PLATFORM FOR DLTs

There is multiple platforms available for different distributed ledger technology, which can be very useful in different use cases in multiple sectors of any organization. These platforms provide any organization an environment for using different technologies as per their requirement. Few of these platforms are discussed in the following sections.

HyperLedger

HyperLedger started in the year 2015 by a limited number of developers who came from various sectors like banking, finance, supply, and data management. All these people have one common goal in mind—to make blockchain as a technology more accessible to the world. So, keeping these things in mind the developers have started testing between applications and secure blockchain networks.

According to Brian Behlendrof, executive director of HyperLedger, “HyperLedger is an open source community of communities to benefit an ecosystem of HyperLedger based solution providers and users focused on blockchain related use cases that will work across a variety of industrial sectors.” HyperLedger can be thought of as a software that every individual can use to create a personal blockchain. Many different companies and organizations started using HyperLedger for their business in order to improve the business and the quality of the process.

The HyperLedger platform was created under Linux foundation and has grown rapidly in the area of blockchain. A user can either install the HyperLedger platform in a Linux machine or if using Windows, the user can create a virtual machine w'ith Linux operating system.

HyperLedger fabric is one of the known and most-used platforms that is being used for blockchain technology. HyperLedger is an open source platform,which means anyone can use and download the platform, and that too is free of cost. HyperLedger provides a good level of flexibility, scalability, confidentiality, and resiliency.

A HyperLedger fabric is a permissioned distributed ledger, and not everyone can join the network on its own. When a user going for the installation of the HyperLedger platform, it provides all the prerequisite commands necessary for the working with the HyperLedger platform.

On HyperLedger, the participants directly get associated with the deal and it get updated on the ledger and notified. This maintains a good level of privacy and confidentiality.

A modular and extensible framework is developed under HyperLedger where the common building blocks can be reused. Because of this modular approach, developers would be able to experiment with different types of components whenever they evolve, and the individual component can be changed without altering the rest of the system.

When we talk about blockchain on HyperLedger, we also need to think about the transactions and how the transactions need to be complete especially when the transaction is finance based, then smart contract comes into picture. In HyperLedger, a smart contract code can be written in different languages such as Java, Go, and NodeJS.

There are different types of HyperLedger framework present, which could be used for different purposes.

• • Hyperledger Fabric
• • Hyperledger Iroha
• • Hyperledger Saw tooth
• • Hyperledger Indy
• • Hyperledger Grid
• • Hyperledger Burrow'

• • Hyperledger Caliper
• • Hyperledger Cello

HyperLedger raises and promotes various business based on blockchain technology, which includes distributed ledger framework, smart contracts, client libraries, utility libraries, and other sample applications (https://hyperledger.github.io/, n.d.).

The following command needs to be executed while installing HyperLedger for the first time.

sudo apt-get install curl sudo apt-get install golang-go export GOPATH=$HOME/go export PATH=$PATH: $GOPATH/bin sudo apt-get install nodejs sudo apt-get install npm sudo apt-get install python sudo apt-get install docker

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg I sudo apt-key add - sudo add-apt-repository “deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/ linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) stable” sudo apt-get update apt-cache policy docker-ce sudo apt-get install -y docker-ce sudo apt-get install docker-compose sudo apt-get upgrade

R3 Corda

A lot has been changed from 1960s computers runs everything and is being used in every small or large sectors be it a banking and financial market or processing a billion of transaction in a day. But something has not changed yet. Suppose someone creates a transaction, before the transaction reaches to the receiver, the transaction reaches to multiple users in the network for authentication. At the end of the process both the sender and the receiver sees the same update.

What if there is simpler way for everybody? There is distributed ledger technology (DLT). The DLT is about sharing the data to keep the sender and receiver in sync but to make sure that no one can change or modify that data. There are a lot of platforms available today that uses blockchain technology. The problem with block- chain is that, everyone receives a copy of data or transaction which results in lots of duplicate data, which is hard to scale to meet the world’s need. Privacy is another factor which is to keep in mind while using any platform. However, using encryption techniques, data can be encrypted but usually the persons sharing the data are only the sender and the receiver.

R3 was an enterprise blockchain company started in 2014. R3 made its first block- chain open source platform for business in November 2016 (Kelly, 2016) and named the platform Corda.

FIGURE 8.8 KYC process of Corda network.

Corda is a platform for permissioned network and only authorized nodes are allowed to join the network to communicate with each other on a need-to-know basis and update the shared information.

To meet the needs of business Corda network architecture it differently. Before joining the network, each node goes under a KYC (Know Your Customer) process in order to obtain an identity certificate and when they join the network, they publish their legal identity as their name, IP address, the public key information for network map service. The nodes then can use this network map service to transact witli well- known parties in the network using private point-to-point messaging (Figure 8.8).

When there is any deal on Corda, data is put into a block with everybody else’s. Each deal is individual. Like HyperLedger, on Corda smart contract can be used for trading just anything a person can think of. The information is sent to only those who need to know the information. Sometimes there is only a sender and receiver in the transaction process, and sometime you might want to plug in a service in order to check if the deal is fine or not, and sometime a regulator needs to be kept in a loop. With Corda, you are in control.

In Corda the famous double spending problem can be prevented by using notary pools (https://docs.corda.net/head/key-concepts-transactions.html, 2018). A notary pool is a set of nodes generally set of mutually distrusting node operating a Byzantine fault tolerant consensus algorithm. They will only sign a transaction if it does not represent a double spend attempt. Every transaction requires a signature for a notary to be valid. The nodes in the notary pool cannot see the contents of ledger update; they only see the hash of each transaction updating the ledger plus the index of the fact being constitute in the outputs of that transaction.

Corda platform has been made to integrate common tools and languages like Python, Java, and JDBC.