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A gentle introduction to The

Hyperledger Project
Posted on December 9, 2016 by antonylewis2015
I have noticed a great deal of confusion when people talk about “Hyperledger”. I
recently gave a talk about this at a meetup hosted in Paypal’s offices in
Singapore. This article summarises the talk.

Hyperledger is a project, not a technology, and you don’t build stuff on Hyperledger.
When people ask, “What is Hyperledger?”, the answer I give is usually “Do you
mean the project called Hyperledger run by The Linux Foundation, or do you mean
one of the ledger technologies incubated by that project which used to be confusingly
called Hyperledger Fabric?”. The first is a group of people, the second other is a
bunch of code.
Let’s start with The Linux Foundation
According to their website, The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the
world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open
technology development and commercial adoption.
Funding. The Linux Foundation is funded via membership fees,
mainly from corporates, and offers members compliance guidance, consulting,
training, events, networking and webinars.
Projects. The Linux Foundation runs many projects, the most well-known of which is
Linux, the open source operating system, with the iconic penguin logo. Currently the
website lists 52 such projects. Projects run by the Linux Foundation use open source
governance best practices, including license and contribution agreement choices, in
keeping with the ideals of Linux. The Hyperledger Project is one such project.
The Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Project
(“Hyperledger”)
An “Umbrella” for Open Source Blockchain & Smart Contract Technologies
Hyperledger is just one of the many projects run by The Linux Foundation.
From the website, with my bold: The Hyperledger project is an open source
collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is
a global collaboration including leaders in finance, banking, IoT, supply chain,
manufacturing and technology. The project aims to bring together a number of
independent efforts to develop open protocols and standards, by providing a modular
framework that supports different components for different uses. This would include
a variety of blockchains with their own consensus and storage models, and services for
identity, access control, and contracts.
Who funds the project? Project members.
There are three types of members who pay different fees: premier members, general
members, and associate members. There are varying membership fees:
 $250k/year for premier members
 General members pay $5k-$50k/year based on the headcount of the organisation
 Associate members (pre-approved non-profits, open source projects, and government
entities)
Membership to the Hyperledger project also requires companies to be a corporate
member of The Linux Foundation.

[Source: https://www.hyperledger.org/about/join retrieved 9 Dec 2016]

Who are the members?
Premier members, who can have representation on the project’s governing board and
the technical steering committee include: Accenture, Airbus, CME Group, Deutsche
Bourse Group, Digital Asset, DTCC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, JP Morgan, R3, Wanda
Group.
Currently, Blythe Masters of Digital Asset is chair of the governing board, and Chris
Ferris of IBM is chair of the technical steering committee.
From R3, Todd McDonald sits on the governing board and Richard Brown sits on the
technical steering committee.
Who coordinates it?
The Linux Foundation supply staff the project management and coordination.
Currently, Brian Behlendorf of the Linux Foundation is the executive director.
Who writes the code?
Technologies that conform to the ideals of the project can be submitted for
consideration to be incubated by the project. Who develops the code? It is not the
responsibility of The Linux Foundation to directly develop any of the code bases.
There are several code contributions to the project: these are currently separate
standalone distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) that all show promise, rather than
“parts of a whole”. Currently, the main code contributions of distributed ledgers being
incubated by the project are:
 IBM’s Fabric (initially contributed mainly by IBM*)
 This was earlier confusingly called “Hyperledger Fabric”, causing some people
refer to it as “Hyperledger” for short. Usually when someone says “we tried
to use Hyperledger”, they mean “we tried to use Fabric”, but sometimes they mean
any of the DLTs incubated within project Hyperledger more broadly. It’s best to
check!
 Soramitsu’s Iroha (contributed by Soramitsu, NTT Data, Colu)
 All together now, “eee-row-ha”
 Intel’s Sawtooth Lake (contributed mainly by Intel)
R3’s Corda
R3 open-sourced its distributed ledger technology (DLT) called Corda on 30
November 2016, and currently intends to submit it for consideration for incubation
in Hyperledger. Corda is designed to meet the requirements of regulated financial
institutions and as such is targeted for use firstly by the financial services industry.
It can also be used elsewhere for other industries: solving for the requirements of
finance makes is a good candidate for any industry. For more depth, it is well worth
reading these accessible descriptions of Corda: business
whitepaper and explanation in Richard Brown’s own words.
Interoperability, or chains working together
Although the project’s goal is to create interoperable ledgers suitable for a diverse
range of industries, the individual contributions (Fabric, Sawtooth Lake, Iroha) are not
yet interoperable. That is, assets or smart contracts on one of the ledgers can not
immediately interact or work directly on another. Driving ledger interoperability at
the most basic technical levels is one of the key aims and values of Hyperledger.
Conclusion
For clarity of communication, Hyperledger is a project run by The Linux Foundation,
and the distributed ledger technologies under incubation by the project are IBM’s*
Fabric, Intel’s Sawtooth Lake, Soramitsu’s Iroha, and perhaps soon R3’s Corda.
In the interests of clarity over confusion, talk about “The Hyperledger Project” if you
mean the project or “Fabric/Sawtooth Lake/Iroha” or even “The Hyperledger
technologies” if you mean the technologies in general, but you can’t build an app on
“Hyperledger”.

* The history of the “Fabric” contribution is complex (I don’t understand it), and for simplicity’s sake I have

described it as IBM’s Fabric. It appears to have been originally mainly contributed by IBM. Tim Swanson wrote

about it here and at time of writing, Wikipedia says “One of the first proposals was for a codebase combining

previous work by Digital Asset Holdings, Blockstream’s libconsensus, and IBM’s OpenBlockchain.[5] This was later

named Fabric.[6]
Spread the knowledge:

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This entry was posted in blockchain, Fabric, introductions, Iroha, Sawtooth Lake and
tagged Corda, Fabric, Hyperledger, Hyperledger Project, IBM, Intel, Iroha, Linux, Linux Foundation, Open
source, R3, Sawtooth Lake, Soramitsu. Bookmark the permalink.

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Distributed Ledgers: Shared control, not shared data →

One thought on “A gentle introduction to The

Hyperledger Project”
1. Arvnder Thukral says:
December 6, 2017 at 7:29 am

I know the must be outdated, but the key construct that Hyperledger project introduces is the
use of ‘Managed BlockChain’. This framework enables new set of possibilities around using
BlockChain framework for solving a community challenges without being totally distributed.
Further it eliminates the need for incentive driven aspect of blockchain in terms of the role for
‘proof of work’. Is my understanding misplaced?
Regardless, I must commend you for taking the effort to make the concept of block chain to be
understood better. It is a great resource.

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