Catalyst Blockchain Manager: the Best Efficiency Tool for Hyperledger Fabric
Hyperledger Fabric is the most widely-used blockchain framework from the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger initiative. It is a highly modular, scalable, and open-source protocol that affords enterprises the flexibility and freedom to leverage blockchain technology.
In this article we explore:
- Why Hyperledger Fabric is one of the most popular enterprise blockchain frameworks
- Where companies can run into difficulties in setting up and operating Hyperledger Fabric
- How the smartest companies use Catalyst Blockchain Manager to enable powerful and flexible Hyperledger Fabric-based solutions in accelerated time, with minimal effort.
Let’s get started.
Blockchain is at last a mature technology. Companies around the world are using it to build more efficient business processes and to develop previously impossible solutions. Though not all blockchain frameworks are suited to enterprise requirements, Hyperledger Fabric was designed with them specifically in mind. This is partly why it remains so popular with larger organizations.
Like all technologies, Hyperledger Fabric comes with its own list of advantages and disadvantages. But for organizations looking to maximize the strengths of the protocol and minimize friction, solutions exist that can offer drastic efficiency improvements for Hyperledger Fabric developers and projects.
How is Hyperledger Fabric different from other blockchain technologies?
Hyperledger Fabric is a permissioned blockchain protocol, meaning that all the identities of participating members are known and authenticated. Hyperledger Fabric offers modularity and a distinctive method of consensus that enables performance at scale, while features such as network ‘channels’ maintain data confidentiality. Transactions on a Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network are executed on a channel, where every party needs to be authenticated and authorized. This provides an additional layer of security and privacy for your blockchain solutions.
Hyperledger Fabric’s three-part transaction process is divided into:
- Distributed logic processing and agreement
- Transaction ordering
- Transaction validation and commitment
This separation offers several advantages, including fewer levels of trust and verification across node types, network scalability, and improved performance. It also means that Hyperledger Fabric can support plug-in components.
This allows you to employ different consensus mechanisms depending on the specific needs of a project. For example, if you need higher throughput, you can inject a lightweight algorithm. On the other hand, if your organization requires a particularly high level of trust between members of the network, you can implement a more robust consensus algorithm.
Additionally, developers can create chaincodes (Hyperledger Fabric’s smart contracts) using various programming languages, such as Go and Java. Chaincodes run within isolated environments (called Docker containers) and this allows you to deploy each chaincode independently and to enhance security.
External systems can interact with chaincodes using SDKs, simplifying integration with existing enterprise systems. This allows organizations to onboard blockchain technology without the need to update all their other related systems.
What kinds of business cases are possible with Hyperledger Fabric?
IntellectEU has assisted clients in using Hyperledger Fabric for a broad range of use cases: to develop tokenized programmable payments ecosystems, to enable blockchain-based knowledge sharing for sustainability research projects, and to build complex digital supply chain tracking solutions, to name a few.
Payments Ecosystem & Programmable Tokens
IntellectEU is closely collaborating with a European bank to shape, design and develop a loyalty coin for the bank’s customer and employee base. Developed using Hyperledger Fabric and built in a scalable and composable way, the payment ecosystem integrates on-chain coin movements with off-chain products and services.
Howest's On-Chain Knowledge-Sharing Platform
Our client, Howest University of Applied Sciences developed a knowledge-sharing platform using Hyperledger Fabric. The solution contributes to research efforts and enhances transparency and automated traceability in the agricultural livestock production and processing chain.
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4AIR's Digital Supply Chain Tracking Sustainability Solution
IntellectEU is working with sustainability innovator 4AIR to create a blockchain-based registry for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) using a private instance of Hyperledger Fabric. The system accounts for all necessary SAF details, regulatory eligibility, and ownership information. Tokens are used to represent emissions reduction claims and, once created by fuel producers, are transferred to fuel distributors and fuel consumers before they get burned/retired.
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Where do companies struggle with implementing Hyperledger Fabric-based solutions?
Deployment and maintenance of Hyperledger Fabric solutions is not altogether straightforward. Setting up and managing the network can be a challenging and time-consuming task, especially if there is no prior experience within the development team. These kinds of implementations are resource intensive and usually require a dedicated team, which can be costly. There is also a steep learning curve associated with understanding Hyperledger Fabric concepts, components, and architecture.
Additionally, while Hyperledger Fabric’s privacy and confidentiality features, such as channels and private data collections, are useful — implementing and testing solutions with these features can be complicated. Typically, this requires careful design and planning.
How does Catalyst Blockchain Manager supercharge Hyperledger Fabric solutions?
Clearly, while Hyperledger Fabric is a modular and powerful framework, it comes with some complications. But with Catalyst Blockchain Manager, enterprises benefit from the best Hyperledger Fabric efficiency tool on the market.
Catalyst is an end-to-end solution enabling enterprises to focus solely on delivering value with DLT and blockchain technology. It provides a cutting-edge abstraction layer for Hyperledger Fabric, driving teams towards efficiency through simplified certificate authority management and rotation, advanced monitoring and visibility features for chaincode events, peer status, and external database status, and support for external orderers.
Benefits
- Enterprise-grade security: Leverage secrets and encryption management systems like HashiCorp Vault and Kubernetes Secrets, to manage and protect sensitive data such as certificates, API encryption keys, and passwords.
- High-availability & Disaster recovery: Failover mechanisms, disaster and recovery strategies, and multi-site high availability deployments. Simplified migration between versions, technical and application monitoring, as well as integration with existing monitoring tools.
- Cloud-agnostic Deployment: No vendor lock-in. Cloud-native design. Support for any cloud service provider, hybrid, or on-premise deployment. Options for deployment of a cluster in multiple availability zones.
- Intuitive User Interface & API: Clear and consistent, with streamlined access to all Hyperledger Fabric functionalities via our user interface & API.
- Management & Operations Console: Manage networks, organizations, consortium proposals, nodes, applications, and more.
- Expert Support: Highly qualified, well-equipped troubleshooting from a reactive and responsive support team.
Easily build, deploy, manage, and scale Hyperledger Fabric-based solutions
To succeed in today's competitive business landscape, organizations must optimize their processes, increase productivity, and rapidly create value. Hyperledger Fabric offers a robust framework for building secure and scalable blockchain application networks, and Catalyst simplifies the process of deploying and managing these networks. By automating high-impact workflows, Catalyst enables organizations to maximize their resources and focus on delivering value to customers.
Creating & Managing the Network: Catalyst Blockchain Manager helps you streamline the process of building, deploying, and managing your blockchain application network, providing simplified functionality for the majority of tasks.
Smart Contract Deployments: Catalyst Blockchain Manager streamlines the deployment of smart contracts to a Hyperledger Fabric-based application network, providing a simple interface to upload and deploy chaincodes.
“Catalyst Blockchain Manager simplifies the development, deployment, and maintenance of Hyperledger Fabric network solutions and allows you to focus on the business scenarios that matter. For the development team, it provides an easy path to deploy smart contracts and greatly reduces the time needed for testing.”
— Jonathan Mayeur, Product Lead, IntellectEU
Catalyst Blockchain Manager makes Hyperledger Fabric simpler, easier, and faster to build and work with. This allows you to quickly develop Hyperledger Fabric-based solutions for innovative new business cases. Catalyst is streamlined for the enterprise, providing high levels of workflow automation, back-up and recovery capabilities, and advanced monitoring.
Summary
Hyperledger Fabric is an industry standard for open-source enterprise blockchain. Implementing the protocol can come with technical complexity for organizations and it can take time for teams to develop the necessary expertise to work with it successfully. Fortunately, IntellectEU’s Catalyst Blockchain Manager can lower the bar to entry and dramatically accelerate your blockchain project roadmap.
That’s why leading organizations use Catalyst Blockchain Manager to build, deploy, and manage their Hyperledger Fabric solutions at scale.
BUILD POWERFUL HYPERLEDGER FABRIC NETWORKS
Speak to one of our specialists about deploying and managing Hyperledger Fabric solutions with Catalyst Blockchain Manager.
Hyperledger Fabric is a project hosted by The Linux Foundation™ and Hyperledger is its registered trademark.
