Hyperledger Fabric – A Platform For Business Solutions

Blockchain will change the way we do business. The combination of the shared immutable ledger and codifications of smart contracts will redefine how trust is manifested in enterprises. You will get an idea of this once you get started with a few projects. This blog on “Hyperledger Fabric” will help you assimilate how business networks can be established on blockchain systems in the following sequence:

1. 1. 1. 1. What Is Blockchain For Business?
         2. Hyperledger Project
         3. What is Hyperledger Fabric?
         4. Key Benefits Of Hyperledger Fabric
         5. Hyperledger Fabric Model
         6. Participants In Hyperledger Blockchain Network
         7. Fabric Architecture
         8. How Hyperledger Works?
         9. Types Of Peers
         10. Transaction Life-Cycle Of Hyperledger Fabric
         11. Use Case On Hyperledger fabric

What Is Blockchain For Business?

It is the distributed ledger of records where business terms are engrossed in smart contracts and the participating parties agree to the current state of the network, and the privacy is not being compromised.

So, to advance enterprise blockchain technologies, Linux foundation founded Hyperledger in 2015.

Hyperledger Project

As stated on the Hyperledger’s website,

“Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration, hosted by The Linux Foundation, including leaders in finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing, and Technology.”

Hyperledger incubates a plethora of business blockchain technologies, framework, under its “Umbrella strategy“. Currently, Hyperledger houses the following projects: 

“The Fabric (or the Hyperledger Fabric) led by IBM was designed to develop highly scalable blockchain applications with the flexibility of permissions”

Now, what I mean by above statement, well you’ll just know!!

What is Hyperledger Fabric?

The fabric was intended for developing solutions with a modular architecture. Hyperledger allows the components to be plug-n-play.

It is a private and permissioned Blockchain system which means Unlike, in Permissionless(or public network) systems that allow unknown identities to participate in the network, the members enroll through Membership Service Provider (MSP).

It also offers the ability to create channels, allowing a group of participants to create a separate ledger of transactions.

Since Fabric is the permissioned Blockchain it has some major advantages over other blockchain systems.

Key Benefits of Hyperledger Fabric

Hyperledger Fabric Model

Following are the key features of Hyperledger Fabric that fulfill its promise of customizable enterprise Blockchain

• Assets: Enable the exchange of monetary value over the network
• Chaincode: Partitioned from transaction ordering, limiting the required levels of trust and verification across node    types, and optimizing network scalability and performance
• Ledger Features: Encodes the entire transaction history for each channel, and includes SQL-like query capability Privacy through
• Channels: Enable multi-lateral transactions with the high degrees of privacy and confidentiality
• Security & Membership Services: In Permissioned membership participants know that all transactions can be detected and traced by authorized regulators and auditors
• Consensus: Allow network starters to choose a consensus mechanism that best represents the relationships that exist between participants

Participants in Hyperledger Blockchain Network

Fabric Architecture

• Blockchain developer codes Application and Smart Contract
• He deploys the app on a server and smart contract on a peer using DEPLOY
• A registered user interacts with the app sending order (INVOKE) or retrieving information (QUERY) through the smart contract
• Smart contract can emit an event subscribed by the app

How Hyperledger Works? 

Hyperledger Fabric was designed to be a truly modular, scalable and secure foundation for industrial Blockchain solutions. Maybe the most notable change in the upgrade from Fabric version0.6 to Fabric 1.0 is that the peers are now decoupled into two separate runtimes with three distinct roles.

Types of Peers 

1. 1. Committer peer: Commits transactions, maintains ledger and state
   2. Endorsing peer: Receives a transaction proposal for endorsement, responds granting or denying endorsement
   3. Ordering peer: Approves the inclusion of transaction blocks into the ledger and communicates with peer and endorsing peer nodes

Transaction Life-cycle of Hyperledger Fabric

Use Case on Hyperledger Fabric

Hyperledger can host almost any type of business network. With the scalability as an advantage, a number of use cases are being developed on the Fabric. 

Use Case: Interoperability of Assets 

Description: Interoperability of assets means the exchange of assets among a group of people.

Problem statement: If an organization requires 20,000 units of asset B but instead owns 10,000 units of asset A, it needs a way to exchange asset A for asset B. Though the current market might not offer enough liquidity to fulfill this trade quickly, there might be plenty of liquidity available between asset A and asset C, and also between asset C and asset B.

Now there are market limits on direct trading between A & B, so what can be the probable solution?

Solution: In this case, a chain network connects buyers with “buried” sellers, finds the best match (which could be buried under several layers of assets), and executes the transaction. So basically a business network of a group of individuals can be set up on the Hyperledger Fabric and the assets can be exchanged among the buyer and the sellers.

So the strategic goals of Hyperledger to build business solutions on blockchain technology sharply separates it from currency based blockchains. This might be mundane to some, but also more straightforward to the technology.

I guess my information bucket of Hyperledger Fabric is empty now, I hope the reading was fruitful.

If you wish to learn Blockchain and build a career in Blockchain Technologies, then check out our Blockchain Certification which comes with instructor-led live training and real-life project experience. This training will help you understand Hyperledger Fabric in depth and help you achieve mastery over the subject.

Got a question for us? Please mention it in the comments section and we will get back to you.