// Blockchain
Benefits of Blockchain Hyperledger Fabric
// Blockchain
Blockchain has a huge potential for changing different branches of our lives, and we see it right now. With the choice of revolutionary technology, you take on enormous responsibility for choosing the structure on which you will create your blockchain project.
The Blockchain technology radically transforms the modern concepts of various branches of our life. One of the most popular options in the development of the blockchain project is the Hyperledger Fabric. We present you one of the best structures for developing blockchain technologies - Hyperledger Fabric, an open source mechanism for business chains.
Hyperledger Fabric is a relatively new business flowchart. Hyperledger Fabric has several distinctive features compared to other modern blockchain models; whether these characteristics are advantages or disadvantages often depends on the context.
Hyperledger Fabric is a software framework for developing applications and specialized blockchain-based business solutions.
It needs to be noted that in order to meet current business requirements, IBM has joined other companies to jointly develop an open source, ready for production, business flowchart called Hyperledger Fabric, one of eight Hyperledger projects organized by The Linux Foundation.
Hyperledger Fabric supports distributed register solutions in decentralized networks for a wide range of industries. Its modular architecture maximizes blockchain privacy, flexibility, and ease of decision making.
159 engineers from 27 organizations participated in Hyperledger Fabric v1.0.
One of the features of Hyperledger is the principled rejection of creating your own cryptoactive assets. Hyperledger members develop projects as purely information technology.
As part of its work at the IBM consortium, it created the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework (initially the project was called OBC - Open Blockchain). The first version of HLF, at number 0.6.0, appeared in the fall of 2016. July 1, 2017, the first production version - Hyperledger Fabric 1.0.
It should be noted that Everledger, the global digital registry for diamonds, uses the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain to track conflict diamonds across the supply chain to protect suppliers, customers and carriers from theft and counterfeit.
Now for the benefits of Hyperledger Fabric.
Hyperledger Fabric is the basis for decentralized networks, where all participants have identifiers. If you want to implement a decentralized network, you need to understand whether your business needs an idea to use a chain to comply with data protection rules. Most cases of Hyperledger Fabric use in the financial and healthcare sectors are subject to data protection laws.
Hyperleger Fabric was created by the corporation for corporations, so it is “allowed by ticket”. The network member must obtain a certificate and be identified. Different participants may be granted different rights, restrictions and privileges.
For example, consider a private incorporated company. To begin with, private equity is anonymously traded on the stock exchange, its investors are usually venture capital enterprises, private investment companies or investors. Members of this network must have a certificate and be identified in order to invest and be able to participate in the blockchain system.
Hyperledger Fabric is built on a modular architecture that divides transaction processing into three phases: distributed logical processing and agreement (chained code), transaction ordering, and transaction verification and validation. This separation has several advantages: node types require fewer levels of trust and verification, and network decentralization and performance are optimized.
In a Hyperledger Fabric structure, transactions are handled in a completely different way than in other structures. The focus here is on reducing the levels of trust and the number of checks that a transaction should have. This allows you to make transactions faster and more efficiently.
To illustrate this, consider the transaction flow in version 1.0 of the Hyperledger Fabric shown in the picture below.
Starting to the left of the picture:
1) Transaction offer is sent by application to approving node.
2) The approval rules indicate how much and/or which combination of evidence is required to sign the application. A confirmation executes a chained code to simulate a sentence in a network node, creating a read/write set.
3) Then, the confirming nodes send back approvals to the application.
4) The application sends transactions and signatures to the order service.
5) The buying service creates a package or blocks transactions and delivers them to complete the nodes.
6) When the receiving peer receives a transaction package, for each transaction it checks whether the approval policy has been executed, checks in the read/write sets detect conflicting transactions.
7) If both checks are passed, the block is recorded in the register, and status updates for each transaction are reflected in the status database.
Since only signatures and a read / write set are sent on the network with the new v1.0 architecture, scalability and performance are optimized. In addition, since only confirmations and nodes actually see a transaction, fewer levels of trust are required in different parts of the Blockchain system, which provides greater security.
For example, in the stock market with securities, secured assets, or purchased and sold bonds, the volume of transactions increased due to the growing number of participants. To increase the number of transactions in the blockchain, the system requires improved scalability and performance, as v1.0 from Hyperledger Fabric is partly explained by the splitting of the execution of the chain.
Splitting chain execution also provides dynamic growth in the network. In version 1.0 of Hyperledger Fabric, nodes can be added dynamically and programmatically, rather than statically, as in v0.6. For example, suppose a company that manages exchange rates has a new bank to add to the network. With Hyperledger Fabric v1.0, they can do it programmatically, which increases the efficiency of the structure.
Due to competition, laws protecting and regulating the confidentiality of personal data, organizations dictate the need for confidentiality of certain data elements, which can be achieved by dividing data into block chains. Channels supported in Hyperledger Fabric allow data transfer only to those who must use it.
For example, many financial companies are concerned about competitors who see at least the number of transactions being processed. Some financial institutions do not consider cryptography as a “sufficient” measure to protect their data. Channels help ensure data sharing is possible, where only those who need to know the data will see the number of transactions and the data itself.
Fabric decentralized book and smart contract platform allow private channels to be used. If you have a large network of chains and you want to share data only with certain parties, you can create a private channel only with these participants. Moreover, not every transaction can be visible to every network user. Hyperledger Fabric allows private transactions — something that cannot be done in Ethereum, which contributes to transparency. For certain highly regulated industries, such as healthcare, this is certainly a very big benefit.
Smart Contracts: Like Ethereum, Fabric allows you to use smart contracts called “Chaincode”. Smart contracts developed at the highest level.
Not every blockchain should be anonymous and open. It all depends on the purpose of its use. Hyperledger Fabric allows all network participants to have known identifiers. Decentralized block chains are exactly what financial companies need, and even more so the health care industry.
For example, take the case of a mortgage company using blockchain. Information about the mortgage can not be publicly published. The information requires the parties to identify themselves on the network for authentication.
The decentralized environment is an ordered recording of information for a blockchain application. Each transaction results in a key-value set that is linked to register. It can be created, updated or deleted. Immutable source of trust for v1.0 is added to the node's file system, which also has a built-in LevelDB module.
LevelDB has a default baseline of data and supports key queries, composite key queries, and key range queries. If you need complex, rich queries, CouchDB will help you and support the basic features of LevelDB by adding complete queries, data-rich queries. With additional document database support, such as CouchDB, JSON content becomes fully requested, the data model is compatible with the existing key / value programming model. As a result of all this, application changes are not required when modeling code data as in JSON when using CouchDB.
This JSON format helps minimize the work required to create simple reports and perform audit functions. For example, in supply chain scenarios, you can use the JSON document style to display specific data for products and transport objects. You can easily prepare a report on the goods for different locations and transport objects that were used for delivery to the final destination of the goods.
Hyperledger Fabric allows developers to create embedded components in their architecture. For example, you can compress some components as needed and in one of the fastest ways.
This modularity is ensured by its firm architecture, which takes into account the prospects for the development of new blockchain technology. This is very useful when you want to access a system, such as a user identity management system, so that users can use the blockchain platform built on top of Hyperledger Fabric.
Modular architecture: Fabric has a modular architecture and provides more flexibility depending on what you want to use.
The modularity of the Hyperledger Fabric architecture allows network designers to use various component solutions, which is a significant advantage. One of the most sought-after areas of modularity is node identification. Some networks with several companies already have identity management and they want to reuse what they have, rather than rebuild. Other components of the architecture that can be easily connected include consensus or encryption.
Clear process: transactions may be nontransparent, but the development process is the opposite. “At this stage, the core Hyperledger teams were extremely willing to balance needs in order to get opportunities with an open and transparent development process,” said Skuchain founder Zaki Manian.
HSM (Hardware Security Module) support is vital to protecting and managing digital keys for strong authentication. Hyperledger Fabric provides modified and unmodified PKCS11 for key generation, which supports a feature such as identity management that needs more protection. For identity management scenarios, HSM enhances key and confidential data protection.
Hyperledger channels can be one of the most underrated features. Channels provide the ability to perform data sharing. This allows us to protect the data we need to protect.
This feature is very useful when financial companies that intend to implement a blockchain express deep concern in data protection. We are talking about companies and banks, where even very good cryptography is not enough to secure data.
With channels in the Hyperledger Fabric, you can provide data that is only needed in a partitioned form, or store data that is sensitive to data sections.
The community that is shaping and making changes to the Hyperledger Fabric is very energetic today.
With the support of huge companies like IBM and Toyota using Hyperledger Fabric in their production, the Hyperledger Fabric community and its support continue to grow at a fast pace.
Large enterprise support: Thanks to technology giants such as IBM, Intel and Cisco, Fabric has strong support from corporate companies. This can provide a high degree of stability, instilling confidence in those who still may not know about the future of the blockchain. On the other hand, people familiar with the blockchain will pay attention to a relatively new and efficient infrastructure.
Hyperledger Fabric is Hyperledger’s most mature technology project, but Hyperledger itself is far from that. In fact, Fabric 1.0 was released only in July 2017.
Brian Behlendorf, Hyperledger Executive Director, disagrees that the project has no proven use cases, limited understanding of technologies and their potential, limited talent and lack of skills in IT and business. As he said: “If this were indeed the case, we would not have heard from enterprises that the Hyperledger Fabric is no longer just a project, but what they need.
The creators of Hyperledger Fabric recognize that much remains to be done. This is what Chris Ferris said about this: “Of course, this is not the end. There is still a lot of work. We need more collaboration and new innovations on all Hyperledger projects.” Ferris is chairman of the Hyperledger Technical Committee and technical director of Open Technology at IBM.
Meanwhile, businesses that want to develop blockchain applications with strong support for confidentiality and decentralization are guided by the Hyperledger Fabric. It is best suited for developing chain-ready, block-chain applications using smart contracts and supporting privacy and permissions. Fabric's modular architecture provides flexibility and is largely focused on enterprises that want to streamline their workflow using blockchain technology.
As CoinJoker states, “most enterprise applications will be focused on Fabric, while Ethereum will remain the basis for dApps, which are more “B2C”.
Hyperledger, with its technology sponsors, is focused exclusively on transaction-based applications. Despite this, Ethereum also targets corporate customers.
Take, for example, JP Morgan Quorum, created and opened by JPMorgan. Quorum is a permitted implementation of Ethereum; This is what is called the fork of the public Ethereum blockchain. Like Fiber, it does not have its own cryptocurrency.
There is Enterprise Ethereum, which was launched in February 2017. It includes more than 30 companies from the Fortune 500 list, as well as start-ups, scientists, technology providers and experts from Ethereum. Participants include BP, Cisco, Accenture, Intel, and Toyota.
