Tired of the Blockchain hype? You should be, but the emergence of Hyperledger Fabric 1.0 gives us a sense of the reality to come and where this is all heading. Let’s dive in…
Hyperledger announced the release of Hyperledger Fabric 1.0 yesterday (see press release). Hyperledger Fabric is an open-source platform, hosted by the Linux Foundation that allows organizations to develop Blockchain applications. Version 1.0 marks the release of a production-ready platform that goes beyond pilots and proof of concepts. 159 engineers from 28 organizations collaborated over a 16-month period to make this happen.
There are multiple Blockchain platforms that exist today. Ethereum is the most mature public platform (besides Bitcoin) with tremendous potential and over 500 use-cases in various stages of development. There are multiple other private or semi-private platforms such as Ripple and Chain. Hyperledger Fabric is younger than many others, but there are three characteristics that make it important for enterprises that want to solve business pain points, leveraging Blockchain:
- Flexible. The architecture of Hyperledger Fabric can run like a private or hybrid or public platform, making it potentially more secure from a data-privacy standpoint thus rendering itself enterprise ready
- Open-Source. 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. This structure gives it the potential to become the de-facto standard which will become an important adoption criterion going forward
- Not crypto-currency based. Hyperledger does not have a crypto-currency (such as Bitcoin or Ether) which potentially renders it more usable for business applications as not every potential use case needs a currency
The announcement marks a significant move forward to leverage Blockchain for business use cases. The Hyperledger Fabric project started in March 2016 based on merged codebases from IBM and Digital Assets Holding. It moved out of incubation 12 months later and was ready for pilots and POCs. Now four months later, they have released Hyperledger Fabric 1.0 – a production ready version.
Does this mean that Blockchain can now become mainstream for enterprise adoption? No.
These are the three challenges the Blockchain pioneers must address to make the technology truly enterprise ready:
1) Technical challenges. Blockchains by design will never be able to complete thousands of transactions in a second, but the technologies do need to be able to scale up for enterprise-grade performance, efficiency, and costs. Hyperledger Fabric promises to solve this by not using consensus-driven Proof of Work (PoW) that most other Blockchains are built upon and requires major computing power
2) Policy challenges. There are no Blockchain standards, there exist multiple platforms with no interoperability, and there are no regulations in this space. And these are not easy questions to solve. For example, given that all Blockchains are Distributed Ledgers, which geographical jurisdiction will be applicable?
3) Nascency challenges. Several challenges stem from its nascency and novelty. Lack of proven use cases, limited understanding of technology and its potential, limited talent and skill-sets shortage across IT and business, etc. The inherent power and potential of the concept with the help of some pioneering risk-takers will help pull it through such nascency challenges, but it will take time
Bottom-line: There is still a long road ahead for Blockchain, but real progress is being made.
Notwithstanding these challenges, the advancements in Blockchain technology are happening at a frenetic pace. Market developments such as this Hyperledger Fabric 1.0 release are important milestones in the development of this space. It’s important for enterprises to take notice and start investigating.
Posted in : Blockchain
Sounds promising, but I’m not sure I totally get it. How do they want to organise the Blockchain without Proof of Work, or – since it’s not currency based – for that matter Proof of Stake? (Or is it an alternative on Proof of Stake in a Consortium style model?) All in all, this has to be organised to prevent any misconduct or manipulation. Or aren’t the use-cases meant as separate decentralised blockchains, but centralised, fully private ones or simply smart contracts based on the larger blockchain of Hyperledger? Any thoughts?
Excellent question. Hyperledger is modular and hence you can chose different algorithms for different business requirements. Also, I don’t think you always need all the functionality of a DL depending on what is the business problem that you are trying to solve