Why Hyperledger Fabric?ΒΆ

The Hyperledger Fabric project is delivering a blockchain platform designed to allow the exchange of an asset or the state of an asset to be consented upon, maintained, and viewed by all parties in a permissioned group. A key characteristic of Hyperledger Fabric is that the asset is defined digitally, with all participants simply agreeing on its representation/characterization. As such, Hyperledger Fabric can support a broad range of asset types; ranging from the tangible (real estate and hardware) to the intangible (contracts and intellectual property).

The technology is based on a standard blockchain concept - a shared, replicated ledger. However, Hyperledger Fabric is based on a Hyperledger Fabric Glossary, meaning all participants are required to be authenticated in order to participate and transact on the blockchain. Moreover, these identities can be used to govern certain levels of access control (e.g. this user can read the ledger, but cannot exchange or transfer assets). This dependence on identity is a great advantage in that varying consensus algorithms (e.g. byzantine or crash fault tolerant) can be implemented in place of the more compute-intensive Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake varieties. As a result, permissioned networks tend to provide higher transaction throughput rates and performance.

Once an organization is granted access to the blockchain network Hyperledger Fabric Glossary, it then has the ability to create and maintain a private channel Hyperledger Fabric Glossary with other specified members. For example, let’s assume there are four organizations trading jewels. They may decide to use Hyperledger Fabric because they trust each other, but not to an unconditional extent. They can all agree on the business logic for trading the jewels, and can all maintain a global ledger to view the current state of their jewel market (call this the consortium channel). Additionally, two or more of these organizations might decide to form an alternate private blockchain for a certain exchange that they want to keep confidential (e.g. price X for quantity Y of asset Z). They can perform this trade without affecting their broader consortium channel, or, if desired, this private channel can broadcast some level of reference data to their consortium channel.

This is powerful! This provides for great flexibility and potent capabilities, along with the interoperability of multiple blockchain ledgers within one consortium. This is the first of its kind and allows organizations to curate Hyperledger Fabric to support the myriad use cases for different businesses and industries. Hyperledger Fabric has already been successfully implemented in the banking, finance, and retail industries.

We welcome you to the Hyperledger Fabric community and are keen to learn of your architectural and business requirements, and help determine how Hyperledger Fabric can be leveraged to support your use cases.