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Hyperledger Fabric Advantages for Blockchain Networks

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Snapshot

  • Modular Architecture
  • Permissioned Blockchain Can Be Developed
  • Scalability and performance
  • Data Partitioning Through ‘Channels’
  • Querying Capabilities
  • Security for Digital Keys

Hyperledger Fabric, also known as ‘Fabric’, is a blockchain platform that is open-source and can be used by businesses to create their enterprise blockchains. The Fabric will help businesses to address all the issues related to public blockchain and will provide the following benefits.

Modular Architecture

Creating an enterprise blockchain can be a formidable task. A lot of time is required to be spent by the developers in developing the required components, as the technology is relatively new. 

A lot of time and energy is spent by the developers at the protocol level to automate things. 

A modular architecture is offered by Hyperledger Fabric to create plug-in components. This provides great assistance to the developers. Components like custom identity management can be easily included by the developers, thanks to the features offered by Hyperledger Fabric. 

Custom identity management is the most common requirement for most businesses. Most of the organizations looking to build permissioned blockchain are keen on including their existing identity management system. Through modular architecture, this can be accomplished. 

Permissioned Blockchain Can Be Developed

For businesses, information is a very important asset, so any unauthorized access of this information, which is possible in public blockchains, can risk the future profits of a business. 

Whereas, Fabric is a permissioned blockchain framework, where only those members can participate whose identity has been verified against the ‘identity management system’. There cannot be any anonymous or pseudonymous participants. 

A ‘Membership service provider’ (MSP) is used by organizations for issuing and validating certificates, and for user authentication. 

Different roles can be assigned to the nodes:

  • Client: transactions are invoked by clients 
  • Orderer: transaction data is updated by the orderer
  • Peer: commits transactions in the ledger
  • Endorser: validates the authenticity of the transaction        

Scalability and performance

High scalability and performance are delivered by Fabric as there is no mining and POW algorithm in it. The transaction validation process is similar to the one in a normal enterprise, and works as follows:

There are three separate phases

  • Distributed logic processing and agreements involving chaincodes 
  • Ordering transaction 
  • Validation of transaction and commit

This helps in reducing overhead since fewer levels of validation and trust across various nodes are ensured. 

Transaction lifecycle

  • A transaction proposal is submitted by the requester to an endorser. 
  • The number of endorsers required for this transaction gets specified by the endorsement policy.   
  • Chaincodes are executed by the endorser to stimulate the proposal to the peers through a ‘read/write set’. 
  • Signed proposal responses, known as endorsements are sent back by the endorser
  • A transaction with digital signatures is submitted by clients to the orderer
  • A block of transactions is created by the orderer and is sent to peers
  • The peer checks for conflicting transactions and if the endorsement policy was met. A block is only committed to the ledger after both the checks are successful.  

Data Partitioning Through ‘Channels’

Financial services companies are very much eager to separate their sensitive data to protect them. Fiber offers ‘channels’, which provide data portioning capability for sensitive data. 

Querying Capabilities

LevelDB is incorporated by the file system of Fabric and it is very appropriate to query functions. LevelDB has a key-value database and facilitates keyed queries. 

CouchDB can also be added optionally, consisting of a document database where the content is stored as JSON, making it very easy to query a database.

Security for Digital Keys

The digital keys used for authentication are protected and safeguarded with the help of the ‘Hardware Security Model’ (HSM). 

Disclaimer: The article should not be considered as any financial advice. It is advisable to conduct thorough research before investing.

Photo by – geralt on Pixabay