Blockchain technology is changing the way businesses record and monitor data transactions. It provides a decentralized, immutable ledger, or record of transactions, that effectively verifies the integrity of data in that ledger.
The Hyperledger Project is a collaborative open source development effort built on the goal of advancing blockchain technologies. Hyperledger now has more than 140 members and hosts several blockchain-related projects. These include Hyperledger Fabric — a blockchain framework implementation — and Hyperledger Composer — a toolset for integrating blockchain applications within existing business systems.
In this article, you’ll hear from Ivan Vankov of Cognition Foundry, an IBM LinuxONE business partner working with customers on implementing Hyperledger, about the principles of the distributed ledger model, how blockchain technology can help eliminate data forgery and verify supply chains, and how Hyperledger is changing the way business is done. To find out more, visit www.hyperledger.org or www.ibm.com/linuxone/solutions/blockchain-technology.
Linux.com: Briefly describe Hyperledger in your own words.
Ivan Vankov: The shortest definition is that Hyperledger is a blockchain designed not for cryptocurrency but for business needs. It takes all the good parts from the blockchain model, adds a ledger inside the blockchain, and has the ability to create smart contracts that manage the ledger. This is governed by a very strong and flexible authorization/authentication system based on state-of-the-art cryptography. However, this is not enough for the business — scalability, data isolation and separation, interfacing with existing systems, replacement of core components, and many more features are available with Hyperledger. Since by design it is a distributed system, there is no central point of failure.