See how Botanical Water Technologies Ltd and Fujitsu have built a solution to the 3 trillion liters of water wasted every year using Hyperledger Fabric! read more >
Water is the most precious resource on Earth. But with more and more storms, floods, and droughts, it’s not always where we need it. The UN says 4 billion people—half the world’s population—face severe water shortages at least one month a year.
Botanical Water Technologies(BWT) from Australia found a way to recover the water usually wasted making alcohol, juice, ketchup, and sugar. BWT estimates 3 trillion liters of water are wasted this way every year. If that water were recovered, it could be reused, commercially sold or gifted to people who need it most.
The company had a working process for capturing, purifying and creating the world’s most sustainable drinking water with technology housed in shipping containers and connected up to existing systems that process fruit, vegetables, or sugar cane. The next challenge was creating a marketplace for buyers and sellers of plant-sourced water that would support three different transactions:
Sales of actual water for food, beverage and other manufacturers
Sales of “water impact credits” (WICs) to help fulfill corporate water stewardship goals
Bulk donations of water to the world’s most vulnerable people
BWT asked Fujitsu to develop a world-first: Botanical Water Exchange (BWX) that securely tracks every drop of water from producer to end consumer. That exchange is powered by the leading open-source framework for enterprise blockchains, Hyperledger Fabric.
The BWX exchange went live in the second quarter of 2022. The platform is now testing all functions and features with a selection of key partners in the U.S., Australia, and India. A standard water harvesting unit (WHU) can harvest ~460,000 liters or ~122,000 gallons per day. The BWX doesn’t only allow producers and buyers to trade. It also covers production planning, logistics planning, and value chain management. In addition, it interfaces with the WHU’s software for audit and certification purposes, tracing over 170 touchpoints and sensors per WHU.
The Hyperledger Foundation team worked with Fujitsu and BWT on a case study covering the business plan, technical requirements and implementation details. The case study also highlights plans to build out the network and expand the ecosystem, including creating a real-time wall display that quantifies the amount of water harvested and delivered, along with the positive impact made to people and the environment. The goal is to deliver water to 100 million of the world’s most vulnerable people by 2025.
The compelling network economics of centralized platforms prove an existential threat to traditional businesses. Companies that control the most powerful platforms are rewarded with exponential growth, insurmountable competitive advantage, high multiples, and access to cheap capital. Needing centralized platforms to validate counterparty identities and automate transactions, non-platform companies are often forced into business arrangements that see their business models commodified and their value chains held hostage.
Corporate support for open source collaborative efforts are, in part, a response to the centralizing tendencies of Web2. Open source blockchain technologies such as those hosted by Hyperledger Foundation promise to leverage the existing trust within corporate transaction networks by automating traceability, settlement, and audit processes. Public and private Distributed Ledger Technologies, together with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) open standards — Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs) — enable the creation of decentralized Zero Trust Networks. These networks allow companies to avoid centralized platforms when digitizing extended value chains and automating multiparty transactions while lowering the cost of trust.
Zero trust is a security model that assumes all network traffic is untrusted until proven otherwise. Organizations do not automatically trust traffic, even if it originates from a seemingly trusted source. Instead, all traffic is validated before being allowed to pass. By implementing strict access controls and continuous authentication of all entities entering the network for all transactions, zero trust:
Improves security by reducing the attack surface and minimizes the potential for data breaches
Strengthens compliance by helping organizations meet regulatory requirements and industry standards for data protection
Provides greater visibility into network traffic and activities, allowing organizations to identify and prevent potential threats
To develop and implement zero trust Web3 technologies for multiparty business processes, 35 companies joined together in early 2018 to launch MOBI, the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative, a global nonprofit smart mobility alliance of forward-thinking vehicle manufacturers (OEMs), NGOs, government agencies, financial institutions, smart city leaders, and technology companies.
Since its launch, MOBI has continued to grow its membership and to date has created and released 17 blockchain-based standards to enable a zero trust environment for multiparty applications. These standards include:
MOBI VID (2019) was the first W3C DID-compliant vehicle identity based on the internationally accepted vehicle identification number (VIN) standard
MOBI Trusted Trip (2021) applied W3C VCs and DIDs guidelines to link trusted identity and location into a verifiable trip
In 2020, MOBI began building a two-layer, member-owned and operated zero trust Web3 infrastructure (Citopia and the Integrated Trust Network, or ITN) to demonstrate MOBI Standards, enable multiparty applications interoperability, and allow entities to perform privacy-preserving, tamper-evident transactions via Self-Sovereign Identities (Digital Twins).
Figure 1: Citopia and the ITN are separated into two distinct organizations, each with its own legal structure, governance, network, and operators.
Citopia is a federated Web3 marketplace leveraging VCs (or transactions) and Zero-Knowledge (ZK) cryptography to enable any entity to verify that another entity was present at a location, completed a trip, and performed relevant activities. Citopia VCs are machine-readable, privacy-preserving verifications for business automation in a zero trust ecosystem. These transaction verifications can be performed by any ecosystem stakeholders and do not rely on centralized certificate authorities.
The ITN is the first cross-industry permissioned network where participants agree to common identity standards and shared governance. As the first Zero Trust Certificate Authority for IoT, eCommerce, and business automation, the ITN acts as a global trust anchor for digital business. It is protocol, cloud, and technology agnostic. It’s currently built on Hyperledger Fabric with a Arbitrum One (EVM compatible optimistic layer 2 rollup on Ethereum) to anchor DIDs onto Ethereum as well. Plans call for this to be a multichain network.
Using the ITN, organizations can create secure digital services that are locally highly performant while also decentralized. The ITN is backed by three global industry consortia (MOBI, MEF, AAIS).
Together, Citopia and the ITN form the foundation for a community-owned and -operated Web3 infrastructure for connected ecosystems and IoT commerce. MOBI and its members are currently focusing on a selection of foundational use cases, including:
Platform agnostic global battery passports
Using in-vehicle telematics to provide real time accident data for reports and collision repair, using Web3 technology for data privacy
Multiparty supply chain track-and-trace
Zero-knowledge proof of vehicle location
Multimodal trip planning, booking, and payment
Maintenance and recall traceability
Figure 2: Working together to enable zero trust business automation, Citopia and the ITN offer end users and providers security, privacy, speed, and control.
Although Citopia and the ITN have some similarities to other industry networks, there are important differences that will enhance the speed, privacy, security, and regulatory compliance of connected ecosystems.
First, any organization can use Citopia and the ITN services. However, membership is required to run nodes on Citopia and/or the ITN.
Second, whereas most Web3 solutions combine DIDs registry (the ITN) and transactions processing (Citopia) on the same infrastructure/company, we choose to separate them into two distinct organizations, each with its own legal structure, governance, network, and operators. This increases decentralization by reducing the market power and information advantage of any single organization. Neither Citopia nor the ITN gets such dominant network effects that users can’t switch/leave, hence neither can abuse its position, rent seek, or meaningfully change the economics of the ecosystem.
Figure 3: A closer look at how Citopia and the ITN function together.
Third, the separation permits Citopia to use any DIDs registry network following W3C DIDs standard, meaning that Citopia users aren’t locked to the ITN (and vice versa) and can use other networks.
Fourth, both Citopia and the ITN are vendor, technology, and protocol-agnostic, allowing applications interoperability and scaling of complex, cross industry, multiparty value chains.
Finally, through using Citopia and the ITN, DIDs are the only things registered and stored on chains. All personal and competitive information resides in the Self-Sovereign Digital Twin (SSDT) stored locally on the owner’s device or provider’s server and remains under the control of the owner, making the scraping and collection of data impractical, eliminating honeypots, reducing attack vectors, and improving security for all users.
Figure 4: Citopia SSDTs are designed to ensure the highest possible level of data privacy and security for users and providers while enabling seamless application interoperability.
Through Citopia and the ITN, companies have the opportunity to combine the best of both worlds — building and leveraging applications that meet enterprise security, privacy, and compliance requirements while avoiding vendor or technology lock-in. Companies can retain their brand, their business models, and their customers without paying significant economic rent to a centralized certificate authority, platform, or data monopolist. They can reap the full benefits of value chain automation and digital efficiency in a shared zero trust ecosystem where the network effects accrue to the community. More information on MOBI’s standards, Web3 infrastructure, and multiparty pilots can be found on our website.
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For more on displacing centralized platforms with zero trust networks, join Mobi’s Tram Vo and leaders from across the insurance market for a discussion about proving the efficacy and value of enterprise-level blockchain. It will cover the technical and business challenges the insurance market, like other multiparty industries, must tackle in the move to Web3.
The webinar, Measuring and Proving Enterprise-scale Blockchain Technology in the Insurance Industry, will take place on Thursday, March 30, 2023, at 1pm ET / 10am PT. To register, go here.
Hyperledger Fabric performance is a question that comes up frequently as users try to compare it to transactional databases or other blockchain platforms in terms of the maximum TPS (Transactions Per Second). Performance in a Hyperledger Fabric network is complex because in an appropriately deployed network there will be many organizations participating, each with their own hardware and networking infrastructure, along with different solution characteristics such as number of channels, chaincode implementations and policies.
Hyperledger Fabric 2.x has performance improvements over Hyperledger Fabric 1.4. Fabric 1.4 is now out of LTS and should not be used in production environments. Fabric 2.5 is the latest LTS version and includes the new peer Gateway service. When used with the new gateway SDKs, applications will demonstrate improved performance relative to applications based on the legacy SDKs.
Hyperledger Fabric documentation now has a section on Performance Considerations that can be found in the 2.5 and latest versions of the Hyperledger Fabric documentation. This content provides useful insight into helping to achieve a performant Fabric network. It doesn’t include information about certain scalability concerns such as large numbers of PDCS, channels, organizations, etc.
Performance Benchmarks
In conjunction with the new Performance Considerations documentation, the community has leveraged Hyperledger Caliper for some initial performance benchmarks for Hyperledger Fabric 2.5. This post shares the benchmark results for a sampling of Hyperledger Fabric 2.5 builds to give an example of transactions per second (TPS) achieved, based on a very specific chaincode running on dedicated hardware.
Hardware and Topology
The Hyperledger Fabric topology used was two peer Organizations (PeerOrg0, PeerOrg1) with a single peer node in each and one Ordering Service Organization (OrdererOrg0) with a single orderer service node configured for Raft. TLS was enabled for each node.
Each node had the same identical hardware
Intel(R) Xeon(R) Silver 4210 CPU @ 2.20GHz
40 Cores made up of 2 CPUs. Each CPU has 10 physical cores supporting 20 Threads in total
64Gb Samsung 2933Mhx Memory
MegaRAID Tri-Mode SAS3516 (MR9461-16i) disk controller
Intel 730 and DC S35x0/3610/3700 Series SSD attached to disk controller
Ethernet Controller X710/X557-AT 10GBASE-T
Ubuntu 20.04
The machines were all on the same switch.
Hyperledger Fabric was deployed natively to three physical machines (i.e., the native binaries were installed and executed; no container technology such as Docker or Kubernetes was used).
Hyperledger Fabric Application Configuration
LevelDB was used for the state database
Gateway Service Concurrency limit was set to 20,000
A single application channel was created and the 2 peers and orderer were joined to this channel
The application capabilities were set to V1_4 so as to use the old lifecycle deployment. All other capabilities were set to V2_0 (capability level should not impact performance).
No system channel exists only the application channel
Go chaincode without the Contract API was deployed (fixed-asset-base from hyperledger Caliper-Benchmarks)
Endorsement policy 1 Of Any was specified for the chaincode
No private data was used
Default Fabric policies and configurations (note that in 2.5 SendBufferSize now defaults to 100) excluding anything previously mentioned
No range queries or JSON queries
The network was enabled for TLS, but not mutual TLS
Load Generator
Hyperledger Caliper 0.5.0 was used as the load generator and for the report output. Caliper was bound to Fabric 2.4, which means it used the peer Gateway Service to invoke and evaluate transactions. All transactions were generated from the same organization to its gateway peer.
The load itself was defined from fixed-asset in Hyperledger Caliper-Benchmarks.
Caliper used four bare metal machines to host remote Caliper workers and also to host a single Caliper manager to generate the load on the Hyperledger Fabric Network. In order to generate enough workload on the Fabric network, we have to use multiple Caliper workers, which equate to the number of current clients connecting to the network. In the results section, the number of Caliper workers is provided.
Diagram of overall Topology
Results
These results were generated against the latest builds of Hyperledger Fabric 2.5 and utilized the default node and channel config values. Specifically the following block cutting parameters were used:
block_cut_time: 2s
block_size: 500
preferred_max_bytes: 2Mb
In order to be able to push enough workload through without hitting concurrency limits, the gateway concurrency limit was set to 20,000.
In summary the following benchmarks are presented here:
Blind write of a single key with 100 Byte Asset Size (a create asset benchmark)
Blind write of a single key with 1000 Byte Asset Size (a create asset benchmark)
Read/Write of a single key with 100 Byte Asset Size (an update asset benchmark)
Read/Write of a single key with 1000 Byte Asset Size (an update asset benchmark)
The following should also be noted
Only a single channel is used and thus the peer doesn’t utilize its full resources (as described earlier a peer can achieve more throughput if more than one channel is utlized).
The chaincode is optimized for these tests. Real world chaincode will not be as performant.
The Caliper workload generator is also optimized for pushing transactions. Real world applications will also have a client implementation generating the workload which will introduce some latency.
The Caliper workload generator is sending transactions to a single gateway peer on the same organization. Real world applications are likely to have multiple organizations sending transactions concurrently. There is the potential for higher TPS results if the workload is sent to from multiple organizations rather than just the same organization.
Utilizing the gateway service means that blocks are not received by the client (Caliper) via the delivery service to determine whether a transaction has completed, improving the performance of the client and the network compared to using the legacy node SDK.
Blind Write of a single key 100 Byte Asset Size
A Blind write is a transaction that performs a single write to a key regardless of whether that key exists and contains data. This is a Create Asset type of scenario.
Caliper test configuration:
workers: 200
fixed-tps, tps: 3000
The TPS here is the peak. Trying to push beyond this resulted in unexpected failures and a drop in overall throughput.
Blind Write of a Single Key 1000 Byte Asset Size
Caliper test configuration:
workers: 200
fixed-tps, tps: 3000
Here we see that we can achieve roughly the same throughput (i.e., the peak) but latency increases.
Read Write of a Single Key 100 Byte Asset Size
This is a test where the transaction will randomly pick an already existing key with data, read it, then modify that key. The world state was loaded with 1 million assets for this test to reduce the chance of using the same key in two concurrent transactions resulting in MVCC_READ_CONFLICT validation errors. In this example, the TPS rate was low enough and fortunate that no MVCC_READ_CONFLICT validation errors were received.
Caliper test configuration:
workers: 200
fixed-tps, tps: 2550
Note that the above results were done with an expectation of no failures. We see that the fabric network was not reaching capacity in this test as latency remains very low.
Read Write of a Single Key 1000 Byte Asset Size
The above was repeated using a 1000 byte asset size.
Caliper test configuration:
workers: 200
fixed-tps, tps: 1530
Note that the above results were done with an expectation of no failures. We see that the Fabric network was not reaching capacity in this test as latency remains very low.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Shivdeep Singh for running the Hyperledger Caliper benchmarks to get the results presented in this blog and Dave Enyeart for reviewing the content.
IPwe’s President Leann Pinto, along with Casper Labs’ Medha Parlikar and Hyperledger Foundation’s Daniela Barbosa, took to the stage at the Blockchain Hub in Davos to announce IPwe’s deployment of 25 million patent NFTs concurrently with the launch of IPwe’s Smart Intangible Asset Management (SIAM) solution.
The Use Case for Blockchain and Intellectual Property
IPwe is revolutionizing the intellectual property (IP) system using blockchain. Intangible assets represent 90% of the S&P 500’s value, but patents, a large percentage of those intangibles, are underutilized and undervalued[1]. There are approximately 25 million active patents worldwide, but the asset owners generally misunderstand their holdings, causing low utilization and commercialization rates, including financing, due to a lack of transparency and standardized asset valuation metrics that asset classes have[2]. This amounts to over $1 trillion in lost IP opportunities annually[3].
Blockchain-based technologies, specifically NFTs, allows patent data to be managed efficiently and securely by consolidating it into a single digital wrapper representing the asset. Beyond that, blockchain further enables smart contracts, meaning that when specific contractual events occur, the smart contracts directly read from the blockchain and automatically trigger a predefined reaction, making human intervention no longer necessary. Smart contracts create efficiency and transparency and enable micro-transactions, such as small-volume patent licensing deals, to be economically viable for businesses for the first time. They alleviate suffocating by transaction costs. Furthermore, trails of evidence on the blockchain safeguard that every action and smart contract automation can be audited properly.
Blockchain Meets IP: How IPwe is Changing the Game with Hybrid Casper Blockchain and Hyperledger Fabric Network
IPwe is leveraging blockchain technology to transform the IP landscape by tokenizing the majority of the world’s patents as patent NFTs, referred to as IPwe Digital Assets, representing the largest enterprise blockchain NFT deployment in history. These 25 million IPwe Digital Assets store verifiable ownership data and auditable, compliant records for each patent, allowing enterprises to confidently manage their IP in the next-generation Web3 ecosystem. Additionally, IPwe Digital Assets are populated with public data from leading patent datasets, providing IP owners with a transparent digital representation of asset ownership. With verified data about each patent stored on NFTs, transactions can happen faster than ever before because enterprises no longer have to spend weeks or months manually verifying patent data, and smart contracts will trigger the transactions automatically.
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Watch IPwe, Casper Labs, and Hyperledger Foundation announce the world’s largest enterprise blockchain deployment at the Blockchain Hub in Davos
Hybrid Casper Blockchain and Hyperledger Fabric Network
In September 2022, Casper Labs and IPwe developed and launched a dynamic NFT blockchain solution, IPwe Digital Assets. The solution uses the permissioned distributed ledger technologies of open source Hyperledger Fabric and the public Casper Blockchain to securely store verified public and private information about each patent. The integration capitalizes on the data security and trust inherent on a Hyperledger Fabric network and enables Casper to securely bring assets locked on the private ledger to the public chain.
Why A Hybrid Network Approach
A hybrid blockchain combines the capabilities of private and public blockchains, taking advantage of each. The private blockchain offers secure, permissioned data storage—an essential feature that’s particularly crucial for highly regulated industries. Meanwhile, the public blockchain brings scale and immutability, enabling a more open and transparent ledger.
To showcase the potential of a hybrid network, Casper Labs and IBM recently performed the first atomic cross-chain swap of fungible and non-fungible tokens between an instance of a Hyperledger Fabric permissioned network and the Casper Blockchain.They used a Hyperledger Lab, Weaver, to achieve the cross-chain functionality. (Weaver is now part of Hyperledger Cacti.) The result was a hybrid blockchain, uniquely equipped with the enhanced security of a consortium network running Hyperledger Fabric and the public verifiability and open market access offered by the Casper public blockchain.
The Significance of IPwe’s 25 Million Patent NFTs
Beyond just tokenizing patents, IPwe provides a solution called Smart Intangible Asset Management (SIAM), a comprehensive SaaS tool for IP valuation and management. By reading from the patents NFTs, IPwe’s advanced AI algorithms determine a benchmark value for each IPwe Digital Asset and IP portfolio, providing enterprises with unrivaled insights and enabling smarter and more informed business decisions.
One of the key benefits of IPwe Digital Assets is the ability to aggregate data for more efficient management and analysis by storing all relevant data in one location, readily accessible on the blockchain from anywhere. Typically, patent data is not kept in one central repository but is highly fractionalized across multiple public and private databases, causing enterprises to spend weeks verifying their own patent data. Another advantage of IPwe Digital Assets is data verification, as the data stored on the NFT becomes more valuable once verified. When adding data points to an IPwe Digital Asset, IPwe and other third parties confirm its level of trustworthiness, such as whether all existing “public” records show the same owner for a patent. Private asset data is also an important aspect of the NFT. IPwe’s goal is to ensure that enterprises will be able to add all current private data to their IPwe Digital Assets – not just who owns it, but who is licensing it, who is commercializing it, who is financing it. All this information can be used to confirm the asset’s true value.
Conclusion
In conclusion, using a hybrid Casper Blockchain and Hyperledger Fabric network, IPwe is deploying 25 million patent NFTs, the largest enterprise blockchain deployment in history. On top of that, IPwe’s SIAM solution allows enterprises to fully utilize these patent NFTs to transact, manage, and value their IP. This revolutionary implementation of blockchain technology will enable IPwe to bring liquidity to the IP space, where currently approximately 95% of IP assets are not transacted or commercialized[4].
Join IPwe’s upcoming webinar on February 8th to learn more about this revolutionary SaaS platform and how IPwe aims to transform the IP landscape and bring liquidity into the market by tokenizing patents as NFTs.
Everyone agrees that doing business in the EU creates a mountain of paperwork. Many forms deal with customs, duties, and taxes across the 27 EU members and with trading partners in other countries.
Filling out all these forms demands a lot of resources. And missed opportunities pile up when overloaded staff don’t claim the exemptions they’re entitled to under various trade treaties.
Take, as an example, the Long Term Supplier Declaration (LTSD), which certifies the materials and country of origin for any product or material. This form must be updated by every supplier every 24 months. More than 80% of these forms are still handled on paper, creating a huge risk of honest mistakes and deliberate fraud.
Every year, Siemens AG exchanges about 10,000 of these forms with suppliers at an estimated cost of €120 to €150 for completing each paper-based LTSD form. That means handling a single EU customs form on paper costs Siemens more than a million Euros a year.
The Digital Tax Transformation at Siemens teamed up with colleagues at Henkel to see if they could use blockchain technology to make the processes smoother, faster, more secure, and more transparent. Their aim was to
Prove that digitized tax forms save time and money
Build an open, flexible platform that can support many partners
Showcase the network to companies across the EU
They opted for Hyperledger Fabric as the platform because it is built for permissioned networks, with good security and privacy, and strong community support. It took a team of Microsoft developers in Europe just three days to build a working prototype that could handle an LTSD form on-screen instead of on paper. Right away, the benefits were obvious. Before, the complicated paper-bound process took days, if not weeks. Now, thanks to pull-down lists and tax codes, the LTSD forms never need to be printed. If both buyer and seller use the new system, a whole form can be done in minutes, with far less risk of errors or fraud.
To build out the full blockchain network, Microsoft recommended KrypC, an experienced solution provider that was already operating several other networks built with Hyperledger Fabric. KrpyC built taXchain, a very flexible network where any member can run their own node or use a managed node; write their own APIs or have those written for them; and process a small, medium, or large number of tax forms.
The LTSD form is now running on the network, linked to a database of 7,000 possible materials. APIs link the network to an SAP pilot system at Siemens. The blockchain stands ready to record and certify precise data based on each LTSD, in a tamper-proof format that government authorities and trading partners can trust.
In a huge vote of confidence for its innovative design, taXchain recently won the prestigious Taxcellence award from Handelsblatt, a renowned financial newspaper in Germany.
The Hyperledger Foundation team worked with KrypC and Siemens on a case study that details the planning and development of taXchain as well as next steps for growing the network. It also highlights the long-term opportunity to transform the traditional chore of processing B2B taxes from a cost center to a profit center.
Hello, I’m Great Umegbewe. I am currently a sophomore studying Computer Science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. During the fall of 2022, I had the chance to work on Fablo, a Hyperledger Lab, as part of the Hyperledger Mentorship Program. I was mentored by Jakub Dzikowski and Piotr Hejwowski and found the experience to be both valuable and enjoyable. This blog post will share some of my insights from this experience.
Fablo is a simple tool to generate a Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network from a config file and run it on Docker. Its main goal is to provide a super-easy start with Hyperledger Fabric. It uses a declarative approach to define components in a network, in a single file named fablo-config.json. This where users can define channels, chaincodes, organizations and engines (Docker or Kubernetes). Before I came in, only Docker was supported as an engine. I worked on adding support for Kubernetes.
Before the mentorship, I had previous experience working with Kubernetes and Bash, but none with Hyperledger Fabric. This mentorship helped me learn about Hyperledger Fabric and its components. It also taught me a whole lot about open source software and how the work of a maintainer isn’t that easy.
Hats off to Jakob Dzikowski and Piotr Hejwowski. They are really amazing maintainers and mentors.
To contribute to Fablo, I needed to learn how Fablo worked and understand Hyperledger Fabric. Again my mentors were very helpful with this.
I initially started by defining the various components on yaml’s with the images of peers, CAs, etc. This worked in one direction, but was daunting and had several problems. Luckily, Hyperledger had a Kubernetes Operator hlf-operator with a kubectl plugin that managed all aspects from the deployments, statefulsets and persistent volumes. With this abstraction what was left is to:
Write the shell scripts wrapped around the operator plugin to accommodate the required components (channels, chaincodes, CAs, peers).
Add support for Kubernetes engine in the fablo-config.
Template the shell scripts.
Create a snapshot and unit testing.
What comes next?
This has been a valuable experience. I was really challenged and my skills have improved so much. For the foreseeable future, I will continue working on Fablo and other open source projects. Big thanks to my mentors. Hopefully, I will become a maintainer for Fablo too.
Hyperledger Bevel is an automation framework for rapidly and consistently deploying production-ready DLT platforms. This mentorship project enhances Hyperledger Bevel to perform a live upgrade of a Hyperledger Fabric network from version 1.4.x to 2.2.x and provide an operations guide to perform the steps. This project uses Ansible, Kubernetes, Helm, Hashicorp Vault and Hyperledger Fabric.
My mentors for this project were Sownak Roy and Jagpreet Singh Sasan. Their support and guidance has been immensely helpful for implementation of this project.
This development work has automated the steps to upgrade the Hyperledger Fabric network, which shall increase the productivity to carry out such upgrades.
What did you learn or accomplish?
Learnings:
Before the start of this project, I had a basic understanding of setting up a Hyperledger Fabric network using Docker Compose. Hyperledger Bevel provided insights on how to automate and set up a production grade Hyperledger Fabric network on Kubernetes platform in various cloud providers.
I learned how Ansible, Helm charts and Flux are tied together for this implementation. Ansible does the automation for deployment pipeline, Helm charts are the reusable packages for Kubernetes components, and Flux implements the GitOps model so that current Hyperledger Fabric Network state is available for the operator.
Accomplishments:
My mentors validated my approach and provided feedback. I learned about multiple orderer organizations in a Hyperledger Fabric network and improved the upgrade automation for such scenarios. I was able to set up the network in a local minikube environment and will be updating the Hyperledger Bevel documentation for the same. This will provide new developers who do not have a cloud Kubernetes environment to set up and learn Hyperledger Bevel.
I worked primarily on SharePoint development during my career but last year started looking into blockchain technologies as it provides immense potential to bring trust to the internet. There are so many use cases in real-life scenarios that ultimately can be solved by these technologies
The productivity that blockchain solutions bring to the table will be a win-win solution for enterprises as well as customers. This is an evolving technology that is community driven and, being open source, provides opportunity for all to learn and contribute. This mentorship program provided me a similar opportunity and now, along with Linux Foundation certification, my work is noticed by employers. I wholeheartedly thank my mentors and Linux Foundation for this opportunity and wish to keep contributing to this ecosystem.
Study and develop chaincode and smart contracts following ERC standards.
Prototype a cross-chain bridge between Hyperledger Fabric and EVM-based blockchains. Hyperledger Technologies: Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Besu, Hyperledger Cactus.
Mentors:
Imre Kocsis, assistant professor, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Budapest, Hungary.
László Gönczy, assistant professor, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), Budapest, Hungary.
Impact yielded from work:
This work constitutes an add-on to the existing efforts to enable interoperability between permissioned networks. Moreover, we contribute to the community by developing a cross-chain bridge between Hyperledger Fabric and EVM-based blockchains using the Secure Asset Transfer Protocol (SATP), a protocol under standardization at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
What did you learn or accomplish?
Deliverables:
Create a report on blockchain interoperability solutions.
Implement a prototype of the designed cross-chain bridge solution in Hyperledger Cactus.
Develop an academic paper.
Issues overcome:
At the beginning there were a lot of unknowns: a new area, protocols, and new technology. After all, I am glad about the final product and all the lessons learned.
Lessons learned and advice:
The community is here to help. We had fruitful discussions with various members of the Hyperledger community, which proved to be valuable for the final project.
The best is always yet to come. Believe me when I say things will always be better than they are at the moment — bugs appear, and sometimes we need to take a step back to take two steps forward.
Exciting technology:
Hyperledger Fabric was considered the most adopted enterprise blockchain solution.
Hyperledger Cactus provides the building blocks for interoperability.
The integration of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) with interoperability solutions seems to be the way forward to perform identity management.
What comes next?
The addition of SSI in our work seems a good next step as a way to remove some assumptions made in the solution design.
I envision to continue working and advancing the existing interoperability research. I aim to continue contributing to Hyperledger Cactus (now Hyperledger Cacti), the Hyperledger project directed toward interoperability.
An SLA defines the services delivered by a provider to a client and the metrics for measuring those services. If the actual services received by the client do not meet the SLA guarantees promised by the provider, the agreement has been violated. In that case, the provider may owe the client a refund or whatever penalty is defined in the SLA.
The solution brief includes a high-level overview of a proposed solution for self-assessing SLAs. This proposed solution uses Hyperledger Fabric blockchain technology to tackle the gray areas of conventional SLA assessment.
This unique architecture provides a trusted and privacy-preserving network that can precisely monitor and compute SLA metrics, with full transparency for both provider and client.
Achieving effective SLA self-assessments will benefit everyone in the ecosystem by building trust, removing friction, streamlining processes, and saving costs.
The Problem: Lack of transparency
An effective SLA clearly defines all performance metrics and parameters.
But in most conventional SLAs, the provider assesses their own performance using their own tools and frameworks. The client generally has no way to see how these metrics are monitored or calculated. This increases the risk of biased results that favor the provider.
This lack of transparency means the client could well suffer from misunderstandings, missed violations, and insufficient refunds. All this undermines trust between the provider and the client.
The Solution: Using blockchain for transparent self-assessment
This solution brief proposes a novel architecture that is based on the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework and Hyperledger Fabric Private Chaincode (FPC). As shown in the figure below, the installed Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) provides secure and private monitoring, and computation of all performance metrics governed by the SLA.
Both client and provider benefit from the presented solution, which builds trust where little previously existed. More details are provided in the full white paper.
The scientific research performed on SLA Self-Assessment and applied to the telecom context adheres to work accomplished under the Pledger project.
The Hyperledger Telecom Special Interest Group would like to thank the following people who contributed to this solution brief: Nima Afraz, David Boswell, Gordon Graham, Nikolaos Kapsoulis, Antonios Litke, Alexandros Psychas, Vipin Rathi, and Theodora Varvarigou.
Hyperledger technologies are serving as the open source foundation for a rapidly growing range of production solutions and applications. Companies across Asia are putting Hyperledger technologies to work to boost trade, fight fraud, streamline financial transactions, authenticate data, verify identities and more.
As part of our spotlight on #HyperledgerAsia, we’ve collected a sampling of the many Hyperledger-powered solutions reshaping how business is done in markets across Asia. Read on for details:
Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN)
GSBN was founded by eight global shipping lines and terminal operators as a not-for-profit consortium to provide one standardized source of immutable data to all users in real-time. Built using the Oracle Blockchain Platform implementation of Hyperledger Fabric in multi-cloud deployment, GSBN supports modern and efficient global trade through data exchange. GSBN rolled out its first use case, Cargo Release, over several months, beginning in China and Southeast Asia in August 2021.After the initial deployment, GSBN gained support from terminals across the globe. Cargo Release expanded its footprint into Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in March 2022. Four months later, Cargo Release launched in Latin America, starting with ports across Mexico and Panama.
GSBN is using a permissioned blockchain with strong data governance where only authorized parties are granted the right to contribute and consume shipping related data. By leveraging immutability of the blockchain and data field level privacy through cryptography, participants in the supply chain such as Terminals, Carriers, Shippers, Freight Forwarders, Truckers, Customs and Financial Institution now also access Trade Finance and Electronic Bill of Lading applications, as well as Cargo Release, all enabled by trusted shipping data. Read the details in this case study.
marketsN
marketsN is a secure B2B platform from KoineArth built on the Oracle Blockchain Platform, which is powered by Hyperledger Fabric. It has been deployed by Hindalco Industries Ltd. (a subsidiary of the Aditya Birla Group) for monitoring the supply chain for outsourcing operations, including contract manufacturing with 25+ vendors (tollers) in a 4-tier supply chain network. marketsN enables them to see the inventory available at each vendor at any given point in time, replacing a three day manual process using Excel spreadsheets, many phone calls, and on-site visits, while avoiding the need for subsequent reconciliation since the data comes directly from the vendors. The solution also helps vendors to plan their own production based on shipment info to Hindalco clients, balance quantity, lower-tier supplier information, and other data on blockchain which allows them to better optimize their resources. They plan to also enable online invoice generation to automate the billing and payments cycle.
MDL (Medium Distributed Ledger)
Medium has developed an enterprise-type, high-performance blockchain solution, “MDL,”’ with an advanced core blockchain based on Hyperledger Fabric that can achieve speeds of up to 15,000 TPS. Its usability is maximized through the “MDL Manager,” which allows users to easily install, manage and monitor the blockchain.
MDL is currently being supplied to the Korea Expressway Corporation as a mutual settlement system for the tolls collected on the public and private highways in the country. Before the adoption of the blockchain-based mutual settlement system, there were more than 20,000 complaints a year about payment mismatches. Now, as a result of the new system, not only are data errors and omissions prevented but the processing performance of the system has increased. Settlement data, even in areas with high traffic volume, is now stably handled, reducing the amount of overpayment, manpower, and complaints.
Open Trade Blockchain (OTB)
Open Trade Blockchain is a cross-border trade documentation blockchain from Global eTrade Services (GeTS) that connects China & ASEAN economies It’s built on the Hyperledger Fabric-based Oracle Blockchain Platform and is used to provide security and visibility across all trade documents – helping to contain investment risk and facilitate growing trade with simplified verification procedures and data harmonization. Single-Windows or Single-Window Front-end Services can integrate with OTB to provide more value-added services for the local trade community.
This cross border blockchain-based trade platform has been extended to support collaboration across Taiwan, Singapore and New Zealand with the aim of improving the efficiency of cargoes under their Free Trade Agreement. For example, 3M Taiwan Ltd. reports that the cross border blockchain solution not only helps to reduce time for preparing and transmitting customs clearance documents from half a day to five minutes but has also solved documentation preparation challenges for Singapore exporters working remotely.
RAG Fraud Blockchain
The RAG Wangiri Blockchain was launched in March 2020 as a partnership of telcos and vendors created by Risk & Assurance Group (RAG) and Orillion Solutions with a common aim of reducing the number of wangiri fraud calls received by phone users. SORAMITSU recently joined the partnership and created a new Hyperledger Iroha-based infrastructure that can work with an expanded range of frauds. Renamed RAG Fraud Blockchain, this next-generation blockchain ledger serves as a fraud intelligence exchange where members that contribute data earn the right to access others’ data. The telcos that actively contribute their data will earn the right for continued free access, while other firms and organizations, including software vendors and law enforcement agencies, may pay for access or else be granted visibility of strictly limited subsets of the common ledger.
Secure Logistics Document Exchange (SLDE)
The Secure Logistics Document Exchangewas facilitated by the Government of India and the Ministry of Commerce & Industry with an aim to replace the physical exchange of trade documents with a secure digital platform for generation, storage and exchange of documents. Built using Aadhaar-based authentication mechanism and the Hyperledger Fabric-based Oracle Blockchain Platform as a secure ledger, it offers an audit trail for the title of ownership/authenticity of documents and provides end-to-end visibility on transfer of documents.
The SLDE platform, developed by CargoExchange, supports an end-to-end digital trade ecosystem that includes banks, shippers, customs, freight forwarders, and export and import companies and aims to address the issues related to physical movement of logistics related documents such as slow speed, limited transparency and lack of audit trails. Using SLDE, Axis Bank has successfully executed industry-first blockchain-enabled domestic trade transactions with ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India and Lalit Pipes & Pipes Ltd. YES BANK used the system to support a deal involving Mukka Proteins, a Mangaluru-based marine product manufacturer and exporter, and Golden Beach Line (importer), an Oman-based trading company, with the forwarding agent Shipwaves Ltd.
SnapCert
SnapCert is a blockchain-based Credential Authentication platform for universities, colleges and institutes. Offered as a SaaS platform by Snapper Future Tech, SnapCert equips education customers to issue and verify credentials on a blockchain, ensuring no fraudulent credentials can be issued in their name.
SnapCert is built on Hyperledger Fabric and interoperable with non-Oracle Hyperledger instances that may be deployed on third-party clouds. It uses cloud infrastructure and REST APIs to build powerful products. The platform issues SSI (self-sovereign identity) credentials that follow W3C’s DID (decentralized identity) and verifiable credentials standard. It is also compliant with privacy and security compliance mandates (e.g., GDPR).
SnapCert offers secure digitization, generation, authentication, sharing, and verification of any kind of academic certificate as well as digital credentials for enterprises.
Trust Your Supplier
Trust Your Supplier (TYS) is a next-generation cloud-based supplier management platform built on Hyperledger Fabric that accelerates supplier onboarding, lowers procurement operating costs, ensures global regulatory compliance, and provides real-time visibility of supply chain risk across an encrypted blockchain environment.
TYS continues to expand the solution, allowing network participants to manage and monitor their suppliers across the globe. TYS was recently deployed into China and Japan, which brings the count of countries where TYS is available in Asia to 36. Additionally, suppliers in China can work in the TYS app using Simplified Chinese.
