Hyperledger Archives – Hyperledger Foundation

Jun 16

Developer showcase series: Dr. Yunxi Zhang, Accenture

By Hyperledger Blog, Developer Showcase, Hyperledger Aries

Back to our Developer Showcase Series to learn what developers in the real world are doing with Hyperledger technologies. Next up is Dr. Yunxi Zhang, Tech Architecture Delivery Associate Manager at Accenture.

回到我们的开发者展示系列，让我们了解现实世界中的开发者如何使用超级账本技术。这次为我们分享的是来自埃森哲的技术架构师助理经理：张赟熹博士 (Dr. Yunxi Zhang)。

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

I’ve been working on a number of blockchain projects across various blockchain platforms for diverse business cases since I joined Accenture. I am fascinated by the core blockchain technology, which was invented as a main technical product of bitcoin. I look forward to helping our clients better understand how blockchain could potentially shift their businesses to be more productive. My main motivation for working with blockchain is to help clients leverage this technology to achieve their goals.

问：您好，张博士！您可以介绍一下您的工作背景以及您是如何加入区块链领域的：

自加入埃森哲后，我已经参与了很多个和区块链相关的项目。基于每个项目有其独特的业务，我们会选用不同的区块链平台。区块链作为比特币的一个主要的技术产品，我深深被其吸引。同时，我也期待使用区块链来帮助我们的客户更好地理解如何可以使用这项技术帮助转型他们现有的业务，使其更富有成效。达成这些愿景成为了我在区块链这个领域工作的主要动力。

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

Hyperledger Aries is currently the main framework I’m working on in my project. I’ve used Hyperledger Fabric in earlier projects as well.

We’ve successfully built up a demo by using Hyperledger Aries to demonstrate how Self-Sovereign Identity credentials could help simplify an entire process from credentials issuance, presentation and verification to make a business process more efficient and productive.

Overall, I’ve found the documentation of Hyperledger Aries to be always evolving to include the up-to-date key design principles as well as both technical and business benefits. For Aries, there are even online courses available that introduce the big picture first. If people would like to know more low-level details, there is abundant documentation available in the repo. It’s common for the documentation to be a bit behind the technology. To deal with this challenge, the open community is very responsive to new joiners, listening to us patiently and reacting to any questions and issues raised. This helped me delve into Aries in a short period of time. Once I have a very good understanding of how the technology works, I’m glad I can contribute back to Aries in different aspects.

问：您在项目中使用了哪些超级账本的框架或工具？有什么新进展可以跟大家分享吗？您能总结一下您使用超级账本技术的经验吗？

Hyperledger Aries是我目前项目中主要使用的框架。除此之外，我之前的项目中也曾使用过Fabric。通过使用Aries，我们成功地搭建了一个演示用以验证如何通过使用用户自主身份凭证来简化凭证生成，凭证提交以及凭证验证，使得整个业务流程更富有成效。总体来说，我发现Aries的文档始终保持持续更新的状态，及时发布最新的技术信息，关键设计原则以及业务效益。Aries甚至提供了网上课程，介绍了Aries的整体情况。同时，Aries的代码库中提供海量的细节信息。文档的滞后性是常态，为了解决这个问题，Aries的开放社区对于新加入成员提出的问题给予及时的回复，耐心聆听我们的意见。这使得我在很短的时间内理解Aries。当我对Aries有足够的理解后，我很高兴可以以各种方式回馈于Aries。

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

Hyperledger Foundation should focus on providing updates on how the more mature Hyperledger technologies are being leveraged in different production environments. Any technical architecture design examples could be shared in each repo to help boost the technical architects and developers to try them, so we can reuse these designs, help improve them and contribute back to them. This could facilitate the pace of the adoption for each Hyperledger technology even more.

问：您认为超级账本基金会今年重点应该聚焦在哪方面？

Hyperledger Foundation应该更关注于更新每个Hyperledger技术的成熟程度，它们如何应用于生产环境中。任何的的架构设计的案例可以共享于代码库中，这样，技术架构师和开发人员可以直接尝试并进行改进，并回馈于每个技术。这样也许可以更有效地加速Hyperledger技术的应用。

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

Hyperledger technologies are built upon the basic concept of how blockchain works, but they each implement it in its own ways to provision enough flexibility for different use cases. The nature of blockchain is very complex as it is comprised of different areas of technologies such as cryptography and distributed systems. It would always be beneficial to developers to grasp this foundational knowledge prior to starting to use Hyperledger technologies.

问：您会给其他有兴趣开始使用区块链的技术人员或开发人员提供什么建议？

Hyperledger的技术是构建在区块链的基础概念之上，但是它们各自有自己的实现方式，这样使得他们能更灵活地应用于不同的用户场景中。区块链是复杂的，因为它包含了很多不同的技术，比如加密学，分布式系统等等。对于程序员来说，理解和掌握这些底层的知识对于使用Hyperledger的技术是非常有益的。

As Hyperledger’s projects continue to mature, what do you see as the most interesting technologies, apps, or use cases coming out as a result?

I see use cases related to decentralized Identity and self-sovereign identity being some of the most interesting and popular business areas in the future. Hyperledger Aries and Hyperledger Indy are already contributing to making this happen more easily.

问：随着超级账本项目的不断成熟，您认为由此产生的最有趣的技术、应用程序或用例是什么？

我发现目前一些比较流行的商业领域，他们的用例已经关注了去中心化身份以及用户自主身份，并且会在今后变得越来越流行。Hyperledger Aries和Indy在这些领域里起到了关键的作用，使得应用变得越来越简便。

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

Due to blockchain’s innate intricacy, the application of it is not always straight forward. Even developers or architects with many years of experience find it a challenge to design and use blockchain within the underlying infrastructure and system architecture around them. So, to have a PaaS service of blockchain (not only including the underlying blockchain network, but common architecture on top of it) to quickly enable technicians to use them quickly could further boost its application in all aspects.

问：您希望区块链能解决的一个问题或者一件事情是什么？

由于区块链其先天的复杂性，对于即使有多年经验的程序员和工程师来说，搭建底层的基础设施和系统架构也不是那么容易的。所以，建设一个以平台为服务的区块链服务（不仅限于底层的区块链网络，包括上层的通用架构）使得技术人员迅速使用它们，也许会加速区块链在各个方面的应用。

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

Having achieved a much lower learning curve for technicians.

问：您希望看到超级账本和/或者区块链在五年后将呈现出什么发展情况？

进一步降低技术人员的学习和使用门槛。

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

Get your hands dirty with the technology. The more you play with it, the better you will be at using it.

问：您收到的最好的开发人员建议是什么？

动手使用技术，你玩得越多，你就会越擅长使用它。

What technology could you not live without?

Internet

问：您觉得生活中哪些技术是必不可少的？

因特网

May 31

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Hyperledger Ursa code review

By IDLab Blog, Hyperledger Ursa, Identity

(Le français suit l’anglais)

Hyperledger Ursa is a shared cryptographic library used to avoid duplicating cryptographic related code. The library is an opt-in repository (for Hyperledger and non Hyperledger projects) to place and use crypto.

Broad deployment of digital identity will depend on strong security to deliver the high levels of assurance required in many consumer transactions with their governments, their financial institutions, and other trusted organisations.

Leading advancements in decentralized identity, several originating in Canada, rely on the Hyperledger family of technologies. As such, Hyperledger Ursa is a central component depended upon to provide the security overlay for decentralized identity.

Rooted in a “trust but verify” mindset, several Canadian public sector entities and Interac (Canada’s interbank network) sponsored a project at the Digital Identity Laboratory of Canada (IDLab) to perform a security and cryptography code review of Hyperledger Ursa (full report is available here).

Those commissioning this project deemed it important to have an arms-length third party assessment of this foundational component of the Hyperledger family to understand the risks (if any) being assumed with the deployment and use of Hyperledger-base technology in the domain of decentralized identity.

Overview of Hyperledger Ursa library code review scope:

A code review that examined:

Entry points
Coding standards
Data storage and transfer
APIs and their security
Third party library usage
Programming language issue
Logic flaws

Cryptography best practices including examination of:

Cryptography and key management
Entropy
Best practice cryptography usage

The review did not include an assessment of the cryptographic algorithms foundation themselves, or their suitability. Examination was limited to assessment of sound implementation within Ursa.

Following the code review and the findings documented, the IDLab team worked closely with key Ursa contributors and the Hyperledger Foundation community to review and assess results. As a result, a number of enhancements were identified to address report findings.

Ultimately, the exercise concluded that Ursa provides a solid security footing for projects dependent on the Hyperledger family of technologies applicable to digital identity.

Review findings summary:

In general, the review noted a few relatively minor security defects, some implementation guidance, and some general observations for library improvement.

These can be briefly described as follows:

Minor build issues
Cautions to consider when building, primarily with third party libraries or integrations
Minor issues related to lack of support for message augmentation
Minor issues related to subgroup validation
An issue related to public key validation

For those interested in the full report, please have a look here. You can also learn more by viewing this webinar:

If you have any questions about Hyperledger Ursa, you can engage with the community on the Hyperledger Foundation’s Discord server for Ursa. If you want to learn more about IDLab, please visit www.idlab.org.

Revue de code Hyperledger Ursa

Hyperledger Ursa est une librairie cryptographique partagée utilisée pour éviter la duplication du code lié à la cryptographie. La librairie est un répertoire opt-in (pour les projets Hyperledger et ceux qui ne le sont pas) pour placer et utiliser la cryptographie.

Le déploiement à grande échelle de l’identité numérique dépendra d’une forte sécurité afin de fournir les niveaux d’assurance élevés requis dans de nombreuses transactions des consommateurs avec leurs gouvernements, leurs institutions financières et d’autres organisations de confiance.

Les principales avancées en matière d’identité décentralisée, dont plusieurs proviennent du Canada, reposent sur la famille de technologies Hyperledger. En tant que tel, Hyperledger Ursa est un composant central sur lequel on compte pour fournir la couche de sécurité pour l’identité décentralisée.

Dans un esprit «de confiance et de vérification» (en anglais, trust but verify), plusieurs entités du secteur public canadien et Interac (le réseau interbancaire du Canada) ont parrainé un projet au Laboratoire d’identité numérique du Canada (IDLab) pour effectuer une revue de code de sécurité et de cryptographie d’Hyperledger Ursa (le rapport complet est disponible ici, en anglais seulement).

Les initiateurs de ce projet ont estimé qu’il était important d’avoir une évaluation indépendante par un tiers de ce composant fondamental de la famille Hyperledger pour comprendre les risques (s’il y en a) assumés avec le déploiement et l’utilisation de la technologie basée sur Hyperledger dans le domaine de l’identité décentralisée.

Aperçu de la portée de la revue de code de la librairie Hyperledger Ursa :

Une revue de code qui a examiné :
- Les points d’entrée
- Les standards de programmation
- Stockage et transfert de données
- Les interfaces API et leur sécurité
- Utilisation de librairies de tiers
- Problèmes de langage de programmation
- Défauts de logique
Les meilleures pratiques en matière de cryptographie, y compris l’examen :
- De la cryptographie et la gestion des clés
- De l’entropie
- Des meilleures pratiques en matière d’utilisation de la cryptographie

L’examen n’a pas inclus une évaluation de la fondation des algorithmes cryptographiques eux-mêmes, ni de leur aptitude. L’examen s’est limité à l’évaluation de la bonne mise en place dans Ursa.

Après l’examen du code et la documentation des résultats, l’équipe d’IDLab a travaillé en étroite collaboration avec les principaux contributeurs d’Ursa et les membres de la communauté de l’Hyperledger Foundation pour examiner et évaluer les résultats. En conséquence, un certain nombre d’améliorations ont été identifiées pour répondre aux conclusions du rapport.

Ultimement, l’exercice a conclu qu’Ursa fournit une base de sécurité solide pour les projets qui dépendent de la famille de technologies Hyperledger applicables à l’identité numérique.

Résumé des conclusions de l’examen :

En général, l’examen a relevé quelques défauts de sécurité relativement mineurs, quelques conseils de mise en place, et quelques observations générales pour l’amélioration de la librairie.

Celles-ci peuvent être brièvement décrites comme suit :

Problèmes mineurs de construction
Précautions à prendre lors de la construction, principalement avec des librairies ou des intégrations de tiers
Problèmes mineurs liés à l’absence de prise en charge de l’augmentation des messages
Problèmes mineurs liés à la validation des sous-groupes
Un problème lié à la validation des clés publiques

Pour ceux qui souhaitent consulter le rapport complet, veuillez cliquer ici. Vous pouvez également en savoir plus en visionnant le webinaire ci-dessus (en anglais).

Si vous avez des questions sur Hyperledger Ursa, vous pouvez vous adresser à la communauté sur le serveur «Discord server for Ursa». Si vous souhaitez en savoir plus sur IDLab, veuillez consulter le site www.idlab.org.

May 31

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Hyperledger Launches New Supply Chain Special Interest Group

By Hyperledger Blog, Special Interest Group

Hyperledger has launched its sixth cross-industry Special Interest Group (SIG), the Hyperledger Supply Chain SIG, to facilitate focused technical and business-level conversations related to appropriate use cases for blockchain technology across Supply Chain management. The new group will cover a broad range of topics, including logistics, provenance, authentication, track-n-trace, related IoT utilization, and similar inter-related areas of interest. SIG participants will also contribute requirements to Hyperledger’s supply chain project, Grid. Hyperledger Grid intends to provide reference implementations of supply chain-centric data types, data models, and smart contract based business logic – all anchored on existing, open standards and industry best practices.

The distributed ledger of blockchain is already enhancing collaboration among shippers, carriers, and forwarders as well as producers and manufacturers, who themselves represent every industry imaginable. Blockchain is taking on a growing role in ensuring reliable tracking of goods in Logistics and Supply Chain and has the potential to help reduce delays caused by manual, often “paper-based” cross-border, settlement, tracking, and regulatory processes.

There are many challenges to overcome before blockchain elements like DLT and smart contracts can be deployed widely in the logistics and supply chain industry. According to DHL’s research, “Likely the biggest challenge will be achieving successful industry adoption through collaboration and even co-opetition between diverse Logistics and Supply Chain stakeholders that have legacy processes and varying interests.”

The new Hyperledger Supply Chain SIG, led by chair Jay Chugh, Senior Director, Oracle Cloud, and vice chair Joshua Q. Satten, Senior Director of Blockchain (North America), Wipro Limited, is designed to address some of these challenges by bringing the collective wisdom of the community in a vendor-neutral, open source manner, using the various available components of the overall Hyperledger open-source blockchain framework.

This SIG will serve as a platform for the community to share knowledge and build collaborative efforts, learning from each other’s experiences, successes, and challenges. The potential for blockchain in Logistics and Supply Chain will be predicated by moving from concepts and pilot applications to viable deployable solutions, built on lessons learned via open collaboration.

“Blockchain is a game changer for Supply Chain transparency and efficiency. Hyperledger’s Supply Chain SIG aims to harness the collective wisdom of experts in blockchain and supply chain to collaboratively bridge the gap between real world and theory, and advance the adoption of Hyperledger blockchain in supply chain.” – Sarabjeet (Jay) Chugh, Senior Director, Oracle Blockchain, and SC-SIG Chair

The Hyperledger Supply Chain Special Interest Group

The Hyperledger Supply Chain Special Interest Group (SC-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 technology solutions utilizing the Hyperledger greenhouse of business blockchain frameworks and tools.

The activities of the Supply Chain SIG will include:

Identifying related reference architectures (for example business and integration architecture, technical and infrastructure architecture), frameworks such as Hyperledger Grid, and models (OSI), use cases, current pilots and proofs of concept, and production case studies;
Sharing stories of successes, failures, opportunities and challenges;
Exploring and addressing cross-cutting architectural principles, options and decisions like performance and scalability, security, identity management and privacy, and identity in logistic contexts;
Identifying existing or needed common critical software, middleware, and hardware components that would serve the particular needs of supply chain.
Working towards proposing solutions to the problems identified;
Identifying conferences or other opportunities to connect face to face, as well as submit talks or present as a group at an event;
Identifying the business community and building an inclusive platform for early adopters to contribute with their experiences;
Identifying all different protocols across supply chain to build standardization across the different parties and efforts; and
Supply Chain best practices, awareness of and working in accordance with such rules as customs & import export regulations.

“Addressing distributed & decentralized frameworks for enterprise and cross-industry Supply Chain management is a truly unique need that will be addressed through this new Hyperledger SIG. What makes this special is the confluence of players coming together to advance standardization and adoption including those from transportation, logistics, and major companies from just about every major industry you could think of; whether you’re in consumer goods, technology, aviation, commodities, or just about any other non-virtual business, a company’s supply chain is something that exists as the core of both of its current profitability and its future desired operating model.” – Joshua Q. Satten, Senior Director of Blockchain (North America), Wipro Limited, and SC-SIG Vice Chair

How to get involved in Hyperledger Special Interest Groups

SIGs gather community members from an industry segment to work on domain-specific problems and create an environment for open discussion, document co-creation and solution proposals. SIGs help specific vertical markets in their efforts to address problems specific to that particular community. Hyperledger now has six SIGs, including ones focused on healthcare, telecom and social impact.

Participation in any SIG is open to everyone in the community. Each group has an open e-mail list, a Chat channel, and a wiki page. Live meetings are also held regularly via web teleconference. When needed, a task force can also be created within the SIG and have working sessions to discuss specific work items.

If you’re interested in joining the Supply Chain SIG, please subscribe to the mailing list and join the Chat channel where meeting details will be announced. You also can visit https://wiki.hyperledger.org/display/SCSIG or find a list of other community meetings on the Hyperledger Community calendar. We look forward to your participation and contributions!