- Hyperledger, an open-source collaborative effort advancing cross-industry blockchain technologies, announced the availability of Hyperledger Fabric 2.0
Hyperledger — an open-source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies — announced the general availability of Hyperledger Fabric 2.0. Hyperledger Fabric is a distributed ledger framework which has been under development by the Hyperledger community since 2016. And it delivers a number of features that are needed to increase the efficiency and security of production deployments.
The work on Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 focused on new ways to manage the chaincode (or smart contract) lifecycle to maximize flexibility, remove bottlenecks, and offer more options to distribute governance. And security and data privacy were also major development priorities.
The key Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 features include:
1.) Decentralized governance for smart contracts
The Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 introduces decentralized governance for chaincode with a new process for installing a chaincode on your peers and starting it on a channel. And it allows multiple organizations to come to agreement on the parameters of a chaincode like the chaincode endorsement policy, before it can be used to interact with the ledger. Plus the new model offers several improvements over the previous lifecycle, including requiring multiple organizations to agree to the parameters of a chaincode thus creating a more deliberate chaincode upgrade process and simplifying endorsement policy and private data collection updates.
2.) New chaincode application patterns for collaboration and consensus
The same decentralized methods of coming to agreement that underpin the new chaincode lifecycle management can be used in your own chaincode apps for ensuring organizations consent to data transactions before they are committed to the ledger. And organizations can add automated checks to chaincode functions to validate additional information before endorsing a transaction proposal.
Human decisions can be modeled into a chaincode process that spans multiple transactions. The chaincode may require users from various organizations indicate their terms and conditions of agreement in a ledger transaction. From there, a final chaincode proposal can verify that the conditions from all the individual transactors are met, and “settle” the business transaction with finality across all channel members.
3.) External chaincode launcher
The external chaincode launcher feature allows operators to build and launch chaincode with the technology of their choice. And use of external builders and launchers is not required as the default behavior builds and runs chaincode in the same manner as prior releases using the Docker API.
4.) Private data enhancements
Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 enables new patterns for working with and sharing private data without having to create private data collections for all combinations of channel members that may want to transact.
So rather then sharing private data within a collection of multiple members, you may want to share private data across collections at a transaction or state key level with selected channel members. And each private data collection may contain a single organization or an environment involving a single organization along with a regulator or auditor.
5.) State database cache for improved performance on CouchDB
When using external CouchDB state database, read delays during endorsement and validation phases have typically been a performance bottleneck. And with Hyperledger Fabric 2.0, a new peer cache replaces many of these expensive lookups with fast local cache reads.
6.) Alpine-based docker images
Hyperledger Fabric Docker images now use Alpine Linux — which is a security-oriented Linux distribution. So this means that Docker images are now much smaller thus providing faster download and startup times as well as taking up less disk space on host systems. And Alpine Linux is designed from the ground up and the minimalist nature of the Alpine distribution reduces the risk of security vulnerabilities.
“Hyperledger Fabric has established itself as a popular and practical distributed ledger framework and has powered much of the transition from conceptualization to commercialization we’ve seen in enterprise blockchain,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director at Hyperledger. “Fabric 2.0 is a new generation framework developed by and for the enterprises that are building distributed ledger capabilities into the core of their businesses. This new release reflects both the development and deployment experience of the Fabric community and confirms the arrival of the production era for enterprise blockchain.”
Hyperledger Fabric is widely deployed in PoCs and production networks of all sizes and scales. And to ensure smooth transition to the new version, there is a range of documentation specifically for Upgrading to the latest release. Plus there is also documentation on Upgrading your components and Updating the capability level of a channel as well as a specific look at the Considerations for getting to Fabric 2.0.
“The release of Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 is an important step forward in the on-going evolution of DLT, and was developed based on feedback from real-world use, including improved chaincode management capabilities and performance enhancements,” added Rob Palatnick, Managing Director and Global Head of Technology Research and Innovation at The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and Governing Board Chair at Hyperledger. “DTCC’s work with Hyperledger enables us to bring DLT expertise and knowledge in-house while contributing our learnings and progress on enterprise-scale projects with the DLT community. We look forward to our continued efforts around Fabric 2.0 and in working with Hyperledger.”
IBM Fellow and Vice President Blockchain Technologies Jerry Cuomo pointed out that his team is eager to upgrade the IBM Blockchain Platform — which is the industry’s first multi-cloud implementation of Hyperledger Fabric. And Oracle Senior Director of Blockchain Production Management Mark Rakhmilevich commented that Hyperledger Fabric underpins the Oracle Blockchain Platform, which is used by numerous customers in production, and a number approaching production deployments.
“This release demonstrates a mature project with enhanced performance and deployment features that will allow for innovative identity projects to come to fruition, like our Verified.Me service. Hyperledger’s projects – such as Fabric and Aries – provide important open source components for building ecosystem services like Verified.Me, and we’re happy to contribute to such an excellent and dedicated community,” stated Troy Ronda, Chief Scientist for SecureKey Technologies.
