Hyperledger: Understanding the Open Blockchain Framework

The most important thing to recognize about Hyperledger is that it is NOT A COMPANY, NOT A CRYPTOCURRENCY, and NOT A BLOCKCHAIN--which is why it does not support Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency.

Instead, Hyperledger is a “hub” or umbrella project for open industrial blockchain development, created by The Linux Foundation in December 2015. The platform’s first founding members were announced a year later, in February 2016, with ten more members joining a month later. It quickly grew to over 100 members, including IT-companies like IBM, Fujitsu, SAP, Huawei, Nokia, Intel, and Samsung.

Other members include financial institutions like American Express, J.P. Morgan, BBVA, Wells Fargo, among others. Blockchain startups like Consensys and Blockstream are also in the mix.

In September 2020, it added eight new organizations, including Chainstack, SIMBA Chain, SIX Digital Exchange, and Visa.

How It Works

Cardano uses the “Ouroboros” model alongside its Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. For those individuals, or validators, who want to help validate transactions, they are required to freeze a certain amount of ADA coins, establishing their “stake” in the system. Once a validator helps verify a transaction, they receive additional ADA coins as their reward.

The higher their stake, the higher likelihood a validator has of receiving their reward.

What is “Ouroboros?”

While there are many other PoS blockchains out there, Cardano sets itself apart because of its claim that they offer an actual, true random way of selecting a validator. This, according to the developers is why they built their Ouroboros protocol on top of the standard PoS model.

Ouroboros uses stake as the primary resource to identify the leverage participants have in the system. As it requires very little physical resources to run, Cardano is considered to be extremely environmentally friendly.

The protocol also guarantees the dynamic availability a PoW system never could. In other words, it continues to operate, according to Kiayias, even if an arbitrarily large number of participants decide not to stake and maintain the ledger.

The process of joining and participating in the protocol, according to Kiayias, doesn’t require the availability of any special shared resource such as a checkpoint. When engaging in the protocol requires nothing more than the public genesis block of the chain and access to the network, it eliminates the point of failure that is a trusted shared resource.

Many believe Ouroboros to be a game-changing protocol.

Source: Blockonomi

Hyperledger’s infrastructure enables businesses to apply various modular blockchain solutions and services to help improve operations and increase efficiency.

The hub’s infrastructure can be broken down into modular frameworks and modular tools.

Since it’s not an organization, crypto network, or blockchain system, it simply provides the necessary architecture and infrastructure which develop enterprises develop blockchain-based systems and applications for industrial use. Let’s explore each.