Tag: Christopher Ferris
IBM deepens its commitment to open source Hyperledger Fabric
June 15, 2021 June 15, 2021 PCIS Support Team Leave a comment
IBM is deepening its contributions to Hyperledger Fabric. It is providing code which it (IBM) says makes it easier to develop and deploy blockchain solutions for business.
Per Kareem Yusuf, the IBM General Manager, AI Applications and Blockchain: "We know that many customers working with open-source need extended support, and we will continue to provide access to our expertise through our services business, which continues to grow.
"We are also announcing an entirely new Hyperledger Fabric support offering, which will include access to IBM Certified Images, Code Security Scans, Break/Fix Level 3 Support and 24/7 customer support. This offering will be available in the fall through the Red Hat Marketplace and will offer the same level of Fabric support that previously was only available to our IBM Blockchain Platform customers.
"We are also donating the code that supports token exchanges on Hyperledger Fabric, Fabric Token SDK, as well as support for DLT Interoperability."
Hyperledger Fabric
Hyperledger Fabric is the open-source project from the Linux Foundation. Its attraction is it is a modular blockchain framework for enterprise blockchain platforms. Intended as a foundation for developing enterprise-grade applications and industry solutions, its architecture exploits plug-and-play components so as to accommodate a wide range of use cases.
To date, there are more than 100K contributing organizations and more than 15K engineer contributors working together. As such Hyperledger Fabric can be said to offer an approach to consensus which:
facilitates performance at an enterprise scale
preserves the data privacy that enterprises demand.
The IBM Blockchain Platform Console/Fabric Operation Console contribution
Most enterprises need tools for network management and governance. Such tools enable them to build and scale blockchain networks quickly – and to manage governance.
Part of the IBM contribution is the underlying code for the IBM Blockchain Platform Console. IBM expects this to become part of what is now the Fabric Operations Console. This Fabric Operations Console:
allows different platforms to integrate with a Hyperledger Fabric network
enhances standardisation
improves ease of use of the platform.
Enterprise Times: what does this mean
It is not easy to determine the significance of this IBM donation. On the one hand, IBM is contributing both knowledge and capability in an area where enterprises value greater capabilities. On the other hand, it is hard to assess whether the Fabric Operations Console will become anything of great use.
More interesting to Enterprise Times is the IBM "code that supports token exchanges on Hyperledger Fabric, Fabric Token SDK, as well as support for DLT Interoperability". But there is no detail and this interoperability is a critical issue.
Kaleido open sources consortium system for enterprise blockchains – Ledger Insights
June 8, 2021 June 8, 2021 PCIS Support Team Leave a comment
Today, as part of the Hyperledger Global Forum, Kaleido has open sourced the multi-party system Firefly, which has been accepted as a Hyperledger Labs project. Separately Kaleido announced that it now supports Hyperledger Fabric as part of its solution offering, a combination of a Blockchain as a Service and building blocks to create blockchain applications.
So what is the Firefly multi-party system? When people think about blockchain apps, they tend to think about the blockchain protocol and the smart contracts on top of that. But getting a solution up and running for a consortium requires more than that. It needs a fair bit of plumbing.
When an enterprise uses a blockchain, they want to integrate the solution with their own backend systems. And the blockchain alone is not enough. They often want to send peer-to-peer messages, files or other data between one or more blockchain participants, which are confidential and not intended for the blockchain.
According to Kaleido, these two plumping features – internal integration and peer-to-peer sharing – are where consortia spend the bulk of their blockchain budgets. And Kaleido should know because they've been involved in some major integrations, including agribusiness consortium Covantis and the trade finance solution Komgo where they supported the likes of Citibank, ING, MUFG and Shell.
Apart from the blockchain and the two plumbing features, there's also a control panel where the consortium manages the configuration details. Together these create a multi-party system.
Many of the moving parts are themselves open source software, such as the underlying blockchains and decentralized file storage. In terms of enterprise blockchains, Firefly supports Enterprise Ethereum flavors Hyperledger Besu and Quorum, as well as Hyperledger Fabric. It will explore supporting Corda.
Kaleido isn't the only one to announce a new project Hyperledger project today. IBM said it's contributing Hyperledger Fabric Tokens and the IBM Blockchain Platform Console. And Japan's Datachain introduced YUI.
Ledger Insights
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Indian Blockchain Start-up, Third Nationally to Be Announced as a Hyperledger Certified Service …
March 11, 2021 March 11, 2021 PCIS Support Team Leave a comment
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India: Hyperledger, an open-source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies, today announced Snapper Future Tech as a new member and recognised Hyperledger Certified Service Provider (HCSP). Snapper Future Tech is a global services & technology products company, leading digital transformation for enterprises using blockchain.
This Blockchain start-up was one of the very few companies that raised a second round of $250,000 in funding amidst the lockdown in 2020 from strategic investors. Snapper Future Tech uses Hyperledger technologies like fabric to create enterprise-grade blockchain applications.
Hyperledger supports an open community that values the contributions and participation from various entities. There are only 23 companies that are HCSPs globally, 3 out of these are based in India. Other than Snapper Future Tech, Mindtree, and Tech Mahindra are from India are HCSPs. Other companies are from Canada, China, India, South Korea, Switzerland and the United States.
Speaking on the announcement, Darshana Jain, CEO, Snapper Future Tech, said "Enterprise blockchain is the future, and we believe that Hyperledger technologies like Fabric and Indy will play a significant role in driving enterprise blockchain adoption and solving real world problems in identity management, sustainable supply chain, e-governance, and a lot more."
About Snapper Future Tech (SFT)
Snapper Future Tech is a global services & technology products company, leading digital transformation for enterprises using blockchain. It offers services in Blockchain application development, training & consulting, and an innovative suite of specialised products for e-governance, Financial Services, Insurance, Sustainable Supply Chain & Healthcare.
Established in 2017 in Pune, Snapper Future Tech has raised Pre-Seed and Seed rounds through Enemtech Capital and strategic investors globally. A Hyperledger Certified Service Provider (HCSP) & Training partner (HTP), the company participates in open-source initiatives across the globe & has robust technological alliances & partnerships with Hyperledger, Oracle, Amazon Web Services, IBM, Trust over IP & Sovrin.
About Hyperledger
Hyperledger is an open-source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration including leaders in finance, banking, healthcare, supply chains, manufacturing, and technology. Hyperledger hosts many enterprise blockchain technology projects including distributed ledger frameworks, smart contract engines, client libraries, graphical interfaces, utility libraries and sample applications. All Hyperledger code is built publicly and available under the Apache license. The Linux Foundation hosts Hyperledger under the foundation. To learn more, visit: https://www.hyperledger.org/.
Hyperledger Unveils Plans for 2021 Global Forum
February 24, 2021 February 24, 2021 PCIS Support Team Leave a comment
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Hyperledger, an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies, today announced plans for Hyperledger Global Forum (HGF, #HyperledgerForum), the premier virtual enterprise blockchain event of 2021. The event, set for June 8-10, is open to users and contributors of Hyperledger projects from around the globe looking to connect, network and collaborate. To reach the growing, global base of people exploring and adopting Hyperledger technology, the virtual event will feature content tracks, delivered across a mix of time zones, tackling both business and technical next steps for scaling enterprise blockchain development and deployment.
Hyperledger also announced seven new members, a diverse set of organizations from North America, Europe and Asia that includes Alastria, BONbLOC and Verizon. In addition, three more members, CPQD, KrypC and Snapper Future Tech, completed the requirements to become Hyperledger Certified Service Providers (HCSPs). There are now 23 HCSPs based in markets around the world, including Canada, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland and the United States. Hyperledger added to its growing library of case studies with a detailed look at Kiva's launch of Africa's first national decentralized ID system built with Hyperledger Indy.
Further demonstrating the global growth and traction for Hyperledger technologies, half of the companies on the recent Forbes Blockchain 50 list named at least one Hyperledger technology as part of their solution platform. Fifteen of the 21 companies that were new to the list, including ones from Australia (BHP), India (Tech Mahindra) and Africa (Sappi), reported using Hyperledger-based platforms. Constellation Research also named four Hyperledger DLTs, Burrow, Fabric, Iroha and Sawtooth, to its "Short List of Blockchain Platforms."
"As the Forbes Blockchain 50 and our own collection of case studies underscore, Hyperledger technologies are proving their value every day," said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director, Hyperledger, and Managing Director for Blockchain, Healthcare and Identity at the Linux Foundation. "Now, with planning for Hyperledger Global Forum well underway, we are laser focused on advancing efforts to put blockchain-based systems to work for maximal impact. HGF will be about tackling the core requirements for wider deployment and new use cases and end users. We welcome our newest members into the community and this important discussion."
Hyperledger allows organizations to create solid, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support their individual business transactions by offering enterprise-grade, open source distributed ledger frameworks, libraries and tools. General members joining the community are biztribution, BONbLOC, Pegwin, Inc., Snapper Future Tech and Verizon.
Hyperledger supports an open community that values the contributions and participation from various entities. As such, pre-approved non-profits, open source projects and government entities can join Hyperledger at no cost as associate members. Associate members joining this month include Alastria and Alliance of Blockchain Industry, Z-park.
New member quotes:
biztribution
"At biztribution, we are excited to join the Hyperledger community and become part of this great blockchain framework of the Linux Foundation," said Juan Antonio Navarro, CEO, biztribution. "We look forward to bringing a rapid and global adaptation of blockchain-based solutions to the air travel distribution. Nowadays, the air travel retail model poses great pressure on the travel and tourism industry's profitability while limiting innovation. biztribution is reinventing the industry by creating a new, revolutionary automated and simple distribution model for the travel and tourism sector with no middlemen. We are leveraging Hyperledger Fabric to deploy a decentralized retail network that creates a trusted business environment and preserves privacy to fulfill the needs of the travel and tourism ecosystem. For biztribution, joining Hyperledger represents a further step forward in our commitment to deliver a fair and sustainable retail model to the ecosystem."
BONbLOC
"We are thrilled to be part of the Hyperledger community," said Berta Fuentes, VP of Operations at BONbLOC. "BONbLOC IoT and Data Science solutions, built exclusively on Hyperledger and Linux Foundation technologies, enable immediate business value to Commercial and Public Sector Customers. For example, our supply chain data measurement IoT solution, built on Hyperledger Fabric, enables end-to-end visibility of remote food storage conditions to minimize financial loss resulting from food wastage; and to comply with Federal food safety management (FSMA) guidance. We have chosen Hyperledger frameworks, libraries and tools as our exclusive development platform to expand our supply chain solution offerings in the areas of delivery management, multi-network distribution, product authentication, recall management, asset productivity, and public service solutions; such as affordable housing and city administration, all valuable blockchain use cases that can be converted to viable solutions primarily due to Hyperledger's rich solution components, aggressive R&D, and hyperactive developer community."
Pegwin, Inc.
"We are excited to embark on a journey to unleash the full potential of blockchain for healthcare," said Douglas Dotan, President and Founder of Pegwin Inc. "Hyperledger's enterprise class ecosystem is the perfect scalable security fit for patient information to be leveraged for a wide variety of needs from improving overall healthcare outcomes to lowering overall healthcare costs by mitigating errors. Hyperledger's world-class blockchain ecosystem is exactly what we needed at Pegwin, and we are proud to be on this journey with such a distinguished and diverse community."
Snapper Future Tech
"Having actively contributed to the open-source community, we are happy to become part of the Hyperledger community and to be both a new Hyperledger Certified Service Provider (HCSP) and Hyperledger Training Partner (HTP), which endorses our technical blockchain expertise," said Darshana Jain, CEO, Snapper Future Tech. "Enterprise blockchain is the future, and we are using Hyperledger technologies like Hyperledger Fabric and Indy in our blockchain solutions for real world problems in identity management, sustainable supply chain, e-governance, credential verification and a lot more."
"We're excited to join the Hyperledger community and continue to innovate on new aspects and applications of the technology, both internally and across Verizon's lines of business," said Jean McManus, Executive Director of Emerging Technologies at Verizon.
About Hyperledger Global Forum 2021
Hyperledger Global Forum, the premier virtual enterprise blockchain event of 2021, is open to users and contributors of Hyperledger projects from around the globe looking to connect, network and collaborate. Hyperledger Global Forum, taking place June 8-10, will provide an opportunity to learn and understand various aspects of the ecosystem, including technical roadmaps, milestones and the latest uses and applications across industries and markets for Hyperledger projects and other related technologies. Register here.
Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration including leaders in finance, banking, healthcare, supply chains, manufacturing and technology. Hyperledger hosts many enterprise blockchain technology projects including distributed ledger frameworks, smart contract engines, client libraries, graphical interfaces, utility libraries and sample applications. All Hyperledger code is built publicly and available under the Apache license. The Linux Foundation hosts Hyperledger under the foundation. To learn more, visit: https://www.hyperledger.org/.
Emily Fisher
Linux Foundation/Hyperledger
SOURCE Hyperledger
Hyperledger's birthday: An interview with IBM's Blockchain VP Jerry Cuomo
December 16, 2020 December 16, 2020 PCIS Support Team Leave a comment
In celebration of Hyperledger's fifth birthday today, we interviewed IBM's Vice President of Blockchain (and more), Jerry Cuomo.
He shared his views on Hyperledger's accomplishments and open source in general. Such as the impact of Amazon's choice of Hyperledger Fabric for its Managed Blockchain offering. Cuomo also looked to the future and his vision of blockchain enabling greater trust in AI.
Question: What do you think are Hyperledger's biggest achievements to date?
Jerry Cuomo: I'd say two things. The ecosystem around it. So the community that has been formed around it. And I think with that it's the way we work as a team has all of the markings of the Linux Foundation. Like from a governance perspective. It's a wonderful thing on a good day. And it's a nagging thing that drives you nuts on a bad day for all the right reasons. So the governance process has led to some of the best code, not just blockchain, but just in the lineage of Linux operating system.
The process of graduating code across a bigger community is masterful. And I think that was a great decision by the founders to go with the Linux Foundation to grow enterprise blockchain.
And five years later, we see some of the most mature code for enterprise blockchain. Which gets to the second biggest accomplishment in five years, the production networks.
When you look at some of our favorites that are using Hyperledger technology, for example, Hyperledger Fabric being used by the blockchain community initiative in Thailand across all the major banks to do letters of guarantee. The Bank of Thailand is extending the network after a couple of years of production to include bonds. They call it scripless bonds.
Other geographies around the world have really embraced blockchain right behind the Thai community. Brazil, the country's first birth certificate issued on a blockchain a year or so ago, was on a Hyperledger blockchain.
So when you look at the community, the governance producing some of the best enterprise code leading to adoption in the enterprise, across banking communities, governments in Brazil and many things in between. That's what I smile about when I look at the five-year anniversary.
Question: So who do you think has gained more? Do you think IBM's gained more from Hyperledger or the other way round?
Jerry Cuomo: IBM has brought a lot of intellectual capital to Hyperledger, starting with the fact that we were their earliest to actually donate code and the rights that go along with the code.
So we've donated a lot of intellectual property, a lot of developers' time. At some points we've had some 75 developers working on code. We contributed core technologies around zero knowledge proofs that IBM and the world leaders in cryptography in our Zurich Lab providing the toolkit for zero knowledge proofs to Hyperledger.
That pays dividends in other significant contributions to Hyperledger from other companies like State Street.
But on the other side, there are contributions that keep the project maturing. Like translating the documentation into other languages. So that intellectual capital that IBM initially brought forward, germinated, and led to other intellectual capital being built with and around it by others.
Market adoption of Hyperledger has contributed to the growth of our Global Business Services Blockchain Services practice worldwide. We've worked with clients big, small and everything in between from the early days. Some of the early adopters are still running strong. In fact, many of them are. Some of them have come and gone, but many of them have been seeded through the IBM Services business. And that builds on itself.
And it informs the technology, informs some of our co-created networks, like the food safety network (IBM Food Trust), TradeLens, Trust Your Supplier Network and leading to things like the Digital Health Pass, which is helping provide verifiable health credentials.
It all feeds on each other and it's a two-way street. I think we've given a lot, as have other Hyperledger members and we've also gotten in return.
Question: Most businesses have this challenge in open source projects: How do you decide what to contribute back and what to keep. Do you have a model for that?
Jerry Cuomo: The model is something we evaluate on an ongoing basis.
But if you start with the core technology. The core technology has to be functional. You can't say we have a permissioned blockchain system and we've put out a framework, but the actual permissioning technology is something you have to buy. You can't (do that).
The technology has to be sustainable. It has to do something out of the box as open source. So you have to take it to a logical MVP (minimum viable product). It has actually to do something of value end to end.
Then hard decisions come, like zero knowledge proofs, as an example. Some of the key features around cryptography libraries, how the ledger is stored and how that's done robustly.
Life cycle management, things that people would find boring. Like how do you update a smart contract? Yes, smart contracts are like any other piece of software. There's a life cycle. They get deployed and patched and updated. All of that has been part of the open source.
IBM business model 1: distributed governance
Now we drew the line to say, we're going to create on top of that, a turnkey solution that majors in multi-party governance. So on top of Hyperledger Fabric, we invented a distributed governance system. Perhaps the first distributed network management software where everyone has control, but no one is exclusively in control.
So through the IBM Cloud, you can start with a delightful web experience. In fact, that experience won the Red Dot award, which is a big thing in the design world. And you can then have members whether they want to run their own instances in another cloud of choice or running on their own premises.
Now that network can start building. And the members of the network could referee things like voting, almost like doing smart contracts for basic network management. Like who gets to say that the smart contract is ready to be updated? Well, it should be a network policy that the members of the network vote on. How do you include a new member in the network, a new organization in the network? Again, that should be brought to policies.
IBM business model 2: Commercial distributions of open source
So the IBM commercial offering builds this network governance layer on top of the 100% open source foundation. And we sell that plus along with that, a commercial distribution of the open source.
And that's a big deal too, the commercial distribution and open sources.
Many regulated organizations that are participating, they can't just take random builds of an open source project and deploy it. They need a single throat to choke for support and maintenance of that code. So we provide that commercial distribution of Hyperledger Fabric. Meaning, we've picked the right build from open source. We've run a battery of tests against it. We ran our certification against it. We then sign and seal it digitally so that we know this is the version we picked. And this allows us to provide a worldwide SRE (site reliability engineering) team to support it.
So that's the dividing line. We decided the control plane, if you would, is out there as open-source. The management plane is something we've decided from a platform perspective, we're going to commercialize.
IBM business model 3: Commercialize blockchain-based businesses
Of course, there's other dimensions. Like commercializing some of the businesses we're building on top of blockchain. Like the Food Trust Network as just one example. Or the work that we're doing around the IBM Digital Health Pass. So these are applications that we're building on top of the network along with the cohorts that are part of that, are monetizing.
So there's different levels of it. But it has to start with that open source kernel.
Open source creates competition
I would say that one of our best days and worst days in that five-year history was the day Amazon decided to embrace Hyperledger. It was a terrible day because we had instant, huge competition.
But it was a wonderful day because by adopting Hyperledger and specifically Hyperledger Fabric as the foundation for Amazon's Managed Blockchain, they validated everything we stood for in Hyperledger for the past years. So that's the beauty of open source. The customer wins every time when there is choice.
So now that Amazon and Oracle and other vendors have blockchain platforms that are built on the same open source, it both validates your choice, but also gives the client (choice). It's like, they're not marrying the vendor. They're dating the vendor and they can switch to other vendors in that ecosystem. And that's very powerful.
The other thing that happened when Amazon embraced it, their price point was significantly lower than ours and we lowered our price. So competition. And so it's a great thing for the buyer.
Question: On the topic of different cloud providers, IBM enabled groups to set up a blockchain network that could work multi-cloud. You did that pretty fast as well. So how did you go about doing that? What was your thinking behind that? And do you think that's paid off?
Jerry Cuomo: We did it fast, but we did it with extreme religion. And in a sense, we had 34 billion reasons to go with the multi-cloud approach. And what I'm alluding to is Red Hat.
As we continued our collaboration with Red Hat, as the poster child for how to do open source right. And looking at our cloud strategy and re-examining our cloud strategy and ultimately Arvind Krishna, who by the way, was the founding father of blockchain at IBM, went on to do cloud and orchestrated the Red Hat acquisition. And now is the CEO of the IBM Corporation. There is a linkage there. Arvind was there on day one of Hyperledger. He was a major driver to do that work. At the time, he was the head of IBM Research, pushing that we put out our research technology in the open.
So the multi-cloud story was dovetailing with our approach around Kubernetes containers, and really extending the IBM cloud strategy to run anywhere. And it's a good day when you think about the operating system for the cloud being Kubernetes and that Red Hat has the industry leading Kubernetes commercial distribution in OpenShift. And OpenShift is vibrant on the IBM cloud. Also vibrant on Azure, Google Cloud and AWS.
So Red Hat has very good relationships with what at the time were our competitors. But I think now they are as much our partners. So we followed suit very quickly with blockchain to adapt containers as a way to distribute the nodes in a blockchain network. And then OpenShift as the way to distribute a commercial deployment for our IBM Blockchain product.
I remember at last year's Re-Invent conference, Vertex which is an oil and gas company and they've co-created an oil and gas tracking network.
And their observation was the locus of energy – no pun intended – of those propane companies were doing business on the Amazon Cloud. So when they deployed their network, they wanted the locus of energy of that blockchain network to be on Amazon. And they turned to us because we didn't flinch with respect to blockchain, our blockchain network running on that or any cloud.
But then when they came to us and said, it's a deal-breaker. This major provider, it's going to be prohibitive for them to get approved to run on Amazon. They need to run the node in their data center. We were able to accommodate that, to run it on their private cloud.
And yes, it's true that almost every enterprise has multiple clouds, but their private cloud is something that they do with extreme thoughtfulness.
And following suit with the Red Hat approach to multi-cloud for Hyperledger and Hyperledger Fabric seemed like a natural thing to do.
And it has really helped us to bring blockchain to customers where they are, versus having them come to blockchain, if you know what I mean? So it's helped in that fashion, like reducing friction. It's one less thing that they have to go convince people that they have to do differently.
Question: Particularly in the last week, one of the things that grabbed a lot of headlines is the institutional adoption of digital assets. And Fabric isn't really a token solution. So what is your approach to tokens?
Jerry Cuomo: There's two approaches here. Many of the networks that are built on Fabric are tokenizing assets. It's true Fabric does not yet have a programming construct called tokens or a framework that makes it a domain specific type of asset to write. But that hasn't stopped many of our users. They're building networks around their digital assets.
True Tickets is a great example, creating a digital asset in a ticket. I think they had some recent really interesting announcements about how they're expanding their network. But that is a digital asset, a ticket that has an owner. It has rules about if it can or can't be divided, all of that.
So the first response is that there are many Fabric networks. And I think one of the best examples now are things that are happening around looking at information as a digital asset. Like the MiPasa network and how it's providing provenance for information on COVID. It's an interesting type of digital asset. Maybe not a monetary asset, but a valuable type of asset, information.
So there's different classes of assets and certainly the more monetarial ones have been explored on Fabric. But again, I don't want to overplay the fact that it doesn't go out of its way to provide a framework for it yet.
That said, Fabric is software. I hate to trivialize things. But think about building a mobile application today. Every modern mobile application uses about 12 classes of APIs. A blockchain solution is not too different.
So in a commerce application, you can imagine using a ledger to store your inventory, maybe even some information about your supply chain. You probably won't in this modern age, do payments yourself. You'll delegate that to an API on a payments network. So you might use PayPal as an example, and use the PayPal APIs to do payments. Again, in this modern day and age, you're probably not going to do shipping and logistics yourself. You'll probably outsource that to FedEx or UPS or a provider like that. And then you can multiply that out to 12 things and you'll get your classes.
Building a blockchain solution is no different. So it's quite common to see networks integrating. So that you might have the main part of your commerce exchange and your supply chain being done with a Fabric based ledger. But if you want to exchange digital assets, you might use an Ethereum or some instance of Besu. So these things are completely plausible. If you're looking for a pure decentralized solution.
So while Fabric may not have an express framework for doing digital assets, other networks do. And all of these networks have APIs. All of these networks could be programmed and used. So, I think this is the way I look at it.
Any kind of mashup application, like a mobile application, if you need something domain specific around payments and discreet asset exchange to emulate money, just use one of those networks that have been built expressly to do that.
We've been doing work with a number of such networks like Hedera. They're part of Hyperledger and looking at integration with their HBAR and some really interesting things happening on that front.
So the notion as we go into 2021, we've been talking about networks of networks since probably the last three years. But I think that that is becoming more plausible. I think people have chilled out now. It's not going to be one network to rule them all or one framework to rule them all. No more like there's one API to rule them all.
There are discrete domains where networks are built to excel and users who are building solutions should use.
Question: What are your predictions for enterprise blockchain in 2021 and beyond
Jerry Cuomo: I think blockchain is graduating to, if I could put it this way, to be normal again. Meaning, I think it's been sensationalized for so long, I think it's looking forward to being a normal part of an IT process. And I see two areas.
So this notion of blockchain inside. You've heard of Intel inside where, yes, you know it's there. But it's about the computer. Yes, you know, there's a chip in there. So I think blockchain is following suit in 2021. 'Blockchain inside' some key things. And it can't come a moment too soon.
One of the areas that I'm focusing on a lot these days at IBM is automation. And blockchain inside automation we see as amazing in a sense that as companies look to optimize, to take advantage or to cope with maybe not having their employees all on hand. Automating mundane tasks. But also they're using AI to enhance employees, to make them superhumans is quite timely right now.
We see in 2021, a good part of IT spend will be on automation and AI. So the thing about blockchain is typical automation technology stops at a company's borders. Blockchain allows automation through smart contracts to be extended beyond a company's borders. And clearly examples of supply chain are great examples of blockchain extending automation beyond a single company and really working out across a company's ecosystem.
So enabling that level of automation, number one.
Blockchain to enhance trust in AI
Number two, I mentioned AI. You know, as a set of technologists just watching what's happening in the world around trust. AI needs a food label. As things mature, whether it's food or drugs or whatever, you can look at a label to say, okay, what's in this thing? Where did it come from?
And AI needs that as we speak, to get it to the next level of adoption. I see in 2021, blockchain inside being used to really provide the provenance. And adding another level of trust to core technologies like AI and IOT, which we've become so reliant on.
But as we bring them to the heart of things like information like MiPasa and the coronavirus. Getting to data. Knowing that this data is authentic and came from this hospital is going to be critical. That this person has been vaccinated, that's all going to be critical. Knowing that the doctor's recommendation and the AI bot that is helping advise that doctor… Who trained that AI? I think having that provenance is critically important.
And I think blockchain inside will directly and subtly switch the world from solely depending on reputational trust. And coming from a hundred plus-year-old company like IBM, I don't want to undersell the value of reputational trust.
But adding algorithmic trust along with reputational trust, will propel the world of IT to move faster. And I think that's what I see coming in 2021.
Blockchain inside extending trust models. Like for automation to go beyond your borders. Like getting underneath AI so that there's like a food label there, we can see where it came from. Who built the model? Who trained the model? Did it drift? Who enhanced the model? And blockchain bringing that, not just reputational trust, this was done by good people, but I can now prove it too.
That's where I see things going in 2021.
So, you know, five years went by very quickly here. And I think what the Hyperledger project has done, in the shadow of a great institution of the Linux Foundation, is really a great example of communities coming together. The very strong, as I said, sometimes tedious governance process that ultimately helps you build the best code.
I mean when you get a call from the security lead for Hyperledger. And he wants to talk to you about the security of Hyperledger Fabric. You take a deep breath and say, Oh my God, do I have the energy to have this conversation? But it's a good thing. And this is part of the process that they bring. Code inspections, test case accountability in your code, visibility, the provenance of the code. So we know who's been contributing.
I think that whole process has led to this set of milestones in deployed networks, in diversity of technologies, in diversity of companies now creating economy – working alongside our competitors as we collaborate, there are good days and bad days – but it's good for the customer.
I think all of that, I think it's a lot of progress in a few years.
Image Copyright: IBM
Hyperledger Turns Five
In five years, an entire ecosystem has coalesced around Hyperledger's mission of advancing blockchain for business
Hyperledger also released its 2020 Annual Report, which is a wide-ranging look at project updates and milestones, community engagement, events, international growth, and training and certification. Highlights of the year include:
– The releases of Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 and Hyperledger Fabric 2.2 LTS
– Hyperledger Besu's graduation to active status
– The launch of Hyperledger Cactus, which graduated from Hyperledger Labs
– Record member participation in Member Summit
– Swift, worldwide uptake of virtual meet-ups with more than 180 events in 81 countries
"In the last five years, we've seen an entire ecosystem coalesce around the mission of advancing blockchain for business and, as a community, have built the multiple platforms and tools that are at the center of critical systems around the world," said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director, Hyperledger. "Hyperledger's role is to champion both development and deployment of these technologies, and everyday we see the impact our work is having. This is a great opportunity to look back at the specific achievements of the last year and our overall accomplishments. We arrive at this milestone with the same focus on community building and blockchain's potential that started us on this journey in 2015."
We would like to thank our members for their involvement and support over the years and for their enthusiasm for our work and this milestone:
"As a founding member of Hyperledger, Accenture is incredibly proud to participate in the celebration of this milestone. The importance of bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders, from developers, enterprise leaders, policy makers and academics, to work shoulder to shoulder to make Hyperledger's vision of blockchain for business a reality, cannot be understated," said David Treat, senior managing director, Global Blockchain and Multiparty Systems Lead, Accenture. "These collaborative efforts have paved the way for the accelerated adoption of blockchain technology, reshaped business models and illustrated how technology can be deployed for positive social impact that benefits all. We look forward to continuing to drive the success and growth of Hyperledger technologies to help clients achieve greater business value."
"Over the past five years, Hyperledger has helped redefine blockchain platform identity from being solely cryptocurrency to a platform that enables organizations to solve problems in collaborative, innovative ways. Chainyard has been very fortunate to be part of the journey since the early days of Hyperledger and has been able to contribute with Trust Your Supplier and other enterprise solutions," said Isaac Kunkel of Chainyard. "The rewards for being part of the Hyperledger community are great and can be realized simply by being engaged in one or more of the many groups the community convenes."
"As a founding member of the organization, DTCC continues to believe that open source is critical to the broad acceptance of distributed ledger technology," stated Rob Palatnick, Managing Director and Global Head of Technology Research and Innovation at DTCC and Chair of the Hyperledger Governing Board. "Hyperledger has become the primary open source community working on enterprise strength DLT platforms. We look forward to our continued involvement in this important organization, and in supporting future projects for the open source community in the years to come."
"It is a great pleasure to be a part of the 5th anniversary of Hyperledger," said Toshiya Cho, Senior Evangelist / Managing Director, Hitachi, Ltd. "Hyperledger plays an integral part in Hitachi's Blockchain-related business. Hitachi introduced Hitachi Blockchain Service for Hyperledger Fabric in 2018, and we have successfully conducted various PoCs and implemented production systems in multiple industries including finance, manufacturing, and healthcare. At the same time, as a founding Premier Member, Hitachi has contributed to the quality enhancement of Hyperledger frameworks and tools because Hitachi strongly believes that further growth of Hyperledger will lead to wider use of enterprise blockchain, which is essential to accelerate social innovation. Hitachi will be definitely happy and eager to provide continuing support to Hyperledger and the open source community."
"There is a saying that 'time flies when you're having fun.' Given that it has been five years since we launched Hyperledger, I must say I agree," said Christopher Ferris, IBM Fellow and CTO for Open Technology, Hyperledger Governing Board member, and original Chair of the Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee. "IBM has been, and remains, committed to the Hyperledger mission to develop open source blockchain technology suitable for use in the enterprise. Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation have delivered on that promise, serving as host to some of the most important and widely adopted enterprise blockchain technology projects, such as Hyperledger Fabric."
"In the past five years we have seen the ecosystem evolve beyond proof-of-concepts into industrialized production grade software solutions supporting critical business processes and significant value transfer," said Christine Moy, Global Head of Liink, Onyx by J.P. Morgan, and Hyperledger Governing Board Member. "Hyperledger has been a key part of this technology's advancement, by driving software development and deployment through a unified, but diverse, open source community. Onyx by J.P. Morgan is proud to be part of the Hyperledger community and will continue to support the progress of open source technology."
"There's a famous African proverb that goes like this: 'If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,'" said Jeroen van Megchelen, CTO at Ledger Leopard. "We at Ledger Leopard are happy to be a part of Hyperledger's 5th anniversary. Together we're confident that we can change the world. Looking forward to more successful years!"
"We have been working with the Hyperledger community closely since its inception five year ago and we're proud to see that enterprise blockchain technology has advanced significantly. Oracle has leveraged the technology in its products and services which has resulted in so many incredible blockchain projects for our customers, such as olive oil provenance, verifying diamonds, maritime shipping, bank e-KYC profiles and watchlists, tracking cobalt processing and CO2 emissions for electric vehicle batteries, and most recently COVID-19 test results reporting," said Frank Xiong, group vice president, Oracle Blockchain Product Development. "We look forward to ongoing collaboration with the Hyperledger community to help advance the technology in a variety of areas, including interoperability, performance, security and others for many years to come."
"Tencent Cloud, as the leading global cloud service provider, active member of Hyperledger and a Hyperledger Certified Service Provider (HCSP), is very happy to witness the growth of the Hyperledger community and the 5-year anniversary," said Powell Li, General Manager of Tencent Cloud Blockchain. "Tencent Cloud is one of the earliest organisations to provide a Hyperledger Fabric-based commercial BaaS platform in China. Tencent is positioned as a 'digital assistant,' providing tools, enhancing connections and building ecosystems. We regard blockchain as one of the most critical technologies to serve industry transformation and upgrading, especially in the areas of supply chain finance, electronic data certificate, data element circulation, and electronic bills. We sincerely congratulate Hyperledger's 5th anniversary birthday and look forward to a bright future for the Hyperledger community!"
https://www.hyperledger.org
PixelPlex Shakes up Blockchain Development via Their Hyperledger Blockchain Infrastructure
November 19, 2020 November 19, 2020 PCIS Support Team Leave a comment
PixelPlex, an experienced blockchain provider, has recently revealed more details about their Hyperledger development services. With more than 50 blockchain solutions in their portfolio, the company has always been striving to build apps and systems that guarantee security of all business workflows and transactions.
The developers at PixelPlex point out that Hyperledger apps prove to be really compelling as they manage to accomplish even the most demanding and complex business tasks. For example, a lot of enterprise workflows need loads of dependencies and a number of stakeholders. Hyperledger, in its turn, offers such considerable benefits as data integrity and consistency, trusted environment, ruling out human error and micromanagement, absence of any middlemen. More than that, Hyperledger solutions in comparison with enterprise ones, are generally considered to be more effective and viable. Hyperledger dApps are perfectly capable of dealing with even the most sophisticated business processes within hours. The boons that they offer are as follows: tamper-proof data exchange, cryptographic validation of contract terms and operations, chaincode-based liability execution, breach-secure transactions, a toolkit of platforms and frameworks.
The team of professionals at PixelPlex creates Hyperledger apps that always comply with industry standards, workflow control and transaction tracking. According to the company, their permissioned Hyperledger applications have an impressive set of useful features such as traceable transaction identity, minimized fraud risks, authentic goods origin, consolidated databases, consensus-powered workflow control, digital keys & sensitive data protection, on-demand data retrieval. All of the aspects outlined above are essential for any enterprise and its smooth workflow. To easily build Hyperledger dApps, the PixelPlex developers offer blockchain infrastructure deployment. They collect all the operational and functional requirements that are needed to create an engineering ecosystem upon a consistent API and external IP address. The company also admits that their solution will be welcomed in such industries as Supply Chain, Retail, FinTech, IoT, Healthcare, Banking, Legal Services, and Manufacturing.
About PixelPlex: PixelPlex is a custom software development company with 7+ years of experience in building advanced blockchain solutions. The company has assisted both giant businesses and startups from different backgrounds to unleash their efficiency via secure blockchain solutions.
Contact Name: Alexei Dulub
Contact Number: +1 646 490 0772
pixelplex
Eight New Members Join Hyperledger
Binarystar
"The Hyperledger community is building one of the most well-studied and well-regarded core blockchain technologies with practical use in large industries," said Junya Yamamoto, CEO of Binarystar. "Binarystar is happy to participate in the future of this journey by being in the center of the Japanese blockchain industry harvesting and delivering its content directly to over 3,000 and ever-growing base of Japanese members at our blockchain-exclusive business hub."
"We are excited to join the Hyperledger community, one of the largest frameworks for development and cooperation on setting up enterprise-grade blockchain solutions and standards," said Moritz von Bonin, Head of Blockchain & DLT solutions, DB Systel GmbH. "At DB Systel, Deutsche Bahn's digital partner, over the last few years we have been developing promising ways of deploying the blockchain technology for Deutsche Bahn and other companies. The diverse ideas range from mobility as a service platform, logistics supply chains through to blockchain-based rail control system. We look forward to contributing by exploring collaboration opportunities on multiple technological aspects and cutting-edge projects together with the community members."
IOHK
"The Hyperledger community has an exceptional wealth of shared knowledge and expertise, and we look forward to developing strong relationships with other members of the consortium in order to share our original research, build synergies with other blockchain providers and develop new industrial and business collaborations," Romain Pellerin, Chief Technical Officer at IOHK. "In particular, membership in Hyperledger will inform the development of our enterprise blockchain solutions and the work we're doing with governments in developing countries. IOHK is founded on the principles of open source software and decentralized networks, and we would never seek to patent any of our technological advances. It's great to be involved in an organization which shares that philosophy and is working towards utilising blockchain to create a better industry, and more open, accessible world."
IOVlabs
"We are thrilled to be part of the Linux Foundation, one of the leading organizations in the promotion of open source software and ecosystems. All of the software contributed to the RSK Network and Infrastrastructure Framework (RIF) by IOVlabs was open sourced and built together with the community. This is essential to provide transparency for the blockchain financial infrastructure we are building," said Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar, IOVlabs CEO. "Harnessing the benefits of the Bitcoin Network with a suite of tools to create and protect the wealth of those more vulnerable in our society, we're planting the seeds for global financial freedom, and our membership in the Linux Foundation and Hyperledger will help us accelerate the development and adoption of blockchain platforms fostering opportunity, transparency and trust throughout the world.
Public Mint
"At Public Mint, we believe it's fundamental to have a frictionless, easy, accessible and open capability to move fiat locally and globally," said Halsey Minor, founder and CEO at Public Mint. "We're very excited to be part of the Hyperledger community, and we think this is a great opportunity to work together, addressing business processes in an effective and innovative way. Built on top of Hyperledger Besu, Public Mint is charting new territory as a fiat-native blockchain platform that allows anyone to easily create fiat accounts and transfer funds between any individual, business, device, application and bank. After 25 years of innovating in the enterprise, I can clearly see that with blockchain we are beginning the next major chapter in the incredible story of technology adding business value."
Members big and small are collaborating across company and country lines to ensure the success of Hyperledger business blockchain technologies, building products, services and solutions on top of Hyperledger code bases that are critical to their lines of business. Learn more about becoming a member of Hyperledger.
PR@Hyperledger.org
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Hyperledger Cactus: Fujitsu and Accenture seek reliable blockchain interoperability
Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Fujitsu Laboratories of America Inc. (FLA) and Accenture are collaborating (as approved by Hyperledger) under the name: the 'Hyperledger Cactus' project. This is an open source software (OSS) collaborative effort. Its purpose is to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies hosted by the Linux Foundation. The companies will also open source a software development kit (SDK) so as to offer services in order to integrate multiple blockchains for software developers.
"Hyperledger Cactus has moved quickly through the process of becoming a Hyperledger project thanks to the support and initial code contributions of Accenture and Fujitsu and a compelling use case," said Brian Behlendorf, executive director of Hyperledger. "There is strong community interest in facilitating the flow of information and transactions across disparate blockchains, and Hyperledger Cactus is tackling that challenge. Now that Hyperledger Cactus is a full Hyperledger project, there will be an even bigger pool of resources and contributors driving this project forward with the aim of delivering market-ready blockchain integration technologies."
Brian Behlendorf, executive director of Hyperledger
Genesis of Hyperledger Cactus
Blockchains are difficult to modify. On the other hand, they do not require central management. The result is that adoption is increasing in non-financial areas, for example content management and rights management.
In an environment with real asset digitisation, users want to trade these via applications which may interact with multiple blockchains. In such circumstances, a user requires a starting point of trust applicable to the interconnection. This suggests the need for a common platform to protect the transparency and security of such interconnections.
In November 2017, Fujitsu Laboratories developed a proprietary security technology – ConnectionChain – to enable the safe interconnection of blockchains with varying implementation methods and objectives. The software for exchanging different private coins was made available as OSS.
Under the new project Hyperledger Cactus, Fujitsu Laboratories and FLA will integrate the ConnectionChain technology with Accenture's Blockchain Integration Framework. Jointly they will develop a platform for interconnecting blockchains. This should enhance and deepen digital transformations.
Hyperledger Cactus
The two companies originally submitted a proposal for the development of an open-source software project for integration between multiple blockchains. Accenture, Fujitsu Laboratories and FLA will use Fujitsu' ConnectionChain proprietary security technology as the basis for the development of infrastructure software so that multiple different blockchains work together. By becoming Hyperledger Cactus. the software becomes open-source.
The Hyperledger Cactus project will develop the foundation for a new architecture. The latter will seek to eliminate differences such as the:
timing of transactions between multiple blockchains
enabling of asset transfers
recovery from transaction errors.
The new open-source technology aims to create a modular, extensible system which will enable integration, communication, operations and transactions between different blockchains. The companies will also offer an SDK as OSS. This will open up the offering of services which can integrate multiple blockchains for software developers.
By working with Accenture, Fujitsu Laboratories and FLA plan to develop an infrastructure software which will:
integrate different blockchains to securely and reliably work together
make these available as OSS for the Hyperledger-interested community.
By applying the infrastructure of Hyperledger Cactus to car-sharing, for example, it will be possible to create a new service where a car driver can temporarily use a car in exchange for transferring private coins. This would link:
a car-sharing service blockchain (that manages the rights of car usage)
a blockchain handling private coins.
Hyperledger Cactus – car sharing example
The difference is this. Unlike conventional blockchains, which cannot integrate different blockchains or refund excess money back from remitted coins, the Hyperledger Cactus framework will automate the linkages between different blockchains. Moreover, the technology can monitor the results of such operations, thereby facilitating the development of integrated services which combine multiple blockchains.
One of the obstacles to enterprise adoption of blockchain was, and is, the difficulty of integrating different blockchain technologies. Most enterprises understand, at some point, they will have to address this. Many are reluctant to commit until there is some clarity about a path forwards.
By leveraging Fujitsu's ConnectionChain and Accenture's Blockchain Integration Framework, the Hyperledger Cactus project will establish a foundation for a new architecture. An initial attraction is that this will eliminate differences such as the timing of transactions between multiple blockchains.
However, from a broader perspective – one that arguably extends beyond Hyperledger, the principles embedded in such a foundation will be usable elsewhere. Indeed, this may turn out to be the effect with the most impact of Hyperledger Cactus.
Fujitsu and Accenture launch new project to advance blockchain
May 16, 2020 May 16, 2020 PCIS Support Team Leave a comment
Fujitsu and Accenture have announced a new joint project titled 'Hyperledger Cactus' by Hyperledger and hosted by the Linux Foundation.
The project is described as an open source collaborative effort designed to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies.
According to their initial proposal to the community, the companies are looking to develop an open-source software (OSS) project for secure and reliable integration between multiple blockchains.
Hyperledger executive director Brian Behlendorf says, "Hyperledger Cactus has moved quickly through the process of becoming a Hyperledger project thanks to the support and initial code contributions of Accenture and Fujitsu and a compelling use case.
"There is strong community interest in facilitating the flow of information and transactions across disparate blockchains, and Hyperledger Cactus is tackling that challenge.
"Now that Hyperledger Cactus is a full Hyperledger project, there will be an even bigger pool of resources and contributors driving this project forward with the aim of delivering market-ready blockchain integration technologies."
Accenture, Fujitsu Laboratories and FLA will utilise the Fujitsu Laboratories' proprietary security technology ConnectionChain to develop an infrastructure software that enables simpler development of integrated services in which multiple different blockchains work together. The companies have open-sourced the software for Hyperledger Cactus.
According to the companies, the project aims to develop the foundation for a new architecture that will eliminate differences such as the timing of transactions between multiple blockchains, enabling asset transfers and recovery from transaction errors.
The new open-source technology aims to create a modular, extensible system that will enable integration, communication, operations and transactions between different blockchains.
The companies will also offer a Software Development Kit as an OSS to offer services that integrate multiple blockchains for software developers.
As an example, by applying the infrastructure of Hyperledger Cactus in car-sharing services, a new service can be created in which a driver can temporarily use a car in exchange for transferring private coins, while linking a car-sharing service blockchain that manages the rights of car usage, with a blockchain handling private coins.
According to the companies, conventional blockchains cannot integrate different blockchains or get excess money back from remitted coins, whereas the Hyperledger Cactus framework automatically links different blockchains.
Furthermore, the technology can monitor the results of such operations, enabling the rapid development of integrated services that combine multiple blockchains.
When discussing the need for the Hyperledger Cactus project, the companies state blockchains are difficult to modify and do not require central management, and therefore are increasingly being used in non-financial areas such as content management and rights management.
Prior to this project in November 2017, Fujitsu Laboratories developed a proprietary security technology ConnectionChain to safely interconnect blockchains with varying implementation methods and objectives. The software for exchanging different private coins was made freely available as an OSS.
Under the new project Hyperledger Cactus, Fujitsu Laboratories and FLA will integrate the ConnectionChain technology with Accenture's Blockchain Integration Framework to jointly develop a platform for interconnecting blockchains and further activate digital transformation.
Going forward, Accenture, Fujitsu Laboratories and FLA plan to develop an infrastructure software that will integrate different blockchains to securely and reliably work together while making these now available as OSS for Hyperledger.
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