Hyperledger Sawtooth Archives

Feb 02

Once Again, Forbes “Blockchain 50” Shows Enterprise Blockchain’s Footprint and Impact, with Hyperledger Technologies Leading The Pack

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Grid, Hyperledger Indy, Hyperledger Sawtooth

Declaring that blockchain has “gone mainstream,” Forbes today released its 2021 “Blockchain 50,” featuring companies that have at least $1 billion in revenues or are valued at $1 billion or more and “lead in employing distributed ledger technology.” And, once again, half of the companies on the list are using Hyperledger technology.

Twenty five companies on the list name at least one Hyperledger technology as part of their solution platform. Hyperledger Fabric, specifically, is cited as a platform by 24 of the companies, topping the list as the most widely used technology. Hyperledger Aries, Indy, Grid and Sawtooth are all also deployed by companies on this list.

The annual list, now in its third year, reflects the growing global impact of blockchain technology with 25 members from the U.S., 13 from Europe and a record 12 from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. All in all, there were 21 companies that were new to the list, and 15 of them, including ones from Australia (BHP), India (Tech Mahindra) and Africa (Sappi), use Hyperledger-based platforms.

Of the 12 companies that have made the list every year, six (Ant Group, Cargill, DTCC, IBM, ING and Walmart) use Hyperledger technologies.

More than just a basic list of companies and technologies, the Forbes Blockchain 50 provides a snapshot of the market-changing deployments these blockchain leaders have deployed. Accompanying stories add even more analysis and context.

This annual look at the market is a good reflection point for the traction our technologies have in the current market but also a guidepost to what needs to come next. The increasing global adoption of blockchain – public, private, hybrid – and coming shifts in currency adoption and payments as well as uptake in markets as diverse as mining, telecom, pharma and shipping all point to the growing reach of distributed ledger technology. And, in the face of such challenges as the pandemic, climate change and income equality, it is important to put the focus on what we can accomplish building on blockchain as a cornerstone.

Dec 22

Love0

Blockchain for the greater good: a round-up of #HyperledgerSocialImpact solutions

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth

While blockchain is taking an increasingly strategic role across a number of industries, one of its biggest areas of impact is powering applications that address the greater social good. Blockchain-based solutions are bringing new scope and scale to social impact efforts around the world.

Read on for details about a sampling of #HyperledgerSocialImpact solutions where Hyperledger platforms are unpinning innovative new approaches to solving very hard and human problems:

Fair Fashion

The Brazilian textile industry represents 10% of the nation’s industrial GDP, and it is also the second-largest employer in the country. Despite its importance, fashion is ranked second as the industry with most cases of forced labor or conditions similar to slavery.

As an effort to fight this problem, in recent years, brands and manufacturers in the textile industry have been auditing production sites. Because of the lack of integration between the actors of this production chain, auditings is still very inefficient, as it involves high costs and offers a vast scope of error.

To solve these problems and reverse this scenario, Blockforce – a Brazilian blockchain researcher and builder and general member of Hyperledger – in partnership with C&A Foundation, Instituto E and COPPEAD-UFRJ, developed a blockchain-based solution called Fair Fashion. Designed using the Hyperledger Fabric framework, this solution promotes visibility and accountability in the fashion supply chain, with the goal of improving working conditions and the efficiency of processes in the production chain.

QMC HealthID

Quantum Materials Corp (QMC) in San Marcos, Texas, has created a mobile app called QMC HealthID, which is seeking to enable people to return to the workforce by providing Covid-19 test credentials without compromising their personal privacy data protection rights. This is achieved by partnering with verified test partners who store the user’s diagnosis in QMC’s HIPAA compliant database. From a compliance perspective, QMC HealthID records all its interactions on a blockchain, providing regulators with an immutable audit trail. QMC is leveraging Hyperledger Sawtooth, which is deployed and managed by Sextant, the blockchain management platform provided by Blockchain Technology Partners (BTP), a Hyperledger member.

Silver Lining Initiative

Over 100 million people around the world will go to sleep tonight without a roof over their heads. Fortunately, technology companies are in the middle of a full-fledged technological revolution that is changing the way we deliver healthcare and social services. A prime example: the Silver Linings Initiative, the world’s first blockchain-based digital identity and marketplace solution designed specifically to empower and connect those experiencing homelessness. Envisioned by Troon Technologies, the Silver Linings Initiative aims to combat two of the biggest challenges experienced by the homeless population:

1. Identity verification and acquisition of government identification;

2. Access to, and awareness of, social support services.

This is managed through a proprietary software application that combines a user-friendly UX with the power of the blockchain to create a safe, secure, and trustworthy system of social support.

Trusted Voices

The exponential growth of fake content and disinformation represents a major trust gap, and points out inherent design issues in the architecture of the Internet that need to be addressed if we wish to safeguard trust and the legitimacy of information resources. Penta Network, which focuses on using distributed ledgers for data related problems in multi-stakeholder ecosystems, is tackling this challenge with Trusted Voices.

Trusted Voices is based on Hyperledger Fabric and other blockchain technologies to provision a chain of custody for information and media assets. Trusted Voices makes it possible to demonstrate the authentication of digital content at time of original publication and subsequently track it across digital platforms, including social media. A robust chain of custody enables consumers to track content and trace information assets back to their authors and origins. Content traceability offers a powerful tool to combat the proliferation of inaccurate or unauthorized content, while concurrently protecting the intellectual property rights of the authors. There are broad opportunities for this technology: from flagging and removing fake news and disinformation to collaborative networks based on shared content.

Verified.Me: Data and Digital for Good

Veriﬁed.Me is the product of collaboration between a variety of industry players working together to build a solution that respects and protects citizens’ personal information for the beneﬁt and betterment of all. By taking a multi-participant ecosystem approach, Veriﬁed.Me raises the bar against bad actors thereby helping to mitigate fraud and improve the digital lives of its users. Verified.Me is built on top of blockchain based on the Linux Foundation’s open source Hyperledger Fabric.

Join the conversation about solutions and applications that address the greater social good with #HyperledgerSocialImpact this month on social channels. Or get involved with the Social Impact Special Interest Group.

Cover image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

Nov 30

Love0

#HyperledgerAsia: Hyperledger-powered production solutions making an impact across Asia now

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

Enterprise blockchain has a global reach, and Hyperledger has a very active and innovative international community. This month, we are spotlighting solutions members have put into production through Asia that are transforming everything from digital payments and bond exchanges to supply chain, telecom, healthcare and security systems.

Read on for details about a range of #HyperledgerAsia solutions that are making an impact in markets across Asia now:

Bakong

National Bank of Cambodia officially launched Bakong — a multi-stakeholder system that enables instant and final transactions using digital Cambodian Riel (KHR) or United States Dollars (USD). Co-developed by the National Bank of Cambodia and Japanese/Swiss fintech company SORAMITSU based on Hyperledger Iroha, it is built to handle the needs of numerous banks and 17 million consumers.

BondEvalue BondbloX Bond Exchange

BondEvalue has been approved as a Recognised Market Operator (RMO) by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). It operates BondbloX Bond Exchange (BBX), the world’s first blockchain-based bond exchange to bring trading of a wide range of fixed-income securities to the mass market across the region.

BondEvalue officially graduated from the MAS’ regulatory sandbox on October 1, 2020. The move means that BondEvalue has successfully concluded proof of technology and business model. It is now no longer bound by restrictions such as limits on trading volume and disclosures specific to the sandbox model.

BBX allows for bonds to be traded in smaller sizes of US$1,000 unlike typical bond trades of at least US$200,000. This leads to better access and better diversification opportunities for a market that is typically inaccessible except to more wealthy investors.

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

dltledgers’ “plug-and-play” platform for cross-border trade and supply chain digitization

The current trade finance system is in dire need of an upgrade. Today’s operations between all involved parties are complex, costly, labor intensive, and inefficient. Also, in the aftermath of the global pandemic, it has become even more critical to shift entirely from a paper-heavy, manual business to digital.

dltledgers used Hyperledger Fabric to create the world’s leading “plug-and-play” platform for cross-border trade and supply chain digitization. All parties’ digital trades in the supply chain are recorded on the platform, providing banks the ability to go paperless and process payments seamlessly for LC issuance and trade finance quickly.

Currently, #dltledgers processes $100 – $150 million in trade finance per month, involving about 400 traders in which 20+ are large enterprises. About 45+ banks have joined the network to facilitate trade financing with prominent names such as ANZ, ADCB, DBS and TDB. To date, #dltledgers has processed more than S$3.2 billion in trade finance via its blockchain platform.

Hala System’s Sentry

Hala Systems is using Hyperledger Fabric alongside Hedera as part of its Sentry early warning system, which helps protect 2M+ people in Syria. Hala Systems uses both Hyperledger Fabric and Hedera to manage the metadata of user inputted and created media produced in conflict. The hashed metadata is simultaneously written to a private blockchain built on an IBM Blockchain Platform powered by Hyperledger Fabric and to Hedera Consensus Service. Hala Systems uses the IBM Blockchain Platform to act as its internal repository, preserving additional metadata to augment the auditable hash data sent to Hedera Consensus Service. With these two sets of records, any 3rd party can verify the information on the public ledger to match the image and, if necessary, its accompanying data stored on the private ledger.

MediConCen’s Blockchain Medical Ecosystem

Named as the Winner of Hong Kong’s “2020 Digital Disruptor” at the IDC Digital Transformation Awards (DXa) 2020, MediConCen simplifies medical insurance claims for medical community, insurers, and general customers using Hyperledger blockchain.

Traditional insurance systems require insured customers to present their physical card at the clinic, mail-in their medical receipts and claims for approval, followed by complicated administrative duties and time-consuming settlement procedures that many detest. Built on Hyperledger Fabric, MediConCen’s solution is the first blockchain medical ecosystem in Hong Kong, aimed at liberalizing the walled network to enhance the expected medical coverage, as well as greatly relieving clerical duties.

By automating the claim process through digital signatures and smart contracts, patients simply display their unique QR code for clinics to scan, thus revealing the corresponding plan and medical service they would provide. Offering efficiency and transparency to all parties involved with a complete and unique set of general ledgers and encrypting data of personal information to eliminate risks of leakage under the application of blockchain technology. This platform currently connects 200+ medical providers and 200,000+ medical insurance clients in Hong Kong.

Tech Mahindra’s plug-n-play solution to curb spam calls

By 2018, the spam call situation had grown grim in India, a country with more than 1 billion active mobile subscribers, causing bad customer experience and propagating of fake news and financial scams. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) acknowledged UCC (Unsolicited Commercial Communication) or spam calls were a major nuisance to telecom subscribers across the country and a growing menace that needed to be tackled with immediate effect. Though TRAI had established a “Do Not Disturb” (DND) list in 2010 with more than 230 million subscribers on it, unregistered telemarketers continue to spam customers, obtaining their consent through fraudulent and questionable tactics. Through various internal and external assessments, DLT was selected as the underlying technology to curb the menace.

Tech Mahindra developed a plug-n-play solution, built on Hyperledger Fabric, to mitigate the problem. With the solution successfully deployed across three major telcos in India, Tech Mahindra has access to >50% market. This solution has potential to have a global impact. Tech Mahindra has already reached out to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the U.S. market and is exploring opportunities to socialize it with U.S.-based telcos to address the pain points of robo-calling and caller ID spoofing are key pain areas that can be addressed by our solution.

May 28

Love5

Interoperability and Integration Developments in the Hyperledger Community

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Cactus, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Grid, Hyperledger Indy, Hyperledger Sawtooth

Interoperability and integration are top of mind issues across the blockchain space right now. From new projects to new solutions, the Hyperledger community is taking on the challenges of cross-chain and cross application communication and data flow.

Here are some of the most recent #HyperledgerInterop developments from across the community.

New Project – Hyperledger Cactus

The newly announced Hyperledger Cactus is a blockchain integration tool designed to allow users to securely integrate different blockchains. This pluggable architecture helps enable the execution of ledger operations across multiple blockchain ledgers, including Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Fabric, Corda, and Quorum available today, with the aim of developers continually adding support for new blockchains in the future.

Cactus started as a Hyperledger Labs project six months ago and has attracted significant attention and become a locus of collaboration between developers from teams at Accenture and Fujitsu, and dozens of others working on DLT platforms both inside and outside Hyperledger.

Member applications

DAML, the open source smart contract language created by Digital Asset, enables application portability across three major Hyperledger frameworks: Besu, Fabric and Sawtooth. Blockchain Technology Partner’s Sextant for DAML supports both Hyperledger Besu and Sawtooth, as well as Amazon QLDB and Aurora cloud databases, allowing the same distributed application to be easily deployed across all four platforms. Hear more about the “Write Once, Interoperate Anywhere” approach in this presentation on how DAML smart contracts connect networks, especially Hyperledger Besu, Fabric and Sawtooth.

Hyperchain Labs created an oil and gas ticketing blockchain network to help companies reduce costs, improve performance and maintain compliance. The network is built using the Hyperledger Fabric framework and is run on the IBM Blockchain Platform. BlocWatch software is used to ensure the Hyperchain Labs network is running optimally and securely. As a monitoring and security tool, BlocWatch seamlessly integrates with Hyperchain Labs and IBM, empowering users to easily manage all platforms in one place. Explore how Hyperchain Labs uses BlocWatch in conjunction with the IBM Blockchain Platform in this short video.

Smart Block Laboratory built the Hyperledger Fabric-powered distributed register Cryptoenter, blockchain infrastructure for digital banking that unites banks into a single digital space for transmitting financial messages and brings a new level of interaction to the financial market. The platform is designed for p2p interaction between consumers of financial services, safe execution of payment transactions with cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies, user interaction within a social network for investors / distributed crowdfunding platform.
The basis of the platform is the Rubicon Blockchain, a cloud platform for the blockchain economy, built on Hyperledger Fabric. Cryptoenter has a dual security system: at the Hyperledger blockchain network level and at the Rubicon Blockchain (also based on Hyperledger Fabric) network level. The solution uses an SRP authentication system. TLS (transport layer security) protocol based on SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol is also included. This dual security system allows Cryptoenter to authenticate the person who signed the message, control message integrity, protect the message from fakes and prove the authorship of the person who signed the message.

Technical talks from Hyperledger Global Forum

Nathan George from the Sovrin Foundation offers his take on “Standards and Interoperability for Identity”

Identity platforms have made significant advances leveraging blockchain technology and standards developed at Hyperledger. In his talk, Nathan covers the latest in trusted information flows and the standards being incubated to promote interoperability and create network effects across multiple blockchains and identity platforms.

Key topics include the advancements incubated in Hyperledger Indy, Hyperledger Aries, the W3C Credentials Community Group and at the Decentralized Identity Foundation for Verifiable Credentials, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), DID Communications, Identity Hubs, Authentication, and the data models that power them.

Panelists Rich Meszaros and Sarah Banks from Accenture, Melanie Nuce from GS1 US, David Cecchi for Cargill and Patrick Erichsen from Target discuss “Business Interoperability – The Key to Supply Chain Traceability”

Technology such as blockchain has the power to solve complex challenges and achieve improved supply chain traceability. In order to tap into this powerful technology, interoperability, enabled by robust data and transaction standards, are a must! Segments of the supply chain, such as the food industry, have made significant progress leveraging data standards to support food safety and product transparency use cases. The panelists discuss their companies’ work on improved supply chain traceability, the importance of standards and the role business interoperability plays in accelerating the success of new technologies like blockchain.

Join the conversation about blockchain-based identity technologies and solutions with #HyperledgerInterop this month on social channels.

Cover image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Apr 30

Love5

Identity Applications in Action & Powered by Hyperledger

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Indy, Hyperledger Sawtooth

Digital identity is gaining a lot of traction as a driver for blockchain adoption. There is growing recognition across many markets that reshaping how digital information is managed and verified can simultaneously increase online trust and privacy. The Hyperledger community is working hard to develop and deploy blockchain-enabled identity technologies and solutions with an eye towards decentralizing control of information and creating new models for verifying identities.

To illustrate where this technology can take us, we are showcasing some applications where it’s already being put into action:

Known Traveller Digital Identity

Known Traveller Digital Identity, or KTDI, is a World Economic Forum initiative with Accenture that brings together a global consortium of individuals, governments, authorities and the travel industry to enhance security in world travel. The pilot leverages cryptography, blockchain technology and biometrics and aims to allow cross-border travel without presenting physical documents, accelerating the flow of passengers through airports, improving passenger experience, and enabling authorities to better focus limited resources on security improvements.

QDX™ HealthID platform

QDX™ HealthID platform is a service from Quantum Materials Corp that leverages self-sovereign identity technology to provide end-to-end visibility to support testing and immunization for infectious diseases, including COVID-19, at scale. The platform enables multiple methods of authenticating the individuals being tested, those who are administering the test, as well as the test kits themselves, whether to detect the presence of the virus itself or associated antibodies.

The QDX™ HealthID platform uses Hyperledger Sawtooth as the backing distributed ledger technology, which is deployed and managed using Blockchain Technology Partner’s platform Sextant for Sawtooth. The platform is also readied for integration with other distributed ledger applications via DAML, the smart contract language open sourced by Hyperledger member, Digital Asset.

MemberPass™

Provided by CULedger, MemberPass^TM is a digital credential held by credit union members that protects credit unions and their members from identity theft and fraud in all banking interactions, from call center authentication to lending to new account opening. MemberPass is a simple, secure replacement for user IDs and passwords, and supplants the traditional knowledge-based interrogation contact centers employ today to authenticate members calling for telephone banking services. MemberPass seamlessly authenticates both, the member and the credit union to each other, in any call-in, log-in or walk-in exchange, providing a consistent, frictionless experience across all channels.

Sovrin Network

Operated by independent Stewards, the Sovrin Network uses the power of a distributed ledger to give every person, organization, and thing the ability to own and control their own permanent digital identity. With recent advancements in digital identity standards, Sovrin provides a secure and private network for identity holders to collect, manage and share their own verifiable digital credentials.

The Sovrin Network is governed by The Sovrin Foundation, a nonprofit organization established to administer the Governance Framework for this open source decentralized global public network enabling self-sovereign identity on the internet.

Trust Your Supplier

Trust Your Supplier is a production Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network, running on the IBM Blockchain Platform, that provides suppliers with a trusted digital passport to streamline on-boarding with their customers.

The Trust Your Supplier network is a cross-industry source of supplier information and identity helping to simplify and accelerate the on-boarding and lifecycle management process. TYS was built to be a cross-industry blockchain network to facilitate procurement functions within an organization. The network’s first use case is focused on supplier onboarding and validation.

VerifiedMe

Verified.Me is a service offered by SecureKey Technologies Inc., in conjunction with a consortium of seven of Canada’s major financial institutions – BMO, CIBC, Desjardins, National Bank of Canada, RBC, Scotiabank and TD. Verified.Me is a privacy-respecting digital identity and attribute sharing network. The service simplifies identity verification processes by allowing individuals (subjects) to share identity and attribute information from trusted sources (including financial institutions, mobile operators, credit bureau, and government) with the services that they wish to access.

The network is based on permissioned distributed ledgers operated by the consortium. It is built using the IBM Blockchain Platform which is based on Linux Foundation’s open source Hyperledger Fabric and is aligning with W3C decentralized identity standards, to enable interoperability with other networks. SecureKey’s Triple Blind® approach means that no network participant alone, including SecureKey, can have a complete view of the user journey – the subject can’t be tracked.

The service is free for consumers to use, either using their web browser, or by downloading the mobile app through the App Store (iOS) or Google Play (Android).

Join the conversation about blockchain-based identity technologies and solutions with #HyperledgerIdentity this month on social channels. Also, Hyperledger has an Identity Working Group that is open to all. Learn how to get involved via this video.

Coverage image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Oct 31

Love2

Announcing Sawtooth PBFT 1.0

By Logan Seeley, Bitwise IO Blog, Hyperledger Sawtooth

The Sawtooth community is excited to announce the official release of Sawtooth PBFT 1.0 along with the Hyperledger Sawtooth 1.2 release. PBFT 1.0 is the result of substantial engineering effort from Bitwise IO and Cargill to provide a fast and practical consensus algorithm for consortium-style Sawtooth networks.

An earlier blog post, Introduction to Sawtooth PBFT, presented the details of the consensus algorithm. The next post, Sawtooth PBFT, Part 2: Extensions and Changes, described the enhancements that made the algorithm more efficient and easier to implement for Sawtooth. Now, we’d like to describe the advantages of Sawtooth PBFT and give practical tips for how and when to use PBFT consensus.

What Makes PBFT Different?

Those familiar with Sawtooth already know about the Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) consensus algorithm, a lottery-style (Nakamoto) algorithm that is designed for large, open-enrollment blockchain networks. Until now, PoET was the only production-ready consensus option for Sawtooth. While PoET is useful for certain kinds of networks, it isn’t a universal solution. In particular, PoET is not well suited for smaller networks because of its slower performance.

To make Sawtooth a more versatile blockchain platform, we introduced the dynamic consensus interface in Sawtooth 1.1, which provides a new consensus API that simplifies the process of adding new consensus algorithms. We started with Raft, a simple leader-based consensus algorithm designed for small networks. Raft provided a consensus type that we didn’t have with PoET, but because Raft isn’t Byzantine fault tolerant (BFT), it wasn’t a complete solution.

This is where Sawtooth PBFT comes in. PBFT has properties that make it well suited for small networks — it’s leader-based, non-forking, and fast. It also provides the safety and liveness guarantees that are necessary for operating a blockchain network with adversarial trust. This makes PBFT an excellent option for most consortium-style networks. Consortium networks are small (typically 5-20 nodes), have controlled membership (only administrators can add and remove nodes), and typically require finality (non-forking behavior). Once a block is committed, it is committed forever, which eliminates any uncertainty about the permanence of state.

How Well Does PBFT Work?

Sawtooth PBFT works very well! We’ve tested it extensively for safety, reliability, and performance. The code includes a large number of unit tests that validate PBFT’s functionality, and we’ve run a number of long-running PBFT networks to work out the kinks.

How does PBFT Perform?

Part of the extensive testing of PBFT was determining how well it performs. A full Sawtooth network consisting of 10 “m5.large” AWS instances running with PBFT consensus performed 2.5x faster than the same network running with PoET consensus.

Exact results may vary depending on factors like system resources and network size, but the big picture is pretty clear: PBFT can provide a big performance boost compared to PoET.

When Should I Use PBFT?

The short answer is that PBFT should be considered the first choice for small to medium Sawtooth networks that do not require open enrollment. If your use case requires a large network (more than 20 nodes, for instance) or open enrollment, PoET may be a better choice because it is designed to perform well with many nodes and is less strict about membership in the network. But, in general, we recommend using PBFT because of its finality and performance advantages for most networks.

How Do I Use PBFT?

Sawtooth PBFT is easy to configure and use. We designed Sawtooth’s dynamic consensus interface to make choosing consensus simple. The Sawtooth 1.2 documentation includes instructions for setting up a Sawtooth network with PBFT using Docker and Kubernetes, which are designed for application development environments and Proof of Concept evaluations. For production networks and do-it-yourself developers, there’s also a procedure for setting up a Sawtooth network on Ubuntu.

See For Yourself

Sawtooth PBFT is an exciting new addition to the Hyperledger Sawtooth ecosystem. If you’d like to learn more:

Check out the source code on GitHub to see how PBFT is implemented
Read the Sawtooth PBFT documentation to learn how PBFT works and how it can be configured
Ask questions in the #sawtooth-consensus-dev channel on Hyperledger Chat

About the Author

Logan Seeley is a Software Engineer at Bitwise IO. He has been a part of the Hyperledger Sawtooth community since May 2018, working in a variety of areas including consensus, Hyperledger Sawtooth, and Hyperledger Transact.

Oct 17

Love0

Announcing Hyperledger Sawtooth 1.2

By the Hyperledger Sawtooth Team Blog, Hyperledger Sawtooth

Today, we are pleased to announce that Hyperledger Sawtooth release 1.2 is available! Since the 1.1 release, Sawtooth has continued to grow in capability, diversity, and adoption, thanks to the involvement of many organizations and open source community members. The release of Sawtooth 1.2 shows that growth with the active contribution of features and improvements by an engaged community of developers.

The latest version of Sawtooth provides exciting new benefits — namely, full support for the PBFT consensus engine and for mobile application development with new SDKs for iOS and Android.

Additionally, this release contains transaction family compatibility with Sawtooth Sabre, enhanced performance & stability, improved documentation, better support for consensus algorithms, and overall platform refinements for a better developer experience.

PBFT 1.0 Consensus in Sawtooth

The dynamic consensus interface, introduced in Sawtooth 1.1, allows for easy integration with consensus engines that meet a variety of use cases. Sawtooth 1.1 included support for PoET, PBFT, and Raft consensus. Now, Sawtooth PBFT 1.0 is the preferred consensus for small-to-medium networks — it’s leader-based, non-forking, and fast. PBFT also provides the safety and liveness guarantees that are necessary for operating a blockchain network with adversarial trust. This makes PBFT an excellent option for smaller consortium-style networks.

Complete procedures are provided for configuring PBFT consensus on a Sawtooth node and network. For more information, see Creating a Sawtooth Test Network in the Application Developer’s Guide or Setting Up a Sawtooth Network in the System Administrator’s Guide.

Mobile Support in Sawtooth

Release 1.2 ushers in support for mobile development in Sawtooth with the inclusion of a new Swift SDK for iOS and improved Java SDK for Android. New tutorials and SDK reference documentation for Swift and Java help developers write native mobile client applications for Sawtooth.

Transaction Family Compatibility with Sabre

All core transaction families are now compatible with Sawtooth Sabre release 0.4.0, a WebAssembly smart contract engine for Hyperledger Sawtooth. This compatibility is a major step towards allowing the default transaction families to be managed as on-chain smart contracts.

Improved Documentation

We are making strong efforts to support developers by continuing to improve the content and quality of Sawtooth documentation. In this release, you will find Swift and Java tutorials, procedures for configuring a consensus engine, and improved summaries of the supported consensus algorithms for PBFT, PoET, Raft, and Devmode. There are also numerous technical corrections, bug fixes, and general improvements throughout the documentation.

Refinements

This release includes a number of refinements designed to improve performance & stability, allow quicker builds, enhance support for consensus algorithms, and provide development options such as access to raw transaction headers through a new API. For details, see the Release 1.2 (Chime) release notes.

Try Hyperledger Sawtooth 1.2 Today!

Sawtooth version 1.2 is available now, so there’s no need to wait. To get your hands on it, use the links below. If you are new to Sawtooth and would like to get involved, take a look at the community links.

See the Sawtooth website to learn more about Hyperledger Sawtooth.
Try out Sawtooth using the Ubuntu, Docker, or Kubernetes procedures in the Sawtooth documentation.
Find the code on Github in sawtooth-core and related repositories.
Join the ongoing community discussions at the #sawtooth channel on Hyperledger Chat and on the Hyperledger Sawtooth mailing list.

About the Hyperledger Sawtooth Team

Hyperledger Sawtooth 1.2 is the result of the collaboration and dedication of many people. Significant contributions were provided by Cargill, Bitwise IO, Intel, and others. Special thanks to Peter Schwarz, Darian Plumb, Anne Chenette, Shawn Amundson, Ryan Beck-Buysse, Richard Berg, Arun S M, Logan Seeley, Andrea Gunderson, Shannyn Telander, and Eloá França Verona.

Oct 14

Love0

Spotlighting Supply Chain Use Cases

By Hyperledger Blog, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth

It’s #HyperledgerSupplyChain month so we wanted to spotlight some of the exciting ways Hyperledger technologies are improving traceability, adding efficiencies and building trust in supply chains around the world.

The role of open source enterprise blockchain is well laid out by Target as a mechanism for “ensuring multiparty trust across enterprises doing business together” in this article about the benefits of the technology.

To help boost the #HyperledgerSupplyChain conversation, below are some noteworthy use cases. Chime in on social with your own examples of Hyperledger powering supply chain solutions.

Walmart’s use of Hyperledger Fabric to track food for better safety: When an outbreak of a food-borne disease happens, it can take days, if not weeks, to find its source. Better traceability could help save lives by allowing companies to act faster and protect the livelihoods of farmers by only discarding produce from the affected farms. Using a system powered by Hyperledger Fabric, Walmart can now trace the origin of over 25 products from five different suppliers. The company plans to roll out the system to more products and categories in the near future.

ScanTrust’s use of Hyperledger Sawtooth to bring transparency to the supply chain: To help their client Cambio Coffee bring more transparency to their ethical trade business, ScanTrust used Hyperledger Sawtooth to build a blockchain-enabled traceability function to enhance its supply chain application. Cambio Coffee implemented ScanTrust’s unique QR codes on their packs in May 2018 to an enthusiastic response from customers. Currently, the roaster and the delivery company enter data onto the blockchain. Future plans call for the roll out the feature to the shipping company and, eventually the farmers, to cover the whole supply chain. Customers are also interested in using the platform other blockchain-supported initiatives, like “Tip your farmer.”

Circulor’s first-ever mine-to-manufacturer traceability of a conflict mineral with Hyperledger Fabric: The African country of Rwanda is the world’s biggest supplier of tantalum: a rare mineral used to make capacitors found in devices like smartphones and laptops. To prove beyond doubt that every bag of tantalum ore from Rwanda was mined, transported, and processed under OECD-approved conditions, without any child or slave labor, Circulor created a Hyperledger Fabric-based system to trace tantalum from three mines and an ore-sorting facility in Rwanda. The system is designed to slash the high cost for compliance, satisfy regulators, reassure consumers, and build revenues for Rwanda.

To see the full line up of supply chain use cases in the Hyperledger Blockchain Showcase, head here. If you have a Hyperledger-powered supply chain project you’d like to see on this list, please submit it.

We also have an active community for those interested in participating and contributing to supply chain solutions. The Hyperledger Supply Chain Special Interest Group (SIG) represents a global membership of logistics and supply chain professionals united in advancing the state of the supply chain industry through the implementation of enterprise-grade solutions based on Hyperledger technologies.

Oct 01

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All The Farms: An agricultural supply chain story

By Jim Cupples, cofounder at Terrapin Data, Inc, creators of All The Farms Blog, Hyperledger Sawtooth

“Where are the local farms around me, what are they growing, and how can I buy their stuff?”

Those are pretty much the questions that my team and I were interested in answering, and we felt that, if we were wondering these things, so were others. That simple question (or string of them) is also what led us to joining the Hyperledger community and building our product in Hyperledger Sawtooth.

To answer the “farms question” we needed to 1) collect accurate information on farm and ranch locations, 2) build a database with this data, and 3) create an interface that allows people to answer these questions. With these three tasks in mind, we created All The Farms.

Fortunately, my cofounder, Chris Styles, and I had experience with collecting and standardizing data, as well as building APIs and tools to share this information. (Previously, I had cofounded the political database Run For Office, and Chris had led projects like Vuhaus). We still needed help to share the engineering load and provide UX/UI (thanks Szabi and Whitney), but we were able to fill those gaps with people who were equally as passionate about helping people connect with their local food economy. It’s been very personally gratifying to work on this site/database, and we will continue to work on improving it – because it’s a passion of ours.

So, why blockchain for this project? Well, our interest was kicked into gear last September by the IBM/Walmart announcement of their adoption of the Global Food Trust blockchain platform. As we thought about our role in this ecosystem – as a provider of data for local food options – we saw a changing landscape in logistics and traceability. We also recognised the importance of finding the right format for sharing the data we were collecting.

Adding the task of applying our data in a blockchain was daunting, but we were able to recruit an experienced blockchain developer to head up that effort. This is an area where being a smaller company has its advantages – no one expects you to have money, so you can hire with equity. Over the summer, we were fortunate to bring along someone who wanted this project, and our entire team has been able to learn about Hyperledger along with him. (Hi, Dan.)

Participating in something that creates greater transparency in the food system is what drives our team. We see the food consumer as being at a classic disadvantage due to the informational asymmetry in the food chain. Essentially, the consumer has less knowledge than just about everyone else in their transaction.

We were heartened to see Intel and Oregon State University collaborating on a traceability project for Oregon blueberries using Hyperledger Sawtooth. The fact of the matter is that Intel has a big presence in Oregon and at OSU, so it was easy for us to connect directly with people on this project. They gave us valuable feedback on our plans to put the data we were collecting into blockchain.

The logistical applications for blockchain are well known and important, but we also saw lateral applications of the technology that could help farms outside of traceability. One use case we are working on is using the value in blockchain for farm/ranch compliance record keeping.This application helps all the farms, not just the ones with the budgets for the full scale traceability use case. We also feel that producers can benefit from blockchain applications for Water Rights and have found a solid use case for tracking industrial hemp seed. Both of those projects we have underway with Oregon State University.

Most of our team has a personal and professional background with farms. Many come from farming families. Others have worked with state agencies in agriculture and ranching. Some have both of those experiences. I think that this type of understanding has allowed a flexibility in our thinking about blockchain and has led us to consider other projects that we feel can be widely beneficial for our farming communities.

What we want the Hyperledger community to know is that our data in Hyperledger Sawtooth is the starting point for other projects. It is meant to be used by logistics companies and institutional buyers that are looking to source locally. It is meant to have applications that help farmers and ranchers consolidate their records for compliance purposes. It is meant to connect our Hyperledger community directly with the real food producers and to figure out ways that we can best work together.

Lastly, climate change: it is real and the way we currently eat emits too many greenhouse gases and degrades our soil as well. A key piece of our work in data collection is identifying farms that use regenerative farming practices. We hope you use the regenerative agriculture filter for your personal shopping, and we also hope you’ll consider putting your technology skills towards a solution with regenerative agriculture. We invite you to collaborate with us and other like-minded allies in our Hyperledger community.

Jim Cupples is a cofounder at Terrapin Data, Inc. which has launched All The Farms. The All The Farms blockchain, built on Hyperledger Sawtooth, is a permissioned blockchain. Please contact jim@allthefarms.com if you are interested in access or have comments or questions.

Sep 19

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2019 Summer Mentee Project Update: Developing Explorer Capabilities for Hyperledger Sawtooth

By Vlad Bormisov Blog, Hyperledger Sawtooth, Hyperledger Summer Mentorship Program

Blockchain itself is, first of all, a back-end technology. That produces a lack of transparency: one can’t see a list of transactions, blocks and signers’ public keys without use of CLI or some node’s API. Both ways usually only let you see raw data with no handy navigation. That’s why there’s often an explorer for certain blockchains.

My project was to develop a Hyperledger Sawtooth explorer. I wanted not only to allow users to explore the blockchain data provided by the API through a nice graphical interface, but also to add some extra features to enhance Hyperledger Sawtooth transparency even more.

To build this app, I used the stack I’m most familiar with: Express.js with MongoDB for the back end and Vue.js with Vuetify for the front end. The main algorithm behind my explorer’s work can be described as this:

1. On launch, back end requests the node of an address that was put to an environment variable. The request is to subscribe for standard Sawtooth events: state-delta and block-commit. In that request, it asks node to send back all events that occurred after the last one known to it. On first launch this means all events.

2. Back end parses all events and saves received data in Mongo.

3. Back end also provides an API for the front end to fetch this data from the database.

4. Front end fetches all the needed data and shows it in according places also providing navigation between transactions/blocks/signers an so on.

As for the general impact of my project, I really hope it would make Hyperledger Sawtooth more transparent both for those who already are in Hyperledger community and for those who are yet to consider choosing Sawtooth as a tool for their projects.

The most vivid impression I have after working on a project related to Hyperledger Sawtooth is the responsiveness of the community members. Some issues I encountered took literally days to solve until I asked a question in Sawtooth RocketChat. That’s my advice for other new members of the community – do not hesitate to ask. If you’re polite, you’ll most probably get a helpful answer.

To sum up, I’d like to say that I was really happy to take part in this internship. It opened the world of open source to me and allowed to really improve as a developer. For that I’d like to thank Hyperledger and my mentors Andrew Backer and Ricardo Garcia from a company called ScanTrust. In short, they provide consumer-oriented businesses with smart blockchain-secure QR codes to stick on every selling piece to enable buyers to see whether this single item was produced, where it’s said to be or it is a counterfeit. If you are a business and looking for such kind of software, go check them out.

Thanks for reading! Find out more about my project here.