6 ms·

Hyperledger Fabric: A Distributed Operating System for Permissioned Blockchains

113 points by zyngaro 8y ago

spiritoftech 8y ago
What is a blockchain without PoW? A Linked List. Bitcoin Cash is bitcoin
skilesare 8y ago
Hyperledger Fabric: Not a Blockchain
- brian_herman 8y ago
  Yes it is uses blockchain technology! http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/blockchain.html http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/bloc...
  - drcode 8y ago
    Rolls Royce uses "car technology" to build airplane engines, but that doesn't make an airplane a car.
  - andromeduck 8y ago
    So it's a just immutable, distributed linked list of signed nodes with a consensus protocol like two stage commit, paxos, isis and maybe overlay network and peer forwarding to bridge some gaps? Sounds traditional distributed systems but now with signatures involved.
    - convolvatron 8y ago
      i can't find a reference to isis, google is pretty swamped with the term. are you referring to the work by Ken Birman?
      - andromeduck 8y ago
        Yes, Birman and Joseph.
- smt88 8y ago
  I see it as a way for technologists to satisfy non-tech people that "yes, we use blockchain now" when in reality this is just an immutable BFTDL with configurable consensus (perhaps similar to what aircraft have been using for many years). Full, PoW/PoS blockchain like Bitcoin or Ethereum is hard to justify in an enterprise. Decentralization is rarely part of a viable business model.
  - codebeaker 8y ago
    BFTDL?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - alpyne 8y ago
      Byzantine Fault Tolerant Distributed Ledger
  - davidgerard 8y ago
    My advice is to say "yes, all our developers use blockchain-related technologies" and never let on that just means you use git.
drcode 8y ago
Now you have to deal with all the issues of the traditional IT world (devops, cloudflare, vpns, containerization, cloud hosting configuration, load balancers, dns configuration, etc) AND all the issues of the new blockchain world (contract security, gas fee metering, block limits, replay attacks, etc) ...the saving grace of a "real" blockchain architecture is that at least most of the traditional IT issues go away.
- jerguismi 8y ago
  > ...the saving grace of a "real" blockchain architecture is that at least most of the traditional IT issues go away. All the work done related to blockchains I know of, involves lot of IT issues, both traditional ones and new ones. Quite often work tends to become more complex as time passes on... In the past we had to deal only with fiat currency, now we have also to deal with cryptos, but fiat isn't going away as well.
isthatart 8y ago
Latest version https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.10228v2 https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.10228v2 For me the takeaway message is: "Fabric is the first blockchain system to support the execution of distributed applications written in standard programming languages"
th3iedkid 8y ago
Why is it called a distributed operating system? Not sure if it can help deal or orchestrate with distributed resources?
- brian_herman 8y ago
  It uses blockchain technology like the EVM and adds a layer of abstraction so you can easily make applications untop of it. It is also funded by companies and is lead by the linux foundation! http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/blockchain.html http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/bloc...
jerguismi 8y ago
The text read like total mumbo jumbo. I have heard about hyperledger multiple times, but I still don't get what's the value prop. Maybe it is just a trap for banks so they waste their time and resources on that, while the real blockchain stuff moves forward elsewhere?
- brian_herman 8y ago
  http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/blockchain.html http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/bloc... You can easily build a dapp! Not entirely without solidtity but you can use different projects because they are managed by a specification!!! https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/sawtooth https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/sawtooth Is my favorite! It is written in python! It is sponsored by intel and you can easly get started with aws images or docker images or you could even setup everything with Ubuntu!!!!!!
  - macintux 8y ago
    I can't tell whether the ludicrous ratio of exclamation marks to sentences (11:4 or 11:5 depending on how strictly you define sentences) is sarcasm or enthusiasm.
    - krrrh 8y ago
      He has two other comments in this thread, albeit with slightly more judicious use of exclamation marks, yet I’m still just as confused as you.
- Moodles 8y ago
  Yeah, I studied blockchains before for a job (some business person saying: "hey we should really look into blockchain, and AI, and Big Data, and IoT, because errr...") and I always felt stupid and like I didn't understand it. Simple things like, why is this such a big deal? What problem does it actually solve? Why is it so amazing compared to a database? It's so, so difficult to actually read what these projects actually "do" sometimes. They often don't define what they think a blockchain actually is, or their threat model, or what their solution concretely does compared to regular databases. Once they got me to look at some project similar to this, and I was so confused as to why anyone would care I literally posted it on Hacker News because maybe they would care? But it got shot down. Which was actually quite a good moment for me because I realized that yes, I am right, this stuff is actually nonsense. I eventually realized that, perhaps, they're just deliberately obtuse. Banks or other business people are obviously falling for it. Wait until these bankers learn what Git is.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
maesho 8y ago
If you prefer to have a immutable database that is anchored to a blockchain, rather then a permissioned blockchain, I suggest looking at the Politeia toolkit. Time stamping the sum content of any data repository makes it censorship resistant. https://blog.decred.org/2017/10/25/Politeia/ https://blog.decred.org/2017/10/25/Politeia/ https://github.com/decred/politeia https://github.com/decred/politeia
wslh 8y ago
There is no point of having a private blockchain or distributed ledger. Full stop. Nothing there was no possible before Bitcoin and what they are trying to achieve is some kind of API 2.0 where different companies can integrate within the same technology. This problem is political rather than technical and the blockchain is not a solution by itself.
- drcode 8y ago
  I wouldn't go quite that far, I think in terms of simplifying your architecture and for providing sandboxing of third party code in a mission critical system there could be some modest benefits in a private blockchain. However, these are not the reasons why people are usually interested in private blockchains, which as you say revolve mainly around political problems where blockchains can't help much.
  - codebje 8y ago
    I'd be horrified to discover an architecture that could be simplified by adding a blockchain to it.
    - tuesdayrain 8y ago
      I think some day this comment will be equivalent to "I'd be horrified to discover an architecture that could br simplified by adding a linked list to it".
    - drcode 8y ago
      I agree that for MOST use cases adding blockchain tech just makes things more complicated
- luckycharms810 8y ago
  This seems to be a popular opinion amongst a lot of ethereum developers I have met. I definitely don’t have as much experience in the field so honest question here. If a permissioned blockchain has nodes running across multiple organizations and third party auditing institutions, can that not solve real world problems?
p10jkle 8y ago
I have done significant development work using hyperledger platform and aside from the fact that private blockchains are essentially pointless, this is (or at least recently was) pretty unusable, with very bad tooling and support.
- nvr219 8y ago
  I took a course on this whole thing on edx and I walked away with the same feeling.
  - um_ya 8y ago
    Out of all the Ethereum contracts people have come up with so far, I still haven't found anything truly useful. Closest thing is just the ability to create "stock" like entities.
    - CryptoPunk 8y ago
      Fabric isn't Ethereum-based. It's the next most active smart contract platform, but way behind in developer interest.
- adminonymous 8y ago
  Same. Admittedly, my work with it was with a fairly early version, but in spite of initial enthusiasm due to the fact that it is written in golang, I ended up very disappointed with a terrible developer experience. IBM's role in this mess didn't give me a whole lot of hope either.
- DINKDINK 8y ago
  Another comment from a technical perspective: Fabric doesn't even solve double spends. Say a logistics company uses Fabric to send diamonds to track (the prototypical blockchain business use case). Logistics Worker Alice goes to reserve Cargo Container C to ship her diamonds in. At the time, Logistics Worker Bob attempts to reserve Cargo Container C -- at the same time -- to ship his diamonds. This is a double spend (Company Cargo Container C -> Alice, Cargo Container C -> Bob). All Fabric does is takes both transactions, issues the txns to the "Orderer" and then both transactions get put into a block and pushed out to the nodes. The nodes are then left to deal with the bloat of having two transaction.

113 points by zyngaro 8y ago

spiritoftech 8y ago

What is a blockchain without PoW? A Linked List. Bitcoin Cash is bitcoin

skilesare 8y ago

Hyperledger Fabric: Not a Blockchain

brian_herman 8y ago
Yes it is uses blockchain technology! http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/blockchain.html http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/bloc...
- drcode 8y ago
  Rolls Royce uses "car technology" to build airplane engines, but that doesn't make an airplane a car.
- andromeduck 8y ago
  So it's a just immutable, distributed linked list of signed nodes with a consensus protocol like two stage commit, paxos, isis and maybe overlay network and peer forwarding to bridge some gaps? Sounds traditional distributed systems but now with signatures involved.
  - convolvatron 8y ago
    i can't find a reference to isis, google is pretty swamped with the term. are you referring to the work by Ken Birman?
    - andromeduck 8y ago
      Yes, Birman and Joseph.
smt88 8y ago
I see it as a way for technologists to satisfy non-tech people that "yes, we use blockchain now" when in reality this is just an immutable BFTDL with configurable consensus (perhaps similar to what aircraft have been using for many years). Full, PoW/PoS blockchain like Bitcoin or Ethereum is hard to justify in an enterprise. Decentralization is rarely part of a viable business model.
- codebeaker 8y ago
  BFTDL?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - alpyne 8y ago
    Byzantine Fault Tolerant Distributed Ledger
- davidgerard 8y ago
  My advice is to say "yes, all our developers use blockchain-related technologies" and never let on that just means you use git.

drcode 8y ago

Now you have to deal with all the issues of the traditional IT world (devops, cloudflare, vpns, containerization, cloud hosting configuration, load balancers, dns configuration, etc) AND all the issues of the new blockchain world (contract security, gas fee metering, block limits, replay attacks, etc) ...the saving grace of a "real" blockchain architecture is that at least most of the traditional IT issues go away.

jerguismi 8y ago
> ...the saving grace of a "real" blockchain architecture is that at least most of the traditional IT issues go away. All the work done related to blockchains I know of, involves lot of IT issues, both traditional ones and new ones. Quite often work tends to become more complex as time passes on... In the past we had to deal only with fiat currency, now we have also to deal with cryptos, but fiat isn't going away as well.

isthatart 8y ago

Latest version https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.10228v2 https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.10228v2 For me the takeaway message is: "Fabric is the first blockchain system to support the execution of distributed applications written in standard programming languages"

th3iedkid 8y ago

Why is it called a distributed operating system? Not sure if it can help deal or orchestrate with distributed resources?

brian_herman 8y ago
It uses blockchain technology like the EVM and adds a layer of abstraction so you can easily make applications untop of it. It is also funded by companies and is lead by the linux foundation! http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/blockchain.html http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/bloc...

jerguismi 8y ago

The text read like total mumbo jumbo. I have heard about hyperledger multiple times, but I still don't get what's the value prop. Maybe it is just a trap for banks so they waste their time and resources on that, while the real blockchain stuff moves forward elsewhere?

brian_herman 8y ago
http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/blockchain.html http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/bloc... You can easily build a dapp! Not entirely without solidtity but you can use different projects because they are managed by a specification!!! https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/sawtooth https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/sawtooth Is my favorite! It is written in python! It is sponsored by intel and you can easly get started with aws images or docker images or you could even setup everything with Ubuntu!!!!!!
- macintux 8y ago
  I can't tell whether the ludicrous ratio of exclamation marks to sentences (11:4 or 11:5 depending on how strictly you define sentences) is sarcasm or enthusiasm.
  - krrrh 8y ago
    He has two other comments in this thread, albeit with slightly more judicious use of exclamation marks, yet I’m still just as confused as you.
Moodles 8y ago
Yeah, I studied blockchains before for a job (some business person saying: "hey we should really look into blockchain, and AI, and Big Data, and IoT, because errr...") and I always felt stupid and like I didn't understand it. Simple things like, why is this such a big deal? What problem does it actually solve? Why is it so amazing compared to a database? It's so, so difficult to actually read what these projects actually "do" sometimes. They often don't define what they think a blockchain actually is, or their threat model, or what their solution concretely does compared to regular databases. Once they got me to look at some project similar to this, and I was so confused as to why anyone would care I literally posted it on Hacker News because maybe they would care? But it got shot down. Which was actually quite a good moment for me because I realized that yes, I am right, this stuff is actually nonsense. I eventually realized that, perhaps, they're just deliberately obtuse. Banks or other business people are obviously falling for it. Wait until these bankers learn what Git is.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

maesho 8y ago

If you prefer to have a immutable database that is anchored to a blockchain, rather then a permissioned blockchain, I suggest looking at the Politeia toolkit. Time stamping the sum content of any data repository makes it censorship resistant. https://blog.decred.org/2017/10/25/Politeia/ https://blog.decred.org/2017/10/25/Politeia/ https://github.com/decred/politeia https://github.com/decred/politeia

wslh 8y ago

There is no point of having a private blockchain or distributed ledger. Full stop. Nothing there was no possible before Bitcoin and what they are trying to achieve is some kind of API 2.0 where different companies can integrate within the same technology. This problem is political rather than technical and the blockchain is not a solution by itself.

drcode 8y ago
I wouldn't go quite that far, I think in terms of simplifying your architecture and for providing sandboxing of third party code in a mission critical system there could be some modest benefits in a private blockchain. However, these are not the reasons why people are usually interested in private blockchains, which as you say revolve mainly around political problems where blockchains can't help much.
- codebje 8y ago
  I'd be horrified to discover an architecture that could be simplified by adding a blockchain to it.
  - tuesdayrain 8y ago
    I think some day this comment will be equivalent to "I'd be horrified to discover an architecture that could br simplified by adding a linked list to it".
  - drcode 8y ago
    I agree that for MOST use cases adding blockchain tech just makes things more complicated
luckycharms810 8y ago
This seems to be a popular opinion amongst a lot of ethereum developers I have met. I definitely don’t have as much experience in the field so honest question here. If a permissioned blockchain has nodes running across multiple organizations and third party auditing institutions, can that not solve real world problems?

p10jkle 8y ago

I have done significant development work using hyperledger platform and aside from the fact that private blockchains are essentially pointless, this is (or at least recently was) pretty unusable, with very bad tooling and support.

nvr219 8y ago
I took a course on this whole thing on edx and I walked away with the same feeling.
- um_ya 8y ago
  Out of all the Ethereum contracts people have come up with so far, I still haven't found anything truly useful. Closest thing is just the ability to create "stock" like entities.
  - CryptoPunk 8y ago
    Fabric isn't Ethereum-based. It's the next most active smart contract platform, but way behind in developer interest.
adminonymous 8y ago
Same. Admittedly, my work with it was with a fairly early version, but in spite of initial enthusiasm due to the fact that it is written in golang, I ended up very disappointed with a terrible developer experience. IBM's role in this mess didn't give me a whole lot of hope either.
DINKDINK 8y ago
Another comment from a technical perspective: Fabric doesn't even solve double spends. Say a logistics company uses Fabric to send diamonds to track (the prototypical blockchain business use case). Logistics Worker Alice goes to reserve Cargo Container C to ship her diamonds in. At the time, Logistics Worker Bob attempts to reserve Cargo Container C -- at the same time -- to ship his diamonds. This is a double spend (Company Cargo Container C -> Alice, Cargo Container C -> Bob). All Fabric does is takes both transactions, issues the txns to the "Orderer" and then both transactions get put into a block and pushed out to the nodes. The nodes are then left to deal with the bloat of having two transaction.