Hyperledger Mentorship Program Archives

Sep 29

Hyperledger Mentorship Spotlight: Cactus-samples – Business Logic Plugins for Cactus

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Cactus, Hyperledger Mentorship Program

The Hyperledger Mentorship Program is a structured hands-on learning opportunity for new developers who may otherwise lack the opportunity to gain exposure to Hyperledger open source development and entry to the technical community. These Mentorship Spotlights highlight the work done by the Mentors and the Mentees as part of their program participation. Learn more here.

Mentorship Project Title	Cactus-samples – Business Logic Plugins for Cactus
Description	To build Open Digital Asset Protocol as a business plugin of Hyperledger Cactus to standardize cross chain transaction
Status	COMPLETED
Difficulty	HIGH
Additional Details	Learning Objectives, Expected Outcomes and Project Results available here.

Final Project Video

Mentee

Tzu-Shen Wang

Texas A&M University

“Throughout this great experience, I’ve learned how to write cleaner code and develop in a test-driven fashion. Moreover, I learned the concept of blockchain interoperability and developed a standardized way to create atomic cross-chain transactions. Furthermore, I found that the Hyperledger open source community is quite friendly and people there are always willing to help. So do not hesitate to ask your questions! Lastly, big thanks to all my mentors. I would not be able to accomplish things without them.”

Mentor(s)

Peter Somogyvari

Accenture

Rafael Belchior

Técnico Lisboa

Peter Somogyvari
“Being a mentor on this project exposed me to academic paper collaboration as well as the implementation work itself. It provided me with an expanded view of possibilities for future collaborations, and I am lucky to have been a participant.

This project has also given me more information about how people interact with Hyperledger Cactus when they are new to it. This is very valuable for me as a Hyperledger Cactus maintainer given that our top priority is to grow the open source software community around the project.

Jason did an excellent job, and I hope to work with him again in the future.”

Rafael Belchior
“In this mentorship, we took a research-oriented approach to help to solve cross-jurisdiction asset transfers by building on top of Hyperledger Cactus. Jason, our mentee, excelled at understanding and implementing a real-world protocol that aims to solve such problem, the Open Digital Asset Protocol – a protocol being discussed at the Internet Engineering Task Force. This way, Jason directly contributed to the state of the art of blockchain interoperability.”

A special thanks to the Hyperledger member companies for funding this important program. To learn more about our Hyperledger Mentorship Program and how you can participate in our next cohort, head over to our program overview page on the Hyperledger wiki.

Sep 23

Love0

Hyperledger Mentorship Spotlight: Extending Solidity VM Integration in Iroha

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Mentorship Program

Mentorship Project Title	Extending Solidity VM Integration in Iroha
Description	Extend Solidity VM (from Hyperledger Burrow) integration in Hyperledger Iroha (1.x) and query pipeline
Status	COMPLETED
Difficulty	LOW
Additional Details	Learning Objectives, Expected Outcomes and Project Results available here.

Final Project Video

Mentee

Ayush Jalan

IT Roorkee

“The Hyperledger Mentorship Program was my first stint as an open source contributor, and I am very proud to complete it successfully. The whole Hyperledger community and Iroha team, especially my mentor, Grzegorz Bazior, were always there to clear my doubts and queries. I learned a lot throughout this mentorship program about Hyperledger Iroha’s architecture and its working, writing code with better readability and working in an open source community. As a beginner in the industry, I found the experience gained invaluable and a big stepping stone in my professional career. I want to thank Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation for providing me with this opportunity.”

Mentor

Grzegorz Bazior

Yonix Digital Systems

“I was invited to be a Hyperledger Iroha maintainer five months ago and then I was asked to be mentor. It was my first time being mentor of an open source project. I work as academic teacher, so I’m used to observing students learning and making progress. Being a mentor is different – we can observe progress of useful practical project from beginning until end. It takes time, but it is worth of all that effort when the project is finally completed and is great quality work.

When this project started, I was afraid that it couldn’t be completed. Fortunately Ayush managed to complete it once I guided him through how Hyperledger Iroha works.”

Sep 21

Love0

Hyperledger Mentorship Spotlight: Iroha and Cactus Integration

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Mentorship Program

Mentorship Project Title	Iroha and Cactus Integration
Description	To not only enable interoperability between different blockchains but also create a system of Iroha networks that will demonstrate the integration in examples easy to run by everybody
Status	COMPLETED
Difficulty	MEDIUM
Additional Details	Learning Objectives, Expected Outcomes and Project Results available here.

Final Project Video

Mentee

Han Xu

University of Illinois

“I designed and implemented a Cactus connector plugin to integrate Iroha and Cactus blockchains for the Hyperledger open source community. Through the mentorship project, I learned technologies including Typescript and Node.js, as well as the significance of collaboration within the open source community. I was able to apply my analytical skills, creative problem-solving, and computer science knowledge to develop innovative solutions to challenging problems. The summer mentorship corroborated my professional goal of becoming a software developer who works at the intersection of the open source community and technology.”

Mentors

Grzegorz Bazior

Yonix Digital Systems

Peter Somogyvari

Accenture

Grzegorz Bazior
“I was invited to be a Iroha Hyperledger maintainer five months ago, and then I was being asked to be mentor. It was my first time being mentor for an open source project. I work as academic teacher so I’m used to observing students learning and making progress. Being a mentor is different – we can observe progress on a useful practical project from beginning until end. It is taking time, but it is worth of all that work when the project is finally completed and is great quality.

It was great to be a co-mentor with Peter, who has much more experience with the process then I do. I’ve learned a lot from him. It was also great to work with Han, our mentee. How he works, the questions he asks and his weekly presentations were all really impressive.”

Peter Somogyvari
“Being a mentor on this project exposed me to another Hyperledger project (Iroha) as well as the implementation work itself. It was great to get to know my co-mentor, Greg, who helped carry the load and introduced me to some of the specifics of the Iroha project for which I’m grateful.

Han, our mentee, did an excellent job, and I hope to work with him again in the future.”

Sep 20

Love0

Hyperledger Mentorship Spotlight: Global Scouting of DLT / Blockchain Educational Opportunities

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Mentorship Program

Mentorship Project Title	Global Scouting of DLT / Blockchain Educational Opportunities
Description	Explore, register and map existing opportunities to learn about DLT and blockchain around the globe
Status	COMPLETED
Difficulty	MEDIUM
Additional Details	Learning Objectives, Expected Outcomes and Project Results available here.

Final Project Video

Mentee

Amit Chaudhari

DBATU Engineering University

“I’m glad I decided to work as a mentee this mentorship season. It’s really great how this community has helped me grow and learn more about blockchain and how to work with small teams and communicate effectively. We initiated a community effort within these three months, and I am very excited to see where this project goes from here.

I’m happy I got a chance to work with my amazing mentor Alfonso Govela. He was supportive, motivating, and his vision about this project is very clear. I learnt about how to handle and work with Graph databases and about the blockchain ecosystem.

Thanks everyone!”

Mentor

Alfonso Govela

Co-Founder of Hyperledger Latinoamerica

“Our current Mentorship Program is an excellent opportunity to explore new territories and bring in mentees to foster budding ideas, solve concrete issues, or create new tools for collaboration in our open-source community. However, three months seems so short. Time passes by quickly, and we want to continue at the end of the summer.

On the other hand, a top-level dialogue goes on regularly in our Hyperledger Communities. Members from all geographies, specialties, ages, and levels of experience discuss and share foundational and functional aspects of DLT/blockchain. At Hyperledger Special Interest Group, Working Groups, Labs, and Meetup Groups, knowledge grows every week. A permanent Mentorship Program would benefit us all.

Like apprenticeship at guilds, an ongoing Mentorship Program could formalize an interest in learning skills, and what better way to understand a subject than contributing to its formulation and development.”

Jul 28

Love0

Learning Materials and Development Working Group Mentorship Project: “Global Scouting for DLT / Blockchain Educational Opportunities”

By Alfonso Govela and Amit Chaudhari Blog, Hyperledger Mentorship Program, Working Group

Learning about blockchain and DLT is difficult. Overwhelming amounts of unstructured information lies scattered across the web. Plenty of efforts are wasted in isolated searches for golden nuggets. However, with proper guidance and cooperation, we can hone our skills faster and build a collective body of knowledge.

What and where to learn? Where to gather dispersed data? What structure to add to understand the content? How to expose it for public benefit? What learning paths to follow? How to align our skills with labor markets? How to support our entrepreneurial spirit? At what cost? Is financing available and inclusive? Are there scholarships?

Mass collaboration can answer these questions faster. Paraphrasing Linus Law, given enough eyes, the ocean of educational opportunities is shallow.

We want to engage and energize an active community of learners who are self-selected by their interest to understand the field and assisted by a communication mechanism and an open-source toolkit. Their collective intelligence can explore, gather, understand, structure, and share previously unorganized data, fueled by their satisfaction to contribute and build a reputation as knowledge miners.

Work is underway for this Learning Initiative at our 2021 Mentorship Program Global Scouting of DLT / Blockchain Educational Opportunities.

Timeline

Description automatically generated

We envision five core activities that shall repeat in iterative cycles:

– Community to mine knowledge.

– Surveys to gather human feedback.

– Automation to enumerate digital resources.

– Ontology and Taxonomy for cognitive search.

– Knowledge Graph for navigating the taxonomy.

At the end of this mentorship, we will have the first version of our Global Directory, a small but geographically extended working community, a basic set of tools to support collaboration, a knowledge graph to navigate the taxonomy, and a final report.

Our Call to Action starts with your answer to our survey, which is available in 10 languages. It will gather your initial feedback to get the cycles going.

Thank you.

Apr 01

Love0

Applications Open for Expanded, Paid Hyperledger Summer Mentorship Program

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Mentorship Program

The Hyperledger Summer Mentorship program is back with more opportunities than ever for hand-on skills building and experience in developing leading-edge open source blockchain technologies. Applications are now open for the fifth year of the program and, for the first time, mentees from any career stage are invited to apply for any of the 22 planned projects. These paid mentorship opportunities are open to participants from anywhere in the world.

The Hyperledger Summer Mentorship program is a hands-on, results-oriented program that starts with active developers designing and proposing mentorship projects that have real impact on advancing Hyperledger technologies. This year, the 22 projects cover a range of technologies, challenges and technical difficulty levels. The program offers both part and full-time projects tackling development challenges such as interoperability, security and scalability and addressing a mix of use cases, including in climate change, digital identity and telecom services.

“Since we kicked this program off five years ago, growing it has been a priority for Hyperledger,” said Brian Behlendorf, executive director of Hyperledger. “We believe strongly in creating opportunities for a wide spectrum of aspiring open source and blockchain developers, which is why this is a structured, paid and very hand-on program with involvement from mentors from around the world. We hope, by expanding the program to all career stages and adding a larger number of projects, we will bring even more energy to this program and our community and fuel more breakthroughs on the career and technology front.”

The developers who propose the projects serve as the mentors and work closely with their mentees on developing a project plan, setting milestones and solving problems. Mentees can expect regular evaluations and feedback as well as a stipend. For more about the program, including the schedule and stipend details, go here. To learn more about how the Hyperledger Summer Mentorship program has helped shape the career of one recent mentee, read this Developer Showcase profile of Sara Ghaemi, a member of last summer’s cohort.

All Hyperledger Summer projects must be approved by the Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee before becoming official mentorship opportunities. Read on for descriptions of some of the projects planned for this year:

Support Clique for Besu on HL Labs BAF

Hyperledger Labs Blockchain Automation Framework(BAF) is a tool to deploy different DLT platforms automatically on a given Kubernetes cluster. BAF supports multi-cloud and multi-DLT deployments, and already supports HL Fabric, HL Besu, Quorum, R3 Corda. For HL Besu, currently only IBFT2 Consensus is supported by BAF.

With this mentorship program, we want to support the Clique consensus for Besu, so that BAF can be used to deploy and operate a HL Besu network with Clique consensus. This will also include upgrading BAF to support the latest stable Besu version.

The expected outcomes of this project are:

Documented, ready-to-use Besu Clique consensus on BAF
Documented upgrade of Besu to latest stable on BAF

Documentation and Use Cases for Climate Action

The Carbon Accounting and Certification Working Group is developing an Operating System for Climate Action, which is a set of applications for obtaining and certifying data, creating tradeable tokens for emissions and offsets, and using DAO’s to coordinate collective action.

As part of this project, we’re looking for technical writers who could help both document the technologies and how they could be applied to actual use cases. We’ve started with a few ideas and would like your help refining them with actual or potential projects. We’d also like help reaching out to and interviewing potential users of the applications to get their feedback on how they could be used.

The expected outcomes of this project are:

Improved documentation of the blockchain carbon accounting applications.
Tutorials on how to develop and enhance the applications.
Use cases for the applications.

HL Iroha and HL Cactus Integration

Hyperledger Cactus is a blockchain decentralised integration tool designed to allow users to securely integrate different blockchains started by Fujitsu and Accenture. Cactus has pluggable architecture that makes it easy to integrate various blockchain by creating plugins (currently plugins for Fabric, Besu, Quorum are implemented). Cactus allows transfer not only of assets but also of data between multiple blockchains. On the other hand Iroha (version 1.x) is great with asset management, and has functionality to store data, which makes those two projects a perfect fit!

With this mentorship program we will not only allow the interoperability between different blockchains but also create a system of Iroha networks that will also demonstrate the integration in examples easy to run by everybody.

The expected outcomes of this project are:

Documented, ready-to-use integration of Iroha and Cactus
Documented example of integration between multiple (two and more) iroha’s networks with Cactus
Documented example of integration between Fabric and Iroha (Fabric plugin for Cactus is already implemented) integration

Check out the full list of mentorship projects and start your application today. The deadline to apply is May 7. The Hyperledger Summer Mentorship Program is part of the Linux Foundation’s overall commitment to mentoring. The application process is being managed through LFX Mentorship, a platform created by the Linux Foundations to train future open source leaders. Students from diverse communities are encouraged to apply. All are welcome here!

Apr 01

Love0

Developer Showcase Series: Sara Ghaemi, TELUS

By Hyperledger Blog, Developer Showcase, Hyperledger Mentorship Program

In this edition of our Developer Showcase Series, where we learn what developers in the real world are doing with Hyperledger technologies, we are spotlighting a recent graduate of the Hyperledger Summer Mentorship Program. Today, we get an update from Sara Ghaemi, Technology Specialist at TELUS and a member of last summer’s cohort. Sara presented some of her recent work on interoperability at Hyperledger Global Forum 2021 in the session A Pub-Sub Architecture to Promote Blockchain Interoperability.

Give a bit of background on what you’re working on and how you got into blockchain.

Currently, I’m a technology specialist at TELUS working on various projects. TELUS is very keen on the space of blockchain, and we are in the exploratory phase. Before joining TELUS, I was a master’s student and research assistant at the University of Alberta, working on blockchain research. When I started my master’s program, I had already been exposed to cryptocurrencies and how they work. When deciding on my research topic, I got interested in how this technology can be leveraged in use cases other than cryptocurrencies. I was also curious about the performance of distributed ledgers and the ways we can have blockchain features with higher throughput and lower latency than public blockchains such as Bitcoin.

As a result of this interest, I worked on a blockchain-based serverless computing platform called ChainFaaS, which was implemented using Hyperledger Fabric. As part of our research group, we also worked on performance analysis of distributed ledgers. After about two years of researching this topic, I got into the Hyperledger Mentorship program, which introduced me to the world of blockchain interoperability. During this program, I worked on blockchain interoperability with a focus on Hyperledger technologies.

What Hyperledger frameworks or tools are you using in your projects? Any new developments to share? Can you sum up your experience with Hyperledger?

Continuing my research as my side projects, I am currently using Hyperledger Fabric, Besu and Caliper. Given my interest in interoperability, I am also following Hyperledger Cactus closely. Very recently, I have also become interested in Hyperledger Indy for access management.

I’ve had a lot of positive experiences with Hyperledger. First and foremost is the community. During my mentorship program, I had the opportunity to get involved with the Hyperledger community in different ways. The community is very welcoming, and everyone is always there to help. There have been many instances where I was stuck on something and was able to get help from the community through chat groups. Moreover, the variety of blockchain solutions that are available in Hyperledger’s greenhouse has been a great help for me.

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

I believe blockchain interoperability is an important area to focus on. Given the momentum in the blockchain space, many different blockchain networks are introduced for various use cases. All of these networks are isolated from each other, resulting in silos of information. I believe it is crucial for the future of blockchain to have secure interoperability solutions so that even when new networks are introduced, they can work with currently running networks.

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

Blockchain is a space that is changing fast. Don’t be overwhelmed by the amount of information that is on the internet. Understand the basics first and then focus on one specific blockchain technology that interests you the most. Spend some time to fully understand that technology. When you get a good understanding of one of the blockchain networks, it will be much easier to understand the rest.

If you want to learn something in more detail, I recommend reading a few top research papers in that area. For example, I remember struggling with understanding how exactly Hyperledger Fabric works. Reading the “Hyperledger fabric: a distributed operating system for permissioned blockchains” paper gave me great insight into the details of Fabric.

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

I’m hoping that blockchain can allow users to be in charge of their own data on the internet. Instead of relying on third-parties and trusting them not to disclose their information to others, the users should be able to see and control who can access their data and information.

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

I hope to see blockchain and/or Hyperledger being used in production at a large scale.

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

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. I used to spend a lot of time trying to fix the issues that I had with my code. One of my mentors once told me to reach out to experts in the area and ask my questions. Worst case scenario, they are not going to answer.

What technology could you not live without?

Internet!

Dec 07

Love0

2020 Summer Mentorship Program: The Mentors’ Take

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Mentorship Program

The 2020 Summer Mentorship Program is drawing to an end as the last of our part-time mentees are finishing their final reports. You can read these reports and hear straight from the mentees about the work they’ve done, the lessons they’ve learned and their plans for future involvement in the open source community here.

We applaud the accomplishments and contributions of our mentees. However, their projects are all done in partnership with a committed group of mentors who dedicate a large amount of time and effort to the program. Mentors develop the project concepts and then work one-on-one with their mentees to make sure they achieve their development goals. Along the way, the mentors provide hands-on training on everything from key tools to community engagement to final presentation skills. They are shaping a new generation of developers and advancing projects that are central to the community.

Since mentor engagement and involvement are critical to the success of these programs, we’ve asked some of our mentors to share what is important, rewarding and challenging about their work with mentees.

1) What motivated you to sign on as a mentor in the Hyperledger Mentorship program?

Oracle’s Baohua Yang, mentor for Operate and govern blockchain networks in decentralized way: “The Hyperledger mentorship project is a great bridge between open source community and university students that lets them learn open source culture, technology and projects with help from community developers.”

University of Saskatchenwan’s Sara Rouhani, mentor for Towards Blockchain Interoperability with Hyperledger: “Last year, I was collaborating with Hyperledger’s summer project as a mentee. My excellent experience as a mentee and working with a dynamic team last year was the main reason that motivated me to sign as a mentor this year. Besides that, as a previous mentee, I felt my development experience would help drive the project faster and reach higher goals.”

2) What was the highlight of your mentorship project(s) this year?

Hyperledger’s Dave Huseby, mentor for four projects this year: “The biggest highlight for me this year was the response we have been getting from the proposed technical design for adding universal cryptographic signing to Git. My mentee on that project, Jimit, worked very hard at understanding the problem and potential solutions well enough that his proposal was well received by stakeholders across many large tech companies.

Wipro’s Vinod Panicker, mentor for Secure DID Registry on Github/Gitlab for Hyperledger Frameworks: “Seeding DRman as an open source project and boot strapping a Hyperledger community around it.”

3) What was the most significant growth or learning for your mentee from your perspective?

Baohua: “Learning how to handle a very complicated task. How to define a reasonable plan and finish it step by step.”

Tuxera’s Anoop Vijayan, mentor for Ease endorsement operations for Hyperledger-based products (EasyDoser) and A fully distributed citizens pulse platform for state/city councils – with Hyperledger Fabric: “The chance to be part of the full software development lifecycle right from requirements to delivery.”

4) What lesson(s) have you learned from your mentee(s) or from being a mentor?

Dave: “I always forget how much I have learned over my career in open source development and my mentees are always good at pointing out that I’m making lots of assumptions about their knowledge. Open source development is a very strange and different environment that few people have deep experience with. I enjoy being reminded I need to always be willing to start from basic first principles when mentoring a new open source developer.”

Vinod: “I realized it is possible to explain complex technology to someone who is just getting started. All it really takes is a little bit of passion and the right opportunity.”

Anoop: “The mentees are more capable than I thought, though they are students. So next time, I will have to widen the scope of the project.”

5) What have you found rewarding about being a mentor in this program?

Sara: “It helped me to develop my leadership skills and prepare me for the next chapter in my career as a Ph.D. student. The lessons that I suggested to our mentee was like a reminder to myself as well. Besides, most of the weekly meetings were like a development course for me as well. Many challenging questions were raised during those meetings, so I had to get back and study.”

Vinod: “It was a wonderful experience, and I believe this is a novel way of giving back to the open source community from which I have gained a lot personally.”

Mentorship plays a vital role in bringing new talent and diversity into the open source community. Hyperledger’s program is part of a larger, ongoing commitment to mentorship within the Linux Foundation.

Jun 10

Love4

10 Things to Know about the Hyperledger Summer Mentorship Program

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Mentorship Program

Last week, we kicked off the 2020 Hyperledger Summer Mentorship Program. This year we have a cohort of 18 mentees working on a diverse array of projects. As they join the ranks of active contributors to the Hyperledger and open source community, it’s a good moment to look at how this program actively contributes to the open source blockchain ecosystem.

Here are 10 things to know about how this program has grown in size and impact:

The Hyperledger Summer Mentorship Program is its 4th year.
With this year’s cohort, 52 mentees have been accepted into the program since its inceptions. Over 700 students have applied.
More than 70 mentors, including ones from ConsenSys, Oracle, State Street and Wipro and as well as from IEEE, the Linux Foundation and Técnico Lisboa, have designed and managed summer projects.
Mentees have participated from 20 different countries, namely Brazil, Canada, China, Cyprus, France, Hungary, Italy, India, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Taiwan and the United States.
They have contributed to 12 of the Hyperledger Projects and Labs.
Three of our mentees have become mentors.
13 mentors have participated two or more years.
20 mentees have traveled to present at Hyperledger events.
Mentees have gone on to get jobs at a range of companies, including effx, DFINITY, Facebook, Provectus, Red Hat, Salesforce, SAP, Wavestone and White Metrix, while others are pursuing advanced studies in computer science. A couple have founded their own startups.
Hyperledger is committed to growing this program:

“Hyperledger and the whole Linux Foundation are big believers in the value of mentorship in growing community and driving development and adoption of open source innovation,” said Brian Behlendorf, executive director of Hyperledger. “Our goal is to keep expanding our summer mentorship program to help ensure there is a growing and diverse development community with the skills and connections to advance their careers and enterprise blockchain. The demand for open source and blockchain developers will only accelerate from here, and we want to open as many doors as we can, especially for those from underrepresented communities.”

Mar 23

Love0

Hyperledger Summer Mentorship Program Returns with 18 Projects

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Mentorship Program

Now in its fourth year, the Hyperledger Summer Mentorship program has become a valuable on-ramp for college and graduate students looking to gain real world experience and skills in open source development, work closely with technical experts to grow their professional network and enhance their resumes with tangible project contributions.

Today, Hyperledger kicked off the 2020 Hyperledger Summer Mentorship Program by announcing the 18 projects planned for this year. Each project is an opportunity for a student to be paired with one or more mentors to take on a specific Hyperledger development or research challenge. These paid mentorship opportunities are open to students anywhere in the world and offer the chance to be active participants in developing leading-edge open source blockchain technologies.

The Hyperledger Summer Mentorship program is a hands-on, results-oriented program that starts with active developers designing and proposing mentorship projects that have real impact on advancing Hyperledger technologies. These projects must be approved by the Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee before becoming official mentorship opportunities.

The developers who propose the projects serve as the mentors and work closely with their mentees on developing a project plan, setting milestones and solving problems. Students can expect regular evaluations and feedback as well as a stipend and the chance to travel (with expenses covered) to a technical event where they will present their work to the community.

David Huseby, a member of the Hyperledger Community Architecture team, is a regular mentor in the program. He is enthused by the high impact work done each summer and the role mentorship plays in individual careers and the overall growth of open source development. “The Hyperledger mentorship program is a fast paced and challenging opportunity to work at the cutting edge of blockchain technology as well as gain experience as a contributor to our global open source community,” says Huseby.

Students who want to know more about the program should check out these recaps from last summer’s mentees: Part I and Part II. For more about the application process, go here. The deadline to apply is April 24.

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

Adding Network Fuzzing Capabilities to Hyperledger Umbra

Hyperledger Umbra is a Hyperledger Lab designed to run unmodified versions of our DLT platforms (e.g., Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Iroha) under a simulated environment with software defined networking for the purposes of running experiments (e.g., scaling experiments, consensus algorithm development, etc.) and security audits. Currently Hyperledger Umbra can run unmodified Hyperledger Fabric Docker images and execute a full Fabric network under simulation. Umbra is written in Python and has code for doing virtual network switches and connections. This project is to extend that code to allow for network fuzzing capabilities. The goal is to be able to introduce packet drops, packet delay, packet reordering, as well as unsolicited packets with random/known-bad data. The purpose it be able to test Hyperledger Fabric’s resilience to general network “weather” and intentional attacks coming from the network.

The expected outcomes of this project include:

Hyperledger Umbra gains the capability to manipulate packet transit and the injection of packets either as part of the configuration setup or as an external API that 3rd party tools can call into. If an API is to be created, an SDK and demonstration application is to be created that shows how to use the API through the SDK.
A presentation on the use of this new capability to run network fuzzing operations against Fabric.

Create K8 / Openshift Operators for Besu

Hyperledger Besu is an Ethereum client written in Java. Operators are a method of packaging, deploying, and managing a Kubernetes or an OpenShift application. This project aims for the mentee to design, build and test operators for Project Besu. The code to this will then become part of the Besu project and added to the code repository.

The expected outcomes of this project are:

Provide the ability to deploy, manage and run the Hyperledger Besu containers.
A presentation on the use of this new capability and what it took to the work done.

Rework Data Model Tests of HL Iroha

One of the major current trends of Iroha development is modularization and decoupling. However, there are some base concepts that will persist, such as the data model. Iroha has a set of commands and queries that are extensively covered by tests. But, as we approached the data model decoupling, we found these tests unnecessarily too tightly bound to existing code, rather than only using proper interfaces.

The expected outcome of this project is a reworked set of data model tests that is decoupled from current implementation and will provide us a great help in having pluggable data model modules.

We have already created a replacement test framework and reworked several commands and queries tests with it. But there is more to do in this direction. So, in this project, the mentee will have complete and functional examples of the work that needs to be done, and guidance from a mentor about the architecture and rationale of the changes.

Check out the full list of mentorship projects and start your application today.

The Hyperledger Summer Mentorship Program is part of the Linux Foundation’s overall commitment to mentoring. The application process is being managed through Community Bridge, a platform created by the Linux Foundations to empower open source developers – and the individuals and organizations who support them – to advance sustainability, security, and diversity in open source technology. Students from diverse communities are encouraged to apply. All are welcome here!