6 BENEFITS OF USING HYPERLEDGER FABRIC IN YOUR BUSINESS

Would you put up your sensitive business data on a public network?

The answer is obvious. No one would like to use a public network for their business.

Business data and internal processes require high levels of confidentiality, trust and privacy.

Blockchain offers businesses unmatched security and trust powered by its decentralized attributes. However, the public blockchain networks are open to everyone and business function requires high confidentiality.

This is where the story of enterprise blockchain networks starts. Tech giants developed decentralized permissioned blockchain networks. These decentralized permissioned blockchains are specially designed for business use cases.

With a permissioned blockchain, you have the flexibility to adjust the decentralization factor as per your requirement. Further, they offer:

· Added security layer

· Greater control over data

· Permissioned access

· High performance

· Customizability

· High scalability

One such decentralized permissioned blockchain is Hyperledger fabric. Developed by IBM, the network is offering a secure environment for businesses to develop next-gen apps and solutions.

So, what makes Hyperledger fabric a game changer for businesses?

Let us find out below.

What is HyperLedger Fabric Blockchain?

Linux Foundation developed HyperLedger Fabric to support businesses in the development of scalable and powerful blockchain apps and solutions.

What makes the network distinct from others is its modularity and versatility. By modularity, we mean the modular architecture of the network.

The Hyperledger Fabric architecture is such that you can seamlessly use it for diverse industry use cases. Be it finance, e-commerce, retail or healthcare, you can effectively use the plug-and-play elements to customize consensus, privacy and permissioned services as per your needs.

Further, the Hyperledger fabric framework is an open-source project with dynamic capabilities for optimizing privacy and performance. With flexible decentralization features, the network restricts the access and flow of information internally. As an admin, you can control the data visibility of each member.

Along with membership authorization, the network also enables companies to comply with government data protection regulations.

Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 comes with new features that enhance the overall security and performance of its previous version. It was released in 2020.

There are other key technical benefits of the Hyperledger fabric blockchain that we will be discussing below.

6 Technical Benefits of Using Hyper Ledger In Your Business

1. Modular Architecture

The Hyperledger fabric is known for its modular architecture. The framework helps businesses in multiple ways.

First, it makes the blockchain highly flexible. The Hyperledger fabric framework enables you to customize its elements. You can build apps as per your business needs.

Second, the blockchain simplifies the transaction workflow. This brings us to our next point.

By simplifying the transaction process, the blockchain clears the network. It in turn boosts the scalability and overall performance.

Finally, the modular architecture also allows you to reuse an existing module. Rather than creating a new one from scratch, you can integrate numerous modules whose function already exists. Therefore, saving your time and effort.

2. High performance and scalability

In the previous point, we discussed briefly that modular architecture enhances scalability and performance. Further the same framework also helps you establish high trust levels in your business process.

Let us understand how.

The Hyperledger Fabric module design divides the transaction processing workflow into three modules. They are:

· chaincode

· transaction ordering

· transaction validation and commitment

Further, the network participants have three distinct roles.

· Endorser

· Committer

· Consenter

Endorsement peers receive transaction proposals. These proposals contain a specific number of endorsements. The pre-set endorsement policy decides the number of endorsements required for a transaction.

Once the endorsers receive enough endorsements they forward it to the committer. The committers then check if the standard endorsement policy is followed or not. If all the transactions are valid without any contradictions, the committers then commit the transactions to the ledger.

The blockchain boosts the speed and performance by sharing only the signatures and read/write sets across the network.

Moreover, only the committer and endorser have access to confidential transaction data. Thus, your sensitive business data remains hidden from smaller participants. This avoids unauthorized access and boosts data security.

3. Data on a need-to-know basis

Let us understand from an example why restricted access is important in business.

Let’s assume you own a fashion brand. Now you are planning to launch a sports and gym wear collection at a competitive price than other brands. You will want to keep the prices hidden until the collection is announced publicly.

However, in a public blockchain supply chain, it’s very difficult to keep the prices secret. The involved parties which include manufacturer, shipping firms, financial agencies, distributors, customs officials and others will have access to all the information.

But if you are using a Hyperledger fabric solution, you can separate the private and public data. It will enable you to share important data with the involved entities while keeping the sensitive data (in this case prices) hidden or only accessible to the authorized party.

4. Permissioned Access & Data Rule Compliance

Hyperledger Fabric is a permissioned blockchain network. It means that all the participants have known identities. No one here can operate anonymously.

Permissioned access and data rule compliance go hand in hand when it comes to businesses. Business use cases in finance and healthcare industries require you to comply with legal data protection rules.

In these industries, data protection laws mandate you to know who are members of your network and who has access to your data.

For example, in a blockchain EHR solution, patients have control over who can access their health data. They can even set the time frame for which the third party can access the data. This permissioned access is only possible if you build the EHR solution over blockchain networks like Hyperledger Fabric.

If you use a public blockchain, you will be making patients’ health data accessible anonymously to anyone. This will put the sensitive personal data of individuals at risk as well as go against the individual’s data protection rights.

5. Safeguarding Digital Keys

You rely on Hardware Security Module (HSM) support to safeguard and manage your digital keys for strong authentication.

Hyperledger Fabric offers both modified and unmodified PKCS11 standards for key generation, catering to scenarios like identity management where greater protection is essential.

When you’re dealing with identity management, HSM implementation elevates the security of your keys and sensitive data.

6. Rich Queries

The ledger serves as your chronological record of state transitions in your blockchain application. Each transaction generates a set of asset key-value pairs, which are then committed to the ledger as either creations, updates, or deletions. This immutable source of truth, as of version 1.0, gets appended to the peer’s file system, which includes an embedded LevelDB.

By default, LevelDB offers a key-value database and supports various query types, including keyed queries, composite key queries, and key range queries. If you require more complex and comprehensive queries, CouchDB extends LevelDB’s capabilities by adding robust data-rich query capabilities.

When you optionally integrate a document database like CouchDB, your content becomes JSON-based and fully queryable, maintaining compatibility with the existing key/value programming model. Consequently, there’s no need to adapt your application when modelling chaincode data in JSON when utilizing CouchDB.

This JSON format streamlines the process of generating simple reports and conducting audit functions.

For instance, in supply-chain scenarios, you can employ JSON document formatting to structure specific data related to goods and transportation entities. This allows you to easily generate reports detailing assets’ journeys through various locations and transportation entities en route to their final destinations.

Conclusion

As of now, over 260 businesses use Hyperledger Fabric in their businesses. With a focus on permissioned access, versatility, scalability and simplified transactions, Hyperledger Fabric aims to make blockchain a perfect solution for enterprise use. Further, its capability for data separation and enhanced data security features make it ideal for businesses as they handle vast amounts of data.

If you are a business looking to build solutions over the Hyperledger Fabric framework, get in touch with Chaincode Consulting.

The blockchain experts at Chaincode Consulting will help you leverage the benefits of Hyperledger fabric to propel your business growth.