…

Cover image by Tumisu from Pixabay