What is Hyperledger Fabric in Blockchain Development?

There’s a growing demand for Hyperledger Fabric in blockchain development. Would you like to know why? Keep reading! In this article, I will explain what makes Hyperledger Fabric a good choice for blockchain development.

In this article

1. Hyperledger Fabric: What it is
2. How Hyperledger Fabric benefits businesses in blockchain development
3. The transaction workflow in Hyperledger Fabric networks
4. Why using Hyperledger Fabric makes sense: Its advantages
5. Where to use Hyperledger Fabric blockchain networks: The use cases
6. Frequently Asked Questions on Hyperledger Fabric in blockchain development

An open-source blockchain framework, Hyperledger Fabric fills important gaps. It has a distinct transaction workflow and advantages. Hyperledger Fabric has proven its mettle in several enterprise blockchain use cases.

First things first, so let’s start by discussing what Hyperledger Fabric is.

Hyperledger Fabric: What it is

Hyperledger Fabric is an open-source framework to build enterprise blockchain networks. It helps businesses to build a private blockchain network with data privacy, scalability, resiliency, and flexibility. Hyperledger Fabric is a project from the Hyperledger Foundation.

Hyperledger Foundation: An industry organization hosted by the Linux Foundation

The Hyperledger Foundation, also known as the Hyperledger Consortium, is a non-profit industry organization. It conceptualizes, plans, and executes projects to make blockchain technology more useful for businesses.

Through the Hyperledger projects, the Hyperledger Foundation develops open-source tools and other resources that help developers create blockchain solutions. The projects have participants from enterprises, start-ups, and academia.

LF Decentralized Trust, the Linux Foundation’s flagship organization for fostering innovation and collaboration in the development and deployment of decentralized systems and technologies, now hosts the Hyperledger Foundation.

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Companies like IBM, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Accenture, ConsenSys, American Express, NEC, Siemens, Walmart, Visa, etc. collaborate in this organization to make the distributed ledger technology (DLT) more accessible to businesses.

How Hyperledger Fabric benefits businesses in blockchain development

Here we will discuss why businesses need blockchain networks built on Hyperledger Fabric and highlight the drawbacks of public blockchain networks.

Businesses often can’t use public blockchain networks due to the following reasons:

• Businesses can allow only trusted network participants, however, public blockchain networks are open to all.
• Enterprises must provide privacy mechanisms for their transaction data due to confidential information. However, public blockchain networks are transparent.
• Businesses need high performance throughput and scalability. Public blockchain networks often can’t meet these requirements adequately.
• Public blockchain networks aren’t owned by any single entity. However, businesses need complete control over the governance of their blockchain networks.

These make businesses look for enterprise blockchains. The key advantages of enterprise blockchain are as follows:

• They are permissioned, and they implement access control.
• Enterprise blockchains provide privacy for sensitive data.
• These blockchain networks offer better performance throughput and scalability.
• Businesses can have control over the governance of an enterprise blockchain network.

Having said that, building an enterprise blockchain network can be complex and time-consuming. Developers need to take care of all aspects like peer-to-peer (P2P) networking, servers, access control, consensus algorithms, etc. They need user-friendly tools for these.

Hyperledger Fabric fills these gaps. This permissioned blockchain framework offers the necessary tools to build enterprise blockchain systems and applications.

The transaction workflow in Hyperledger Fabric networks

A blockchain network built using the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework has the following components:

• Members: Members can be organizations like banks or financial institutions. A member can also be a company in other industries, e.g., an insurance company. Members have their identities. Each of them has a Hyperledger Fabric certificate authority.
• Peers: Members can set up authorized peers that participate in the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network. Members can use their Hyperledger Fabric certificate authorities for this. They can be “endorser” peers. “Endorser” peers endorse transactions according to the transaction endorsement policy.
• Client-side applications: Developers can create them in any popular programming language. These apps are connected to the blockchain network.

Transaction processing in Hyperledger Fabric works as follows:

• A member organization creates a transaction proposal using a client-side application.
• The transaction proposal reaches the “endorser” peers.
• Peers check the Hyperledger Fabric certificate authority and other relevant information.
• Peers execute a “chain code” to approve or reject transaction proposals. “Chain codes” on a Fabric blockchain network do what smart contracts on the Ethereum network do.
• The response from the “chain code” indicating transaction approval or rejection is transmitted to the client.
• The client-side app sends the approved transactions to the transaction ordering service.
• Peers responsible for transaction ordering service include the approved transactions into specific blocks. They send these blocks to the organization-specific peer nodes on the network.
• Peer nodes for different organizations update the blockchain ledger with these blocks. This action commits the transactions, which completes the transaction processing workflow.

Why using Hyperledger Fabric makes sense: Its advantages

Hyperledger Fabric offers the following advantages:

• It’s an open-source blockchain framework.
• You can easily use this enterprise blockchain platform with leading cloud providers like AWS and Azure.
• Hyperledger Fabric is a permissioned blockchain network, therefore, you can set up a private blockchain.
• It offers access control mechanisms.
• Businesses can implement privacy measures for sensitive data.
• Hyperledger Fabric has a modular architecture. This makes blockchain development easier.
• This open-source blockchain framework has pluggable components for aspects like consensus algorithms.
• Developers can create “chain codes” on Hyperledger Fabric. These are similar to smart contracts on Ethereum. However, you need to use a particular programming language like Solidity or Vyper to create an Ethereum smart contract. That’s different for chain codes. You can develop them using popular programming languages like Node.js or Golang.
• You can implement advanced security measures using the HSM (Hardware Security Module) on a Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network.
• Hyperledger Fabric blockchain networks don’t need to use a computing-intensive consensus algorithm like “Proof of Work” (POW). This enables performance.
• A growing developers’ community supports Hyperledger Fabric.

Where to use Hyperledger Fabric blockchain networks: The use cases

Hyperledger Fabric has many prominent use cases, e.g.:

1. Supply chain traceability

A supply chain network involves many stakeholders. Tracking the lifecycle of raw materials and finished products can be complex due to this.

A Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network offers data security, data privacy, and a shared ledger. All stakeholders in supply chains can see the same version of truth simultaneously. This improves supply chain traceability.

2. Trading and asset transfer

Many stakeholders need to participate in trading and asset transfer processes. A few examples are banks, importers, and exporters. Many of the processes involved here are paperwork-intensive, therefore, they take time.

A Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network can make these processes more efficient with the help of a shared ledger. Security and privacy features of Hyperledger Fabric help to meet regulatory requirements too.

3. Preventing insurance frauds

The immutable blockchain ledger of Hyperledger Fabric can store insurance transaction data. Insurance companies can refer to them for claims adjudication. A reliable source of tamper-free data makes the claims adjudication process simpler, and it helps to prevent fraud.

The insurance industry needs to comply with stringent regulations. Hyperledger Fabric provides robust access control, security, and privacy mechanisms. These can help insurance companies meet regulatory requirements while preventing fraud.

Planning to create a blockchain solution using Hyperledger Fabric?

Developing a robust blockchain-powered solution based on Hyperledger Fabric requires blockchain development expertise and familiarity with the tool. DevTeam.Space offers a comprehensive range of services to create, test, deploy, and maintain all kinds of blockchain-based solutions.

Our expert blockchain developers have extensive knowledge of Hyperledger Fabric and have helped our clients build a range of custom blockchain solutions such as cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based supply chain apps.

Contact DevTeam.Space if you need professional assistance with your Hyperledger Fabric project. You can either outsource your complete blockchain project to our development teams or outstaff any number of blockchain developers and manage them yourself. If you wish to learn more, get a complimentary discovery call with one of our tech account managers by submitting your project request here.

Frequently Asked Questions on Hyperledger Fabric in blockchain development