Hyperledger Fabric

Telekom Innovation Laboratories has built a solution, using Hyperledger Fabric, that simplifies and facilitates processes between telecommunications network providers for commercial use cases in the areas of wholesale roaming, wholesale voice and data on demand.

Network operators are facing big problems in handling increasing volumes of roaming traffic. They have hundreds of roaming agreements with other operators in place that need to be updated, implemented and settled, mostly on a yearly basis.

Due to lack of automation of interconnection agreements and complexity of current processes, operations are slow and require a lot of manual work. This leads to financial losses due to roaming transactions that cannot be properly tracked and charged. These days, agreements are to a large part analogue contracts on paper that need to be proofread multiple times by many people. The agreed commercial terms then need to be implemented into the software systems manually later on. Some network operators exploit the current process to their financial benefit by not implementing agreements at all or only with delays, leading to financial losses and disputes. Typos can also lead to disputes and financial losses. A holistic, analytic view on all agreements is impossible. At the end of the contract period, the contracts need to be settled, which means that volumes need to be compared, discrepancies clarified and fraud deducted, which is another lengthy and cumbersome undertaking

The processes in place are dated and are not fit for expected increase of roaming traffic, especially when IoT roaming and 5G will become more widespread. Current systems are hard to scale and lack flexibility.

We at Telekom Innovation Laboratories believe that, in the future, automated processes need to be in place in order to enable telecommunications providers to deliver even better services to customers and be ready for new technologies and services that are already evolving, for example 5G and IOT. The current processes are simply not suitable for handling the technologies of the future.

Using Hyperledger Fabric at its core, our solution will optimize the process and, more importantly, enhance the trust between telecommunications providers.

The solution has two main layers:

The application layer provides interfaces for the many different processes mentioned above (e.g.,  enabling commercial roaming teams to create, sign and implement wholesale roaming agreements in a fully digitized way). It also has a UI for the commercial managers to interact with.

The network layer provides a solution that enables telcos to install nodes in their own IT infrastructure and join the main network in a semi-automated and effortless way.

Between these layers, an API enables the flow of data and transactions.

The current version focuses on the digital creation and signing of wholesale roaming discount agreements. A digital solution immediately leads to more transparency across internal teams (e.g., finance, legal, commercial), reduction of third party dependencies, reduction of bad debts and a better cash flow situation and therefore increases the profitability of telecommunications providers.

One of the reasons to pick Hyperledger Fabric was the integrated certification authority (CA). With this component, we can ensure that transactions are linked to the legitimate actors, which is very important from a legal perspective. All network operators have signing regulations and processes in place, which ensure that only certain persons inside the organization can sign contracts, while others can only create or edit them. Being able to mirror this process in our solution was a key requirement.

Another reason for our choice was the fact that Hyperledger Fabric is a reliable open source solution backed by a large developer community. We at Telekom Innovation Laboratories believe that the decentralization of blockchain cannot just be a functional aspect but needs to extend to licensing as well. This is the only way to  ensure that code can be reviewed, changed, and improved by all participating parties in a blockchain network without having to tackle complex licensing issues. Licensing is challenging already when it comes to bilateral relationships, but is almost impossible to handle if there is a multitude of parties involved in the same system.

In order to ensure maximum control for each network operator joining our system, each operator runs its own full organization on the Hyperledger network. Every organisation entity consists of the following components: peer, frontend, database, certificate authority (CA). The components are packaged as docker components and groups as Pods in Kubernetes and can be installed on the premises of each client organisation that joins the network. There are several reasons for choosing this approach:

• Each participant in the network can have control over its data (contracts) as well as administrative rights to the technical components. Sensitive data can therefore be stored on premise or on private cloud or even dedicated hardware, managed by the organisation.
• Using the distributed blockchain architecture, a copy of the ledger is located on multiple organisations at the same time. Transactions flow is implemented by the orderer in the core network, where the consensus algorithm is implemented. This allows for much higher security, as there is no single point of failure and each organisation participates in the networks at the same level as all other organisations.
• Private certificate authority (CA) allows each organisation to issue cryptographic materials needed  to connect to the network, sign contracts and manage transactions. This allows for higher security and flexibility compared to a single centralized CA.

The system currently uses a single blockchain channel, which contains all transactions by all organisations. This means that all transactions are visible by all participants in the channel. However, no contractual data is stored on the ledger. It contains metadata for each transaction that has been executed (e.g., signing a contract by the other party and agreeing to its terms). The hash can be computed based on the raw contract data and therefore can be used as proof in case of dispute that the actual parameters in the contract have been agreed by both parties. A copy of the ledger is distributed in all organisations, but the actual sensitive data is located only at each of the organisations’ respective databases and is not visible to other parties in the network. This ensures that there is a high level of security due to the large amount of participating actors in each transaction, while at the same time keeping up the required confidentiality when it comes to actual commercial data.

The contract data is stored on MySQL server running within the bounds of each individual organisation. This database stores data only related to its own contracts, so there is no distributed contract storage within the network.

Contract data are synchronized only between participating organizations when a transaction occurs (e.g., when a new contract is being created). This synchronization takes place between the frontend components of each organisation. They use a separate API that uses TLS encryption and mutual authentication to secure the transport of data.

A major feature of our solution are installation packages and scripts that allow an easy on-premise creation of a new organization. Through this, we already managed to add major operators to our blockchain network.

Currently, we are also working on integrating the end of period settlements into our solution. As we approach production, we will move to using a RAFT ordering service.

In recent years, a number of economic sectors have seen the great promise of blockchain and are already using or piloting it in different use cases. But proof-of-concept projects are often led by evangelists, developed in R&D, and always in controlled environments. Moving to production requires stakeholder buy-in and can be a real challenge, especially at the current time with blockchain.

The Hyperledger Hyderabad Meetup organized a meetup to demonstrate the potential of Hyperledger technologies and discussed the challenges related to the production deployment of Hyperledger Fabric. This session was headed by a startup team out of the Hyperledger Hyderabad community itself, called ChitMonks, who have set a benchmark in their use case in the chit fund industry. 

The chit fund industry, with estimated assets under management (AUM) of ₹1.50 lakh crore, involves a great deal of paperwork. In some instances, it forms the backbone of the informal economy in developing countries like India. This results in drudgery for both the foremen (who organizes the chits) and the regulators (the State governments). 

Administration of chit funds through companies are happening manually. Every time a company wants to start a chit, they have to submit a huge pile of documentation on a monthly basis to the registration and stamps department, which is the regulator. Consequently, there is a lack of transparency for subscribers, and audits need to be done to ensure the government and chit fund company have matching documentation. The information gap between the chit fund company and the regulators produces a loophole for frauds, which are hard to trace back.

The approach of ChitMonks is to place a private blockchain-based, consortium-driven infrastructure and establish a process-based trust, by bringing all the stakeholders involved in the process to the same platform of blockchain.

Actors and Key activities

Technical Architecture 

The three major entities involved in the process are:

• Foremen: it’s a consortium of all the chit fund companies.
• Regulators: it’s a consortium for all the regulatory entities (generally the local government bodies). 
• Subscribers: they are the end beneficiaries of the chit fund companies.

The foremen and regulators act as the two organizations in the network. And each of the organizations has two peers each. The organizations also have their respective C.A. (Certificate Authority) for letting any new member join the consortium.

• A channel is established between the two organizations to keep data in synch between regulators and the foremen.
• The chaincode is framed around the Chit Funds Act, 1982, passed by Indian legislative. This chaincode takes care of all the guidelines like commissions by foremen, a form of chit agreement, filing of chit agreement, minimum capital requirements for the commencement of a chit, creation of a reserve fund by a company and many more aspects of chit fund.
• The orderers follow Raft ordering service, after being maintained on Kafka ordering service for quite some-time.
• The state DB chosen here is couch DB, after testing it with Go level DB, which can handle complex data and adds rich querying practices. 
• Here the ledger holds only relevant data for both the organization’s, keeping a separate off-chain database for specific purposes.
• The infrastructure is designed as such where a foremen organization can own and maintain organization nodes. Typically, a big organization can own the infrastructure, medium and small organization can be part of consortium org/nodes. This makes the blockchain network more self-sustaining and more decentralized.  

So, here the blockchain system is used in a very optimized way by keeping only the shared data over the system. To make this complex system easily accessible for both organizations, each of the entities has different applications for their purposes.

As already mentioned, ChitMonks serves its platform to more than 700+ chit fund companies. Data privacy was the biggest concern for them, since the consortium of all the chit fund companies are structured as an organization here, and they all have access to the same state DB. To ensure data privacy, ChitMonks used private data collection introduced by Hyperledger Fabric in its 1.4 release. In this case, each transaction is encrypted, and the keys to check data are shared between the regulator and chit fund company over the private data collection provided by Hyperledger Fabric’s latest release.    

Challenges Encountered

Asset Modeling – Asset modeling helps to define the entities and assets involved in the process of business.  Challenges include the incipient regulatory framework and the relatively limited experience of managing large amounts of data with respect to entities (i.e., who will own what data and hierarchy involved each level of the process). While there haven’t been verifiable data breaches of blockchain backbones to date, there have been deficiencies in the implementation of smart contracts, mostly due to failures in coding. But a well-defined set of terms and conditions from the government authorities (which is also the regulatory and one of the organizations in our Blockchain infrastructure) for  the chit fund business helped ChitMonks to encode an ultimate and sustainable asset modeling. 

Testing chain code – Hyperledger Fabric provides us an immutable infrastructure. So, it’s important to test the chaincode well before deploying it. ChitMonks took the approach to perform unit testing at every change to follow up on potential bugs.   

Docker infrastructure – Containers might thus move from one host to another, especially while scaling the number of containers up or down or during container redeployments. There is no static relation between hosts and services they are running anymore! For troubleshooting, this means one must first figure out which host is running which containers. And, vice versa, when a host exhibits poor performance, it’s highly valuable to be able to isolate which container is the source of the problem and if any containers suffer from the performance issue.

Continuous Integration tools (CI) such as Jenkins can build and deploy Docker images across application environments very easily. Builds can be automated and also can be monitored efficiently using CI administrator console.

Maintaining the Kafka cluster – Initially, ChitMonks established its Hyperledger infrastructure with Kafka-based ordering services. Kafka provides a scalable multi-orderer infrastructure and poses a viable fault-tolerant solution for Hyperlуdger Fabric infrastructure, but it required us to maintain zookeepers along with it in production, which added a layer of complexity. So, ChitMonks have shifted to Hyperledger Fabric 1.4, which allows raft ordering services.  

The Raft consensus is a mature consensus algorithm and is easier to implement on a large scale than Kafka. It can extend a network with new organizations, as we don’t need to rely on a third-party Kafka cluster. In the previous versions of the platform, it was impossible to change a consensus type of a blockchain network without full redeployment. However, Hyperledger Fabric v1.4.2 introduced a mechanism that makes it possible to migrate a network from a Kafka consensus to a Raft-based one. And Hyperledger has provided a very easy step-by-step guide for migrating from Kafka to raft consensus.

Conclusion

The meetup was received with a very enthusiastic response. Many of the attendees were very happy to see a local startup deploying production-grade applications. The ChitMonks engaged well with the audience to help them understand the difference between a POC and production level applications and shared their perspective on scaling a blockchain-based product!

Kartikey is a co-organizer of the Hyperledger Hydrabad Meetup and works as a Software Engineer at MSR Cosmos and is a team member of TEDxHyderabad. You can reach out to me via Twitter,  Facebook or LinkedIn.

The hidden costs of raw materials

How much do you know about the making of your phone? How important is it for you to know where all the materials came from?

There are now over 3 billion smartphones in the world and the growth in numbers is expected to continue. This, along with demand for other electronics like tablets, laptops, electric vehicles, even vacuum cleaners, is driving a huge need for raw materials such as cobalt, tin, tungsten and tantalum. Cobalt is used in every lithium-ion rechargeable battery on the planet, while the 3 Ts, also known as conflict minerals, are found in all manner of electronic goods.

Conflict minerals have been classed as such due to their sourcing in conflict areas such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Militias will frequently seize control of a mine and force people to work in dangerous conditions for minimal or zero pay. With weak law enforcement in these areas there are many examples of slavery, theft of natural resources, environmental damage and human rights abuses.

The other issue that is rife here is child labour. The Guardian estimates there are more than 255,000 creuseurs (diggers) mining cobalt in the DRC, at least 35,000 of whom are children, some as young as six. These children will spend an entire day digging up enough cobalt-containing heterogenite stone to fill a sack, which they will then try to sell to Chinese traders for about $0.65.

Traceability-as-a-Service

For a long time. people have been talking about blockchain and how it is a technology looking for a problem to solve. Circulor is one of the first companies to build a solution using Hyperledger blockchain and artificial intelligence that provides traceability and transparency across the supply chain where it is really needed – conflict minerals, rare earth minerals, toxic and polluting waste, child labour-based production, to name a few. 

Responsible companies need to know the answers to the questions:

• To what extent is your supply chain traceable?
• Are you confident in the provenance of your raw material?
• Can you prove the provenance?
• What impact are you having on people and nature?

With extractive industries, true traceability requires reaching far upstream and being able to track material flows through refining, amalgamation and manufacture. Circulor addresses two core challenges – reliably creating a digital identity for a physical commodity at its source in the field, as well as connecting the inputs and outputs from a manufacturing process to enable that identity to be inherited. 

In order to make the identity reliable and digital, Circulor’s solution gives a commodity a dynamic identity, or dynamic twin, so that it can be tracked along the supply chain journey, from source to consumer, even if the commodity changes on the way. Then through the material journey, we use machine learning tools to identify anomalies or fraudulent activity.

With their entire supply chains mapped out for the first time, manufacturers are able to definitively prove responsible sourcing and sustainable production. In relation to conflict minerals and child mining, there are a number of controls in place to enable this. Artificial Intelligence is utilised for facial recognition, ensuring only authorised people are involved in the process, while anti-GPS spoofing measures guarantee that transactions are only done at accredited facilities.

One of these measures is tags that can only be used in a specified geo-fenced area, such as a mine site or production facility. This is an important safeguard because, especially with the case of tin and tungsten mining in Rwanda, the current tagging system is insecure, and tags are frequently traded on the black market. If a commodity has one of these tags, even though it holds no real information on location or identity, that is often enough for it to pass any security checks. Circulor’s tags are linked to specific locations and individuals.

Enabling better business

In partnership with Kumi, Circulor recently completed a successful project with Volvo Cars, using Hyperledger Fabric blockchain technology to trace the cobalt in the company’s forthcoming electric vehicles. Volvo Cars is leading the way in its industry to conduct responsible production, not just in its own operations but now in all of its suppliers as well. It recognised the importance of being able to prove to its consumers that it sources raw materials ethically and sustainably.

There is no doubting a current consumer trend towards a greater concern for our impact on people and the environment. Last year, the UK spent over £83bn on ethical goods with the continued growth driven by increased environmental concern, showing that more consumers than ever are looking for ways to shop that help people and the planet. Businesses are taking note – Circulor has just signed on with another automotive company to conduct a similar project and there are various examples of opportunities in other industries, such as waste, recycling, agriculture and more. In partnership with Kumi and other forward-thinking organisations, traceability provides huge potential to enable better business.

Sources:
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-conflict-minerals-funded-a-war-that-killed-millions/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/04/19/conflict-free/

Cover image courtesy of Circulor

Turning retired planes onto business opportunity, Honeywell Aerospace is on track to modernize the $4 billion used aircraft parts market. A key part of the formula for success has been deploying Hyperledger Fabric to bring a layer of trust to the online sales process. 

When a plane retires, operators can harvest valuable parts, especially engines and landing gear. And those parts can be sold, recertified as airworthy, and reused in other planes. There is a big demand for the parts but, since aviation is a heavily regulated industry, sales require certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies. Each part must be documented with a complete history of its ownership, use, and repairs. Needless to say, tracking all the information required on all those parts is a challenging, error-prone process. And any uncertified or counterfeit part that snuck into the supply chain could have dire consequences.

Vendors attempting online sales were putting up sites that looked a lot like Craigslist, only with no prices or images. Only the most basic information, such as a part’s condition, was posted online with the seller’s phone number. Any transaction required extensive back and forth between buyer and seller to fill in each part’s history and details. It was a long way from the ecommerce experience we’ve all come to expect and online sales made up less than 2.5% of all transactions. The Honeywell Aerospace team knew they had to do better and that the key was building in a layer of trust.

Ushing in a new era in used airplane parts sales, Honeywell created a blockchain-based marketplace, GoDirect Trade, that is a modern shopping site that gives buyers easy access to the information and parts they needed and, importantly, removed uncertainty from the transactions.

Thanks to the blockchain records, buyers can now view vital data on many parts, such as:

• The entire lifecycle of a part
• The number of hours it was in service
• Any and all repairs made and by who, when and where
• All previous owners of the part

In selecting the blockchain framework to power GoDirect Trade, Honeywell had a number of criteria, including low latency, high throughput, and fast send rates. Hyperledger Fabric provided all that, along with privacy controls such as channels that give a granular ability to manage data. 

Today, shopping on the platform feels like using a typical consumer e-commerce site with photos, detailed product information, and a simple checkout. The average checkout screen only takes two clicks. All these were groundbreaking innovations for aviation parts.   

A month after GoDirect Trade went live with little fanfare, the marketplace had registered more than 300 buyers and processed nearly a quarter million dollars in online transactions. Within 10 weeks, sales soared past $1 million.

Hyperledger has captured the details behind the conception and development of the Hyperledger Fabric-powered GoDirect Trade, its success to date and future plans for the platform. Read the full case study here.

Hyperledger Certifications give experts a professional edge by providing globally recognized evidence of skills mastery, demonstrating ability within a specific topic. 

Hyperledger announced the Certified Hyperledger Fabric Administrator (CHFA) designation earlier this year. This certification is earned by professionals who can effectively build a secure Hyperledger Fabric network for commercial deployment, including the ability to install, configure, operate, manage and troubleshoot the nodes of thatnetwork¹.

Hyperledger expanded the available certifications with the recently announced Hyperledger Certified Service Provider (HCSP) designation for companies that meet the following criteria: 

1. Be a member of Hyperledger, 
2. Have a business model to support enterprise end users, including putting engineers at customer sites, and
3. Have three or more engineers who have passed the Certified Hyperledger Fabric Administrator (CHFA) exam.

As an active member of Hyperledger, contributing to the quarterly releases and participating in conferences around the world, Chainyard has the first requirement covered. Additionally, Chainyard’s business model, covering the second requirement, is to service enterprises, startups and associations with their blockchain needs, whether they be advisory, engineering, operational or governance in nature. 

Regarding the third, I am proud to say our first three engineers who obtained the CHFA designation are Ratnakar Asara, Surya Lanka and Ramesh Thoomu. All three were motivated to get the designation to validate their expertise and contribute to the company’s goal of obtaining the HCSP designation. 

Obtaining this designation is important to individuals both to affirm what they know and for their personal development and growth. Here is what our first three engineers to obtain the HCFA designation had to say. 

Achieving Certified Hyperledger Fabric Administrator (CHFA) is a big milestone in my career and demonstrates my skills, knowledge and competencies to build a secure Hyperledger Fabric network for commercial deployment including the ability to install, configure, operate, manage, and troubleshoot the nodes on that network. 

Working in multiple blockchain projects through Chainyard gave me opportunity in exploring Hyperledger Fabric in depth and boosted my confidence in taking this exam. 

– Ratnakar Asara 

CHFA is highly recommended because it helps one to understand the core Hyperledger Fabric network fundamentals with emphasis on building Hyperledger Fabric network, operations and maintenance. It also helps organizations to build Hyperledger Fabric blockchain skill sets for its employees. 

Phenomenal efforts have been put forward by the Hyperledger team in designing the content of CHFA. Thanks to the Linux Foundation. 

– Ramesh Thoomu 

“I have been working with Hyperledger Fabric for over two years. When I heard about the opportunity to become Certified Hyperledger Fabric Administrator, I made up mind to do it. I am grateful to Chainyard for their trust and encouragement to become Certified Hyperledger Fabric Administrator.” 

– Surya Lanka 

For our company, the designation separates us from the competition and provides an objective affirmation by a respected organization, the Linux Foundation, of our capabilities with Hyperledger Fabric. 

Our team has worked on many Hyperledger Fabric projects running in multiple data centers and public clouds on projects across many domains. The experience the team has obtained over the past four years is tremendous and enabled Ratnakar, Ramesh and Surya to pass the exam. Their dedication to their craft, careers and our clients, helping them to solve many problems, allowed them to pass this exam and validate their expertise with Hyperledger Fabric. 

We are happy to say we have additional engineers in the pipeline who have committed to work towards this designation. We work closely on our client projects, leveraging each other’s strengths, to deliver the best work. This collaboration will continue into the classroom as our expert level engineers have promised to hold extra whiteboard coaching sessions to help others in the company pass the HCFA exam. We look forward to having more engineers achieve this milestone. 

As a company, we see the Hyperledger Certified Service Provider designation as a way to help better promote our company services and grow our business. Having the designation validates what we say to our clients, giving them greater confidence in our team, whether it be during pre-sales, while developing a solution or when resolving an operational issue. 

Chainyard has been active with Hyperledger for four years and proud to have the HCSP designation to reinforce our commitment to the ecosystem.

^{1. Certified Hyperledger Fabric Administrator (CHFA) requirements}

The University of Wyoming (Laramie) hosted the 2nd Wyoming Blockchain Stampede event during 20-22nd September 2019. The event comprised three tracks: hackathon, blockchain conference and the Sandcastle Startups Challenge. Together, Chainrider and the Blockchain Research Lab @ Arizona State University participated in these events and accomplished remarkable results. We have won two hackathon prizes (a 1st and 2nd place) for BRL@ASU team for designing a roaming framework on private and public blockchains inside the electric vehicles charging ecosystem. Chainrider has won the 3rd place in the Sandcastle startups challenge. 

The Energy Landscape

Blockchain technology enables peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions through the elimination of a centralized entity governing consensus.  Rather than having a centralized database, the data is distributed across multiple nodes – this both enables crash fault tolerance and makes the system tamper-proof, due to a distributed consensus algorithm.

Blockchain technology has been listed as one of the key innovations in the report, Innovation for a Renewable-Powered Future. Within the energy sector there is an opportunity to handle user accounts and payments using blockchains. Currently, utility companies follow a centralized approach to handle accounts and payments. Thus, the system’s availability and reliability are jeopardized due to a single point of failure. Blockchains, due to their inherent nature, have the potential to provide a promising solution to control and manage trading energy surplus or flexible demand on a P2P basis.

Recent solutions that have used blockchain technology have focused on achieving a shift from a highly centralised power system to smaller scale, localised systems that optimise power demand, consumption, and management. These microgrids are emerging as notions towards decentralization inside the energy ecosystem. They bring together a combination of clean technologies such as distributed generation, batteries, and renewable resources to help organisations operate autonomously  – apart from the traditional electrical grid. Power Ledger and Brooklyn Microgrid are examples of two  such solutions that focus on applying blockchain technology to a microgrid use case. 

The Idea

At the Blockchain Research Lab at ASU, we have an in-house solution to enable a P2P Energy Marketplace using Hyperledger Fabric. It focuses on the transactive energy concept that assigns value to facilitate dynamic balancing between independent power producers. It defines actors who produce, as well as consume energy, as prosumers. Prosumers are offered a way to closely match and balance energy supply and demand. Using smart contracts on Hyperledger Fabric, we digitally facilitate, verify and enforce the negotiations taking place on a transactive grid. Benefits for such a system, for various participants, are summarized in Figure 1.

Figure 1 – Energy trading blockchain ecosystem benefits

Our solution identifies four actors that participate in the blockchain ecosystem.

• Utility Company
• Photo-Voltaic Installation Owners
• Storage Installation Owners
• Utility Customers

Four channels are  used for facilitating transactions on the energy marketplace between these actors. Utility company acts as the operator since it owns the physical infrastructure.  The blockchain infrastructure is displayed in Figure 2. 

Figure 2 – Hyperledger Fabric architecture for  energy trading blockchain ecosystem

The solution implemented uses a permissioned (private) blockchain microgrid – it is a closed ecosystem with each participant well defined. One drawback of such ecosystems landscape is that the asset associated with one such ecosystem has no value as well as meaning beyond that ecosystem. To remedy this drawback, we have worked on an energy trading and roaming use case, showcasing it within the electric vehicle (EV) charging ecosystem. This challenge was sponsored by Dash and Chainrider as part of the WyoHackathon challenges. 

Figure 3 – EV charging ecosystem potential actors

Take a look at the scenario illustrated in Figure 3. A user in the system owns a PV installation as well as an EV. The user has an agreement with an energy storage owner to store surplus of generated energy. The main problem is to share the energy as a digital asset outside its ecosystem so that the user can charge the EV in other similar ecosystems (e.g., while traveling). 

Our solution has two major tracks:

1. Within a local EV charging ecosystem, leverage Hyperledger Fabric to mediate agreements between EV owner, storage operator and EV charging stations operator, as well as generate and transfer ownership of tokenized energy assets. A local EV charging ecosystem has a platform operator (e.g., utility company). 
2. Outside the local EV charging ecosystem, leverage Dash public blockchain to store and share proof of ownership over the tokenized energy assets (platform operators agree that information on a robust public blockchain such as Dash is a sufficient proof of ownership). In this manner we:  
   • Leverage OP_RETURN Transaction from Dash to share ‘proof of ownership’ for stored energy.
   • Allow an asset stored on a consortium ecosystem to be exchanged outside using Dash transaction features.
   • Achieve interoperability on the application level between a permissioned and public blockchain.

Figure 4 – Private-to-public blockchain interoperability for EV charging roaming

Figure 4 summarizes the interoperability between private and public blockchains to achieve the roaming use case. A demo for a prototype of this application can be seen by visiting this link. 

The Outcome

A prototype for the idea was implemented and presented by Raj Sadaye and Arsh Padda from the Blockchain Research Lab @ ASU. The BRL team won 1st place in the Dash/Chainrider Blockchain Challenge, and the 2nd place in the WyoHackathon Interoperability Challenge.

Dragan Boscovic and Sasa Pesic from the Chainrider team competed against blockchain startups from all over the USA in the Sandcastle Startups Challenge. The main driving point of the Chainrider platform is its ability to transform a team of IT professionals into blockchain experts in a matter of hours. This is achieved by providing public and Hyperledger Fabric tools to help with blockchain exploration and transacting on one hand, and deployment of blockchain infrastructure and smart contracts on the other. After multiple rounds of judging and one-on-one team battles, the Chainrider team finished 3rd in the competition. 

Cover image by markus roider from Pixabay