Hyperledger’s Production-Ready Blockchain Code to Come Within March

The Linux Foundation-led Hyperledger Project, a blockchain group which includes 120 major corporations and financial institutions including IBM, Intel, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Accenture, will release its first production-ready blockchain codebase by the end of March.

The codebase, called Hyperledger Fabric, will be utilized as the base protocol and platform for its member banks and companies looking to use blockchain technology in building both decentralized and private applications. According to Hyperledger’s executive director Brian Behlendorf, the goal of Hyperledger Fabric is to supplement large-scale commercial operations of companies with a robust network.

Behlendorf further emphasized that the Hyperledger development team which includes IBM focused on building a codebase which can be put “into serious production.”

Various industry leaders and multi-billion dollar corporations will implement Hyperledger Fabric once the codebase is deployed and released. Community members including the London Stock Exchange, DTCC, and Fujitsu, will allocate their resources in maximizing the potential of Hyperledger Fabric by showcasing its use cases in a wide range of applications.

Unique Structure of Hyperledger

Essentially, Hyperledger is an umbrella organization which houses many development communities and corporations looking to implement and integrate blockchain technology into their existing systems and infrastructures.

Any community member, contributor or partner company can propose blockchain projects or ideas to the Hyperledger Foundation and once approved, the development for the project will be pursued shortly after that.

For Hyperledger projects like the Fabric to be deployed and introduced to the public, the foundation’s Technical Steering Committee (TSC) must unanimously agree that the codebase is production ready. The TSC looks into the technical viability of the code, as well as its adaptability, flexibility, security and functionality to ensure that large-scale service providers will be able to utilize the blockchain technology without any boundaries.

“Hyperledger’s TSC agreed to grant the project team’s request to advance the Fabric’s status from Incubation to Active. As a reminder, we see Hyperledger as an “umbrella” for software developer communities building open-source blockchain and related technologies. Fabric falls under that umbrella and is the first of the five Incubator projects to graduate,” Behlendorf announced in his official statement.

Open-Source Technology

As a non-profit organization, the Hyperledger Foundation develops open-source software. For years, companies and blockchain consortia including the R3CEV were criticized for failing to facilitate peer-to-peer reviews via Github or other open-source repositories. When the R3 Corda was examined by Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd amongst other respected developers, several technical flaws were revealed for review and repair.

The Hyperledger Foundation acknowledges the importance of an open-source development community, specifically for sophisticated technologies like blockchain technology. Once the codebase is released, any developer can contribute to the code of Fabric via GitHub.

In his statement, Behlendorf noted that individual contributors represent nearly 45 percent of the development of the Hyperledger Fabric. He further emphasized his optimism towards the effort, expressing his enthusiasm of Hyperledger Fabric’s diversity in development:

“In the year since the project entered incubation, the diversity of contributors on Fabric-related projects has grown from nearly no diversity of contributors to 45 percent of the contributors – representing individual contributors or developers working for one of nineteen other companies, be they exchanges, banks, large ISVs or start-ups.”