Hyperledger Global Forum

The third Hyperledger Global Forum (HGF) is coming up quickly (June 8-10). While this year HGF will be virtual, we’ve gathered in the past in Basel, Switzerland, and Phoenix, Arizona, and are looking forward to meeting in person again in 2022. 

One of the big goals for this year is to make Hyperledger Global Forum as successful and welcoming as past events, even in its virtual format. To help keep us our eyes on that prize, we asked speakers from past events about their involvement and experience at previous HGFs. 

The great thing about our community is that it’s home to a mix of technologists, developers, business users and innovators from starts-ups, enterprises, solution providers, research labs and universities from around the world. And they all have a voice at Hyperledger Global Forum. 

Read on for more about what brought 10 past speakers from across our extensive community to HGF and what made the event stand out to them. They also share updates on their projects and use cases and on the trends and technologies on their radars now. 

Tell us a little bit about why you chose to speak at HGF and what your goal was

Baohua Yang, Oracle America, Inc.: “Share the experience of using Hyperledger technologies and also raise existing problems from real user cases. Also trigger thoughts for the Hyperledger roadmap.”

Ben Taylor, LedgerDomain / Clinical Supply Blockchain Working Group: “Hyperledger Fabric is an exciting project with flexible modular design, the backing of major industry players, a healthy developer community, great documentation, and a plethora of tutorials and ‘hello world’ code samples. At the same time, it’s maddeningly difficult to develop an end-to-end understanding of Fabric as a platform, create custom deployments, and develop real-world user-facing applications backed by smart contracts. 

This is as much a social and political challenge as it is a technological challenge, and requires the ability to work with various stakeholders to demonstrate value as well as set a clear direction. Along with showcasing results from a real-world use case of Hyperledger Fabric, we wanted to share our insights and strategies related to the key questions of governance and orchestration.”

Markus Stauffiger, 4eyes GmbH: “I often profit from other people’s efforts and know-how and hoped to give something back by sharing our experience to those starting with Hyperledger.” 

Mohan Venkataraman, Chainyard: “As a blockchain practitioner and technology evangelist, I was quite motivated to share my experiences, thought leadership and make connections. I have worked on over 30 projects, some in Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum and a bit on Aris and BigChainDb. The learnings have been tremendous and sharing that with fellow practitioners and learning from their success and failures was part of it.”

Tell us a little about your experience speaking and attending HGF

Thomas Goetz, PostFinance AG: “It was striking to see the worldwide interest in the Hyperledger project. We had a number of interesting conversations and contacts before and after our presentation.”

Mohan: “It was amazing as we have an over full room of over 150 attendees, despite of being the last presentation of the day. The questions were pouring and people were curious about our experience in building highly performant Fabric solutions. Our methodology, accelerators and reference architectures were well appreciated.”

Saptarshi Choudhury, Paramount Software Solutions: “I loved the live interaction with the audience from different parts of the world who helped co-create values while speaking as a panelist, and I truly enjoyed all the sessions of the Hyperledger Global Forum.”

Shengwei You, University of Notre Dame: “It’s a very informative and awesome experience, and I feel everything was arranged well.”

What is the most memorable part of attending and speaking at HGF?

Benjamin Djidi: “The people. I was really impressed by the different project bearers and contributors.”

Markus Stauffiger: “The openness, sharing of ideas, experiences and know-how. The no-bullshit attitude, where critical thinking is welcome. Also the inclusiveness, which is very obvious with the people, but it extends to all aspects, such as technology & philosophy.”

Thomas Bohner, IntellectEU: “Meeting new people and building long-term partnerships and client relationships.”

Thomas Goetz: “The keynotes gave a very good overview of the ecosystem and emerging trends. It was very motivating to be part of the community.”

How has your project/use case with Hyperledger tech progressed since you spoke at HGF? 

Ben Taylor: “Since we shared our results from the BRUINchain study, we have extended the framework to encompass all prescription drugs in the United States, an*d have tested it at scale and with production data. The framework is currently in the process of being rolled out with participating health centers and drug manufacturers. We published the results of our pilot with UCLA Health, Genentech, Amgen, Sanofi and others in December 2020, and at time of writing our peer-review study with real-world enhanced drug verification is set to be published in the next several days.”

Mathews Thomas, IBM: “Multiple use cases were covered and several have gone into production with various clients. Also kept in touch with some folks I met and continue exchanging ideas.”

Saptarshi Choudhury: “We are now in a pilot stage with our Farm2Plate solution and also developing another product catering democratization of energy by P2P energy trade.We are also working on a Social impact project with BlueNumber on ID for farmers.”

Shengwei You: “I was a summer intern for the Hyperledger Caliper project. More users are paying attention to this project, and I feel there are more improvements we can do to make things better and more user friendly.”

What new enterprise blockchain topics, technologies or trends are on your radar?

Baohua: “Zero knowledge, China standard of crypto, PBFT implementation”

Benjamin Djidi: “Aries is very interesting. I’m generally fond of ZKP topics and followings updates to the existing frameworks (especially Fabric, Indy, Ursa).”

Mathews: “Application of blockchain in emerging areas for different industries (e.g ,Telecom – 5G, Media – Decentralized media network)”

Thomas Bohner: “CBDC, Digital Cash, Quantum Technology”

Hyperledger Global Forum, taking place June 8-10, will provide an opportunity to learn and understand various aspects of the ecosystem, including technical roadmaps, milestones and the latest uses and applications across industries and markets for Hyperledger projects and other related technologies. 

To register for the virtual event, go here.

Hyperledger Global Forum is the most important annual event for enterprises that adopt consortium blockchain technologies. Hundreds of blockchain enthusiasts come together at the annual Hyperledger Forum to share their user cases and the latest progress on enterprise blockchain technologies. During the conference, I presented on the 10 critical problems and requirements to consider based on numerous enterprise blockchain implementation projects using Hyperledger Fabric-based Oracle Blockchain Platform (OBP). These projects cover the gamut of industries, including financial services, supply chain, healthcare, and government, and range from custom developments supported by the Oracle solutions team to SI-led projects and ISV solutions. 

These critical issues include: 

1. Using SQL for rich queries in Smart Contracts
2. Data Backup/Recovery
3. Ledger checkpoint and pruning/archiving
4. Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus
5. Governance
6. Performance
7. Privacy & Confidentiality Protection
8. Inter-network Support
9. Pluggable Crypto Implementations
10. Auditing Capability 

Although the original public blockchains rely on a self-sovereign management style with complete decentralization and rules governed by consensus algorithms, permissioned blockchains have a different structure. In the enterprise-permissioned blockchains used in private or consortium deployments, the participating enterprises are often concerned about maintaining their own nodes with efficiency and resiliency while, at the same time, working as part of a cross-company blockchain network. This requires a secure and flexible governance model and on-chain collaboration mechanisms to address the many operational issues at different layers of the blockchain network – from interoperable connections, to storage management, membership governance, chaincode distribution, etc. As organizations set up their blockchain networks, there are several things they need to pay particular attention to and design their networks with in mind. 

SQL and Smart Contracts

The first issue is about supporting SQL language for rich queries in smart contracts – queries of Key/Value data that apply conditions to the values. While some are neutral on this issue, my team views this as an important option for enterprise users, especially those who want to migrate their existing SQL-based business logic into blockchain smart contracts quickly. Using extensive SQL SELECT capabilities minimizes the code complexity and enables a single query to aggregate results that would otherwise involve multiple queries (necessitating multiple network hops between the chaincode container and peer container where the world state database resides). Based on the open-sourced BerkeleyDB K/V store with SQL-Lite, Oracle Blockchain Platform allows customers to enjoy the power of SQL, while also achieving more than 2000 TPS. For interoperability purposes, CouchDB Query Language is also supported in the chaincodes on top of Berkeley DB world state database.

Blockchain Data Backup & Recovery 

For production customers, questions about how to backup and recover the data for blockchain networks are very critical. Although it’s easy to create a new node in theory, it is not practical to wait hours for a new node to sync up the ledger data from existing blockchain nodes and transfer configuration metadata. And when there’s the requirement to migrate a node across datacenters, this recovery operation becomes critical. Oracle has already resolved this problem by designing specific tools for OBP customers, which avoid service disruptions when migrating or upgrading the blockchain nodes.

Ledger Pruning and Archiving

Some of our customer projects expect to handle very large transaction volumes (e.g., a maritime shipping network tracking 10s of millions of shipments/year, each recording on-chain a large number of documentation and logistics events, could exceed 3B transactions/year). Depending on the payload size and number of digital signatures (endorsers) attached to the transaction, the total storage requirements could grow to the levels that are going to be difficult to manage. There’s a strong interest by some of the leading customers in a solution that can prune the ledger, archive old content, and keep the overall storage requirements manageable. Some work is underway in Fabric (e.g., FAB-106 Jira). We believe a solution to the ledger pruning requirements is mandatory and are exploring different approaches consistent with the overall architecture of Fabric in order to be prepared when customer blockchains grow big enough to need a solution.    

Byzantine Fault Tolerant Consensus

Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) is defined as the feature of a distributed network to reach consensus (agreement on the same value) even when some of the nodes in the network fail to respond or respond with incorrect information.

An important consideration to be aware of while setting up a blockchain network is the requirements of Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus, compared with the Crash Fault Tolerant (CFT) one. Due to the underlying complexity of BFT consensus algorithms, a best practice is for the community to leverage the latest academically-proven consensus algorithms based on rigorous and peer-reviewed demonstrations of the safety and liveness properties. Such algorithms include the Tendermint, Algorand, Mir-BFT and HotStuff. There is also some on-going work on Golang-based implementation of the BFT-SMART algorithm for Hyperledger Fabric.  These are important reference points for blockchain architects and developers interested in adopting BFT consensus in the future.  At Oracle ,we are actively exploring the available options to ensure they meet the rigorous proof requirements as well as deliver operational characteristics, including performance and resilience required in enterprise applications.

Governance

Governance is another strong requirement, particularly in consortium blockchains, and all audiences believe this is a feature they seriously need. The lack of governance creates challenges in real applications (e.g., how to agree on adding new members, creating new channels and setting their policies, deploying or upgrading smart contracts, etc.). Although users can negotiate these out-of-band using email, conference calls, etc., it is untrustworthy in theory and very inconvenient in practice, especially to achieve agreements across different organizations. And it certainly doesn’t scale for consortiums with more than a dozen members.  

We recommend several practical solutions to address the issue using on-chain mechanisms to provide an audit trail for governance-related agreements and chaincodes to automate the processes for reaching these agreements through voting and other means. This could be supported via a special governance channel for persisting transactions, votes, and policy evaluation results, similar to the system channel that is used to help govern the ordering services; the other part would be a Governance System chaincode (GSCC); and the last piece is to use External distributed governing service provided by vendors. 

The GSCC option is very promising because in the Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 release organizations can vote for chaincode lifecycle with the help of the implicit collection. Thus, it is feasible to extend the functionality to allow users to vote for other operations, such as adding new members or creating channels. It could also track proposals, manage vote tabulations, and evaluate them against policy requirements. Part of the GSCC implementation has been verified by the Fabric interop team.

Performance of a Blockchain Network

Although customers often ask for performance numbers, sometimes there is a misunderstanding of the performance metrics. For example, in blockchain, the performance metrics include throughput and latency, and results will vary under different network size and hardware configurations and the tradeoffs made between higher throughput vs. lower latency. In analyzing typical blockchain scenarios from finance to supply chain and healthcare to IoT, we can see that the performance requirement is not the same for each scenario. A suggested best practice is to optimize the performance from a systematic view. For example, the chaincode often does lots of calculation, while the ledger will require storage, and the consensus is sensitive to network latency. Hence, a reasonable performance optimization solution will be based on the thoughtful understanding of the business demands and the platform architecture. In customer benchmarks we have observed significant impact of the payload size as transactions move between clients, peers, and orderers; number of peer nodes and their CPU capacity in an instance; ordering block size (more transactions/block can significantly improve throughput but at some cost to latency); network capacity between ordering service and the peers, and other factors. Properly tracking all of these factors and optimizing for those that are most important in the context of a specific application enabled us to meet the highest levels of customer requirements, including exceeding 2000 TPS in a maritime logistics blockchain network.

Data Privacy and Business Confidentiality

Data privacy, which is becoming an important bottleneck in blockchain, has been discussed for quite a while. Enterprise blockchains that plan to share confidential business data are particularly concerned about confidentiality between certain participants and shielding this data from access by other participants. There are a number of approaches, but no perfect solution. Even with the private data collections (PDCs) in Fabric, there’s complexity of configuring PDCs when transactions span different members and when new members join the network. Implicit PDCs in Fabric 2.0 help to some extent. But even with PDCs,  the hashed results are still recorded in the ledger, enabling those with access to detect the relationships and frequency of transactions, if not their content. 

When blockchain nodes run as a managed cloud service with users only able to access them through the APIs and event subscriptions (and not by accessing the underlying files systems where the ledgers are stored), data privacy can be managed easier.  The channel access policies can be set to prevent unauthorized members from seeing detailed block content through event subscriptions and to enable only authorized members to deploy or upgrade chaincode. When coupled with a unique feature of Oracle Blockchain Platform that enables the use of on-chain fine-grained Access Control Lists (ACLs) in smart contracts, the chaincode can control the access based on the user’s identity. And we suggest customers encrypt important data before putting them on the private database (shared by PDC members.) Ultimately, if you care about data privacy, a good rule to follow is to encrypt all your data before putting it on the blockchain.

Inter-Network Operations

This topic spurs a number of active conversations, but the answers aren’t clear today. Let’s break this down into a few more specific questions about what Inter-network operations mean. First, is it about multiple nodes and networks built on the same technology stack (e.g., Hyperledger Fabric)? The Hyperledger Interop Working Group kicked off at the past Hyperledger forum in Basel has been working on testing and documenting how multiple members’ implementations can interoperate. The testing done as part of this working group by Oracle, SAP, and IBM has shown that their nodes can join each other’s network and interop with a common ordering service and channels. The next question is about interop between separate Fabric networks with their own ordering services and channels. This is possible within Fabric architecture, whereby a peer node can be configured to connect with multiple ordering services and see channels supported by each of them. When coupled with inter-chaincode query capability, this enables a chaincode on one network to query a chaincode from another network for data from its ledger.

Moving to heterogeneous technology stacks, what about interop between Fabric and other blockchain technologies, such as Ethereum, Corda, Quorum, etc.? Again, we need to break this down to more specific questions. For example, do we want to:

• Read/query data from multiple ledgers?
• Write data to multiple ledgers with consistent results (i.e., both are committed or none)?
• Involve nodes and members from multiple networks in consensus mechanisms?

The answers vary. Querying the data is possible using “oracles,” gateways that can retrieve data from one trusted source and make it available to another network, while mediating trust relationships (e.g., using Chainlink). Writing data consistently is possible using centralized intermediary gateways, which is not wholly satisfying, but even then the diverse models of finality across these stacks make this challenging as deterministic finality in Fabric is not always possible in other networks. Cross-network consensus remains at the level of academic research and will not be achieved in the near term.

Pluggable Crypto Implementations

The regulatory compliance requirements in some regions (e.g., Asia, Russia and, potentially, the EU) require that blockchains align with regional crypto standards. Today this is handled by scanning Fabric implementation for all uses of specific crypto libraries and the painstaking effort to replace these with regional/country crypto standards. Making the crypto service pluggable will save a huge programming effort, and it can promote the open source technologies into a broader market. Fabric Jira FAB-5496 has been created to track this.

Auditing Capability

Finally, the issues of supporting auditing must be considered. Compared with logging, metrics and tracing, auditing is specific for business and legal regulation and compliance (used by auditors and accountants). In some projects involving Intercompany accounting and billing reconciliation, the information on the ledger related to how invoices are settled and paid feeds into financial systems that are subject to SOX-404 compliance requirements. This means that internal or external audit teams need to be able to verify the source data and the integrity of the systems that maintain it. While we provide tamper-evident block chaining capability in Fabric, we do not currently provide tools to allow a user to re-verify on-demand the cryptographic hashes linking the blocks or the validity of the digital signatures (and the current status of the certificates) attached to past transactions. In discussions with the SIs that are implementing blockchain projects for some of our customers and are also involved in audits, it became clear that having such APIs for auditing purposes would be very useful and could promote the use of blockchain in the financial departments of many enterprises. 

Summary

Enterprise blockchain is rapidly gaining adoption in many industries and for many use cases. In our experience, practical applications of blockchain in production deployments by early adopters raise a number of key considerations and challenges that have to be addressed for greater acceptance of enterprise blockchain in the mainstream. Our blockchain team and partner ecosystem is exploring a number of these topics with customers. As an active Hyperledger member, Oracle is providing recommendations and suggesting approaches to these “bleeding-edge” issues through the various working groups and the TSC. Jointly with the rest of the Hyperledger community, we continue to evolve Fabric and other Hyperledger projects to meet these requirements for the broader set of companies and other organizations who will be adopting these technologies in the coming years.

In case you missed my session at the Hyperledger Forum, or were unable to attend, you can watch the session replay of “Practical Issues in Blockchain Implementation.” 

Developers can learn more helpful tips by downloading the complimentary Oracle Blockchain Developer eBook.

About the Author

Baohua Yang, Oracle, Principal Architect, Oracle Blockchain Platform

Baohua has served the Hyperledger community as a member of the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) and co-chair of the Technical Working Group in China (TWGC) from 2017-2019. As an open-source developer, he contributes  to numbers of projects (e.g., Hyperledger, OpenStack and OpenDaylight), and is leading several (e.g., Hyperledger Cello, fabric-sdk-py). More about him can be found at yeasy.github.com.

“I was paranoid that I backed the wrong horse and I was relieved to see […] real applications going into the world.” Michael Del Castillo’s quote from his keynote panel on Blockchain in Action sums up what has gone through my head now and then during the last years.

Public presence of blockchain declined rapidly after the crypto hype. Innovations and redesigning businesses and processes just doesn’t generate as many clicks. By now, like Don Tapscott says in his speech: “Hardy anyone is talking about it [blockchain], but most people are actually doing something about it.” 

And all the participants at Hyperledger Global Forum could experience the merit of this sentence during the four days at the event. There were presentations after presentations of use cases featuring blockchain in production. Apart from the already famous TradeLens and FoodTrust, I was lucky to learn about many more cases: simplifying trading of used airplane parts (Honeywell), loyalty program (American Express), simplifying exchange of crucial information (Credit Union), reducing corruption in public procurement in Latin America or ensuring fair labor conditions in procurement of raw materials (Volvo Cars) as well as many more projects.

Exchanging experience, know-how and ideas with open-minded experts is, next to co-creating value, one of my favorite activities, and the best place for me is the Hyperledger Global Forum. And this year’s edition, once again, lived up to expectations. (Editor’s note: See Markus’ takeaways from Hyperledger Global Forum in Basel here.)

While I mostly followed the business tracks, there was also a great announcement: The Hyperledger Fabric Developer Certification! My teammates and I are looking forward to having our know-how formally confirmed.

One of the crucial and present topics was identity and while, personally, I’ve already been convinced, it was great to see that many organizations tackle this issue using the tools and frameworks from the Hyperledger family. In the workshop by Nathan George and Ken Ebert (both from Sovrin), I learned how much progress has been achieved in terms of ease of use in self-soverin identity and verifiable credentials, and so I hope to see widespread adoption soon. Being Swiss, distributed and self-sovereignty are deeply rooted in my values, so this is the technical implementation of some of my core values.

“All are welcome here.” In my opinion, the Hyperledger community remains the most open, down-to-earth and inclusive community I know. While this can be felt by anyone attending Hyperledger events or joining any of the working groups, the inclusivity was on display to all the attendees. The focus was consistent through the event, starting with the insightful diversity happy hour on the first day up to the workshop by Accenture’s Alissa Worley and Tracy Kuhrt, where I learned about my unconscious biases and how to deal with them.

The Hyperledger Forum was once again the best blockchain conference I’ve attended, and I look very much forward to the next conference.

I’ll close with the words that inspired me most during the four days of the Forum: Brian Behlendorf quoting Tim O’Reilly: ”Create More Value Than You Capture”

Oliver Johnston-Watt caught up with Don Tapscott, Blockchain Revolution author and Blockchain Research Institute co-founder, ahead of Hyperledger Global Forum, where Don will present a keynote talk. Read on to learn more about Don’s extensive history chronicling digital technology and some of the views he will bring to the stage in Phoenix:  

Oliver Johnston-Watt (OJW): Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed in advance of your keynote at the Hyperledger Global Forum. While most of us know you as the author of the Blockchain Revolution (2016), perhaps you could introduce yourself and talk a little more about the Blockchain Research Institute? 

Don Tapscott (DT): Blockchain Revolution is my sixteenth book, and the first I’ve written with my son, Alex Tapscott. All of my work, from Paradigm Shift to Wikinomics and Macrowikinomics, explores the intersection of digital technology with business and society. 

The Blockchain Research Institute (BRI) was established in 2017, a year after Blockchain Revolution was released, to provide a research foundation for enterprise and government leaders to begin exploring blockchain. We gathered a network of the world’s leading experts in a variety of fields to help create over 300 research deliverables, focused on blockchain’s applications in over a dozen different sectors.

We’ve continued expanding our offerings, though – we have released a MOOC in partnership with INSEAD and Coursera, we have put together the world’s largest enterprise-focused blockchain conference, and we are releasing a series of four books this year, the first of which is out now!

OJW: You have been travelling around the world giving keynotes about blockchain. I personally saw you speak in January at the Geneva Blockchain Congress before you travelled to Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF). Overall, do you think the market is becoming more receptive to blockchain? 

DT: I would call it “uneven and combined development.” In some sectors blockchain/DLT adoption has been rapid, but it’s been downright glacial elsewhere. On the whole, however, the enterprise community is considerably more literate than it was when Blockchain Revolution was first published back in 2016. 

From time to time, I still hear the sentiment that blockchain development has “stalled.” That particular view is deeply misinformed – we have seen a significant growth in production blockchain solutions in the past year.  The previous Internet (of Information) was targeted at the information and media industries. The disruptions were deep and spilled into other industries like retail, but relative to the Internet of Value (blockchain) they are small. 

Why so? Because blockchain targets elements of our economy and society that are more profound than information – assets – everything from money, securities, intellectual property, the data in our identities, deeds, contracts, to cultural assets and even votes.  It challenges the way that we treat valuable information and data assets that are owned too. 

OJW: You wrote for the WEF that bad PR, regulation and technological immaturity are the main obstacles to blockchain adoption. While regulation affects enterprise adoption of blockchain less than, say, cryptocurrencies, what role do software foundations, like Hyperledger, have in solving these issues? 

DT: The Hyperledger community is a core part of the ecosystem governing this historic innovation.  The organizations tackling such stewardship operate on three levels: platforms, application ecosystems, and at the broader cross-industry, societal level. Organizations like Hyperledger govern at the platform level but have proven extremely effective in promoting interoperability too, not just within their own ecosystem of DLTs but more broadly. Meanwhile, organizations like the Chamber of Digital Commerce (CDC) or the BRI provide advocacy and guidance to enable broader institutional changes. 

All of them are crucial, as I see it, in facilitating widespread adoption.

OJW: In your 2012 TED talk, you argued that the four principles of an open world are open collaboration, transparency, sharing, and empowerment through decentralisation. These principles are closely aligned with those of the open source community. Do you think that open source will prevail in the development of lasting blockchain technologies? 

DT: I think that open source is fundamental to the long-term development of this technology. Of course, above the very basic protocols and platforms there will be no shortage of proprietary applications, and that’s to be expected. Fundamentally, though, the success of a blockchain project depends on building and engaging an ecosystem of developers, which lends itself well to open source.  

OJW: Some may remember that, in the early days of the personal computer market, there were many competing offerings. Of course, very few market players survived in the long run – basically Apple and the IBM PC. Do you see a similar situation occurring with blockchain? With many different open source protocols available, will ultimately only a few survive?

DT: The specific offering changes the amount of diversity a market might accommodate, of course. If we’re talking about personal computing, it makes a big difference whether we’re discussing hardware, operating systems, or applications, for example. There’s no question we’ll see greater consolidation of blockchain platforms, but we’ll also see improved platform interoperability. Hyperledger Besu is a good example of the latter.

OJW: Whatever the outcome of the “ledger wars,” would you agree that it makes sense for enterprises to focus on smart contracts? Solidity has been around for a while, but there are now emerging open source smart contract languages such as Accord and DAML (from Digital Asset). Do you think smart contracts will follow a similar evolution to previous business model processing languages, that resulted in BPML (Business Process Modelling Language)?

DT: The areas of innovation that enterprises will, of course, change by industry, but on the whole I do think smart contracts probably have the most immediate impact on the largest number of businesses. This is especially true if your business is approaching blockchain solely as a means of reducing the manual processes involved in conducting business logic, but I think there are more fundamental transformations to work on as well. 

OJW: What role do you think organisations like the BRI and the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC) should play in developing the standards required to accelerate blockchain adoption?

DT: The BRI exists to fill the knowledge gap in blockchain and help large enterprise leaders navigate this coming revolution. I have limited knowledge about the GBBC’s work, but I know they play an important role as industry advocates and they do helpful educational work such as the platform they offered this year at Davos. Both organizations, alongside the CDC, are focused on the highest level of stewardship that I mentioned previously – broad, institutional changes to facilitate further adoption. 

The BRI has been supporting various organizations’ efforts to build standards, specifically at the platform level. My most recent research, in fact, specifically explores the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance’s Token Taxonomy Framework – which is part of a truly breakthrough initiative. 

OJW: How can we work to develop standards particularly in the regulated financial services sector? An interesting example is the partnership between Digital Asset and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) to develop a Common Domain Model (CDM)?

DT: The goal should be not just to develop those standards, but to develop the tools necessary to help innovators and companies abide by those standards. Digital Asset’s CDM reference code library is a good example of that. We should also work to provide greater certainty that solutions or products being developed indeed abide by those common standards – certification systems built into testnets, for example. 

If we don’t focus on accessibility, clarity, and certainty, then it will be far more difficult for smaller companies and innovators to abide by those standards.

OJW: Finally, we keep hearing that this is the year that blockchain becomes mainstream, how close or, for that matter, how far are we from achieving this and what could derail this ambition?

DT: There will never be a distinct moment when we realize we’ve “arrived,” and there are already many applications that have reached a level of production that could be considered “mainstream.” In general, though, it will take time to embed this technology into every facet of business and daily life because it challenges very fundamental aspects of how firms and broader industries operate.

Blockchain often forces us to reimagine the role of some very powerful and deeply integrated institutions, which are – by design – not easy to change. It will take time to get there, but compared to where we were even a few years ago, the pace of change is astounding. It’s clear now that to sit this out is to resign yourself to obscurity, and smart enterprises working hard to bring about change. 

Don Tapscott’s keynote, “The Blockchain Revolution – State of the Union,” will be on March 4, 2020, at Hyperledger Global Forum. To register, go here.

Don Tapscott is a world leading authority on the impact of technology on business and society. He authored 16 books, the most recent being the best-selling Blockchain Revolution which he co-authored with his son, Alex Tapscott, who he also co-founded the Blockchain Research Institute with in 2017. Don received an Order of Canada for his leadership in the field of business and innovation, he is a current Adjunct Professor at INSEAD and former Chancellor of Trent University, Ontario. 

Oliver Johnston-Watt is Marketing Director of Blockchain Technology Partners (BTP), a leading enterprise blockchain company.  BTP brings the benefits of smart contracts and blockchain to business by providing Sextant – a management platform that radically simplifies the deployment and ongoing management of distributed applications. Oliver is based in London and is a graduate of the University of Oxford.

The upcoming Hyperledger Global Forum, March 2-6, in my hometown of Phoenix, Arizona, provides us with an opportunity to come together face-to-face and learn what is happening in the Hyperledger community. 

With the chance to collaborate in person, we can align on how we think about fundamental questions, such as:

• How do we meet the growing need for interoperability?
• What can we do to achieve an inclusive community?
• How can we build the blockchain ecosystem?

While at Hyperledger Global Forum, here are some sessions that will help us answer the questions above.

The growing need for interoperability

Before joining Accenture this time last year, I spent two years with the Linux Foundation as a community architect for Hyperledger. With 15 different projects in the greenhouse, maintainers share a baseline understanding of each other’s work, but community collaboration tends to stay within project silos.

The thing is, multiparty systems like blockchains are a team effort. They rely on an ecosystem of people working together. To reach the technology’s full potential, we need interoperability between every person, every platform, and every project.

As a result, the dialogue in the community is shifting from “Which chain will rule them all?” to “How do I get my chain to work with yours?” The answer hinges on ecosystem collaboration. 

On Wednesday, Accenture’s Giuseppe Giordano and Peter Somogyvari’s session, “Connecting Ecosystems: Blockchain Interoperability,” will give an update on our development work and unique approach to interoperability for permissioned blockchain networks with Blockchain Integration Framework, recently open sourced to Hyperledger Labs.

Inclusive collaboration by design

If you ever attended a Hyperledger event or meeting, you have likely heard the phrase “All Are Welcome Here.” Ensuring we fulfill this commitment is table stakes, for our global community, for our code, and for the future adoption of these cutting-edge technologies. There are a number of sessions related to this important topic that will benefit each of us.

To kick off the event on Monday evening, March 2 at 6pm, Accenture is sponsoring a diversity happy hour. We will be thinking through actions we can all take to make our community more diverse and inclusive in 2020.

On Thursday, Hyperledger Marketing Committee co-chair and Accenture’s Alissa Worley and I will host a workshop on unconscious bias. With the help of VR, this immersive experience will help participants understand what unconscious bias is and how to mitigate it.

I am honored to serve alongside IBM’s Swetha Repakula as the first women on the Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee. Swetha and I will lead a session on Wednesday about how we create an inclusive Hyperledger community. We will share a number of tips about making people feel welcome and being open to contributions. These ideas apply beyond Hyperledger tools to any open source project. 

Building the ecosystem

Building the ecosystem starts before the technology choices are made. We need to make sure that we define the right governance models with our clients, our partners, and our regulators. There are a number of talks that will shed some light on how to lay a successful foundation, ranging from making the case for blockchain initiatives to governing DLT networks. 

If you are like me, you may have got into the blockchain space because of the technology’s potential for positive impact. I will be curious to hear Sheila Warren’s keynote to learn how WEF is using blockchain to change the world. 

Looking ahead

At Accenture, we see blockchain technology flourishing in three main areas: financial services, supply chain and identity.

From hosting the Hyperledger Maintainers’ Summit, contributing code, and supporting Hyperledger Global Forum as a diamond sponsor, it is great to see Accenture further our commitment to the blockchain open source ecosystem. 

I am looking forward to seeing you in March, as we learn from one another and grow the Hyperledger community. Lastly, while you are in Phoenix, you cannot miss having a bite and a beverage at Four Peaks Brewery, taking a hike at Camelback Mountain, or visiting the Heard Museum Indian Fair and Market.

• Discover and bookmark all of Accenture’s sessions at Hyperledger Global Forum by searching “Accenture,” in the program agenda.
• Visit us in the Accenture booth in the Technology Showcase. 
• Learn more about Accenture’s work at Accenture.com/blockchain

It’s 2020 and blockchain is well and truly in production. If you have any doubt, take a look at the schedule for the Hyperledger Global Forum 2020.

Whether you are a seasoned developer, business executive or relatively new to the world of enterprise blockchain, you will be well catered for in Phoenix, Arizona, from March 3-6. The conference features an exceptional range of keynotes, case studies and workshops. 

Here are a few key themes that the Hyperledger Global Forum schedule reveals about the state of blockchain in this new and exciting decade…

Self-sovereign identity (SSI) is here to stay

Self-sovereign identity technology removes the tireless friction of maintaining multiple digital identities and empowers users to control the data they share across platforms. Hyperledger Indy, Aries and Ursa provide enterprises with the tools and libraries required to create meaningful business and humanitarian solutions using this powerful technology. 

At the Hyperledger Global Forum you will learn how SSI is 

1. Reducing the cost of KYC compliance across a consortium of banks across South Africa.
2. Enabling the Province of British Columbia, Canada, to ascertain the provenance of Greenhouse Gas emitting energy resources in their efforts to modernise their energy grid and support their decarbonisation efforts.
3. Enabling non-profit Kiva and the Central Bank of Cambodia to issue digital identifications to unbanked populations, creating better opportunities for credit for traditionally underserved communities as well as helping developing economies grow and better align with the larger global economy.

Innovators are realising the value of blockchain in supply chain 

Blockchain or distributed ledger technology is arguably best described as a database architecture that enables trust between multiple parties. Verifying provenance within a supply chain is therefore one of blockchain’s most natural applications.

A wide range of Hyperledger technologies – notably Hyperledger Sawtooth – is being implemented to harden global supply chains and develop new relationships between customers, suppliers and vendors.

Learn how…

1. Unilever is leveraging Hyperledger Sawtooth to trace the provenance of pork meat so that millions of customers can scan their food packaging using a mobile app to learn the end-to-end provenance of their meat from farm to vendor.
2. Quantum Materials Corp uses Hyperledger Sawtooth and DAML smart contracts  to bring their nanoscale quantum dot technology to market to ensure absolute product identification within critical and high value supply chains.
3. Volvo is tracking the provenance of cobalt to develop a more environmentally responsible and efficient supply chain for the manufacturing of their EV batteries

Blockchain interoperability, both public and private, is evolving…

Open source technology is essential to ease systems integration and drive digital transformation. The interoperability of blockchain technologies is an important challenge that needs to be solved to unlock its full potential. 

Hyperledger technologies are principally permissioned, or private, blockchain technologies. The permissioned space has often been characterised as distinct from, and even adversarial to, public blockchain networks, such as Ethereum. 

A much anticipated panel discussion featuring representatives of ConsenSys, Microsoft and IBM will discuss how both Hyperledger and Ethereum can collaborate to achieve their common goal – the global adoption of blockchain.

Summary

This is just a sample of the sessions on offer at Hyperledger Global Forum 2020. In addition to compelling keynotes, there will be more than 50 sessions covering business and technical topics as well as case studies and demos during the first two days of the event. These are followed by two days of workshops where you can deep dive on topics of specific interest, for example, Accenture and the World Economic Forum are jointly leading a half day session aimed at business leaders to help them understand how to properly evaluate blockchain use cases for their organizations.

For more information or to register, visit the Hyperledger Global Forum 2020 website.