Hyperledger is a collaborative effort from different industry leaders to frame an open source, Cross-Industry Blockchain aided technologies. The movement basically aims to develop the distributed ledgers that can support enterprise-level business transactions. The entire project is developed on the open source platform. Even though the project is hosted and driven by the free folk of the internet ‘Linux Foundation’, technology giants like IBM, Intel, Samsung and many more others already became part of the project.
The project was announced in December 2015 by Linux foundation, and soon it became popular as leaders from different business domains like banking, healthcare, finance, supply chain, IoT, manufacturing etc. joined the movement. As of now with 170+ members, the project is the largest blockchain technology consortium and it is entirely funded by its members. Linux Foundation does not stipulate a single blockchain standard for the participants, rather they choose a community-driven approach to develop blockchain technologies. By early 2016, the project began accepting proposals and later a number of different business blockchain frameworks and tools were accepted for incubation. Under the project following frameworks have been unveiled so far.
Iroha
Fabric
Sawtooth
Burrow
Indy
As of now Fabric, Sawtooth, and Iroha are promoted from the state of ‘incubation’ to ‘active’ by Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee.
Another important thing to point out is the difference between Hyperledger and Fabric. Often people are confused with these two terminologies. The fabric is one of the protocols under the hyperledger project and Hyperledger is the name of the project itself, not a technology. When people using the term ‘hyperledger’, they are actually meaning one of the technologies under the hyperledger project.
The tools that are currently under hyperledger project
- Hyperledger cello
- Hyperledger composer
- Hyperledger explorer
- Hyperledger quilt
The project along with its participating technologies are often referred as ‘Hyperledger Umbrella’
Objectives of the Hyperledger Project.
- To enable its member organizations to build robust, enterprise-level applications, platforms and hardware systems based on blockchain technology
- To advance the use of blockchain technology in business by developing a cross-industry level, open-source development library
- To facilitate building custom distributed ledger solutions for its members.
- To integrate independent blockchain protocols.