Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation open the door to public blockchain space

Rage Comment : The Hyperledger project has a strong foresight in the blockchain field, and its long-term stable strategy has already seen some results. However, no one can be sure of the future prospects and how it will end in the future. Brian Behlendorf, executive director of the project, elaborated on the relationship and universality between the currently popular supply chain and private chain. Obviously, technological integration is the most in line with the needs of the market and enterprises. Regarding the future of blockchain, Behlendorf will give a wonderful analysis at the Shanghai Blockchain International Week this week.

Translation: Annie_Xu

The Hyperledger project is a cross-industry collaboration project initiated by the Linux Foundation and joined by many banks, technology giants, blockchain companies, etc. The purpose is to develop open source protocols for private chain applications. Now the project has extended to the public chain field, and is expected to achieve closer win-win cooperation.

Brian Behlendorf, the executive director of the project, was originally the developer of the Apache Web Server, a founding member of the Apache Software Foundation, and a board member of the non-profit foundation organizations Mozilla Foundation and Electronic Frontier Foundation. He publicly stated that the Hyperledger Project is an umbrella provided by the software development community for blockchain.

“Think about the potential of the Hyperledger project in the emerging public blockchain space. Most open source blockchain projects outside of Hyperledger are centered around permissioned chains, using cryptocurrencies for mining funding and consensus mechanisms. This is very challenging, and not all projects are technical, as we can see from the controversy over the size of Bitcoin and the DAO project. What may seem like technical disputes at first glance may be about the impact of different versions of the platform in society and who should regulate it.”

Close cooperation

Behlendorf pointed out that there is a lack of talent in the blockchain field. Because of the newness of the technology, few people can understand the challenges of cryptocurrency and blockchain engineering, as well as the principles of distributed systems. As a result, there are no extra software development resources. Currently, a lot of work in the field is duplicative, and "there is a high degree of tribalism among open source developers."

Behlendorf spoke about how to enhance cooperation and jointly overcome difficulties, especially about Ethereum, because Ethereum is now very well-known, and many alliances and private chain projects are also developing on this basis.

“Members of the Ethereum community have a good friendship with us and have discussed whether we can provide some help. This community is full of vitality, innovation and influence. And now there is a lot of corporate attention, which can drive the community to develop faster, but there is also the possibility of increasing pressure. We have experience in how to deal with this kind of attention, and we will always have good action to ensure the healthy development of the project. We have no intention of attracting members of the entire Ethereum community or foundation, because they have a lot of work, such as standardization of Ethereum blockchain processes and promotion of Ether, which are beyond the Hyperledger project. But we are willing to develop projects based on the Hyperledger project, as a client of the Ethereum blockchain, or develop projects on the Ethereum technology platform.”

Behlendorf said that the Hyperledger project is mainly designed for private chain applications. The flagship project is called Fabric, which contains a consensus mechanism and operating model that is extremely suitable for private chain needs. The companies involved in the design include "IBM, DTCC (Depository and Clearing Corporation of America), Digital Asset Holdings, London Stock Exchange, etc. Many institutions find that private chains are more useful than the current Ethereum clients and network forks."

Most private blockchain projects in the proof-of-concept or testing phase are based on the Ethereum platform, such as the Swiss Consortium; therefore, the need for a new protocol is obvious. Behlendorf continued his previous speech:

“It would be great if the Ethereum client became part of the Hyperledger project and if developers wanted to modify it to appeal to the use cases of permissioned chains. This could potentially compete with Fabric, but it could also be something unique, like the famous Darwin’s finches. In this hypothetical project, we would not redefine the standard for Ethereum interoperability (which is the nature of the entire Ethereum community), support an alternative currency, or make any changes to the Ethereum trademark, which is theirs.”

“Another avenue for collaboration is exploring integrating some elements of Fabric, such as combining Fabric’s permissioned blockchain consensus with the Ethereum VM that runs smart contract code. There are a lot of complexities here, such as how “energy” (the currency that provides mining power) works in a system that doesn’t need, have tokens, or provide mining rewards, and this is of course just a hypothetical question. But if we can overcome the tribalism of our platforms and think about how to integrate, we may be able to make faster progress.”

Lack of talent

Talents always attract each other, and new members are particularly popular. Currently, most relevant talents have gone to Ethereum. There are many reasons, such as its grassroots nature, perfect development team, including the inventor of smart contracts, "political neutrality" philosophy, emphasis on technology, etc. But the main reason is the function of Ethereum and its smart contracts, which allow developers to launch projects with excellent application value, with the possibility of subverting various industries and even winning big prizes.

This combination of strengths has created a unique ecosystem, with developers flocking in droves, with nearly 1,000 hackers signing up for the ether.camp hackathon. Household names are following suit, with Microsoft Wanxiang Blockchain Labs hosting Devcon2, and Thomson Reuters taking the plunge to become the first multinational to release a public blockchain product, the Ethereum HD ID Wallet, which is hopefully just the first of many.

Hence why can’t multinational corporations invest more resources in Ethereum, such as hiring developers to develop on the Ethereum public chain to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge, and allow Ethereum to take into account private chain use cases when necessary, instead of spending resources on the Hyperledger project.

Behlendorf confirmed this possibility:

“We can do this with any Ethereum-related project that is based on the Hyperledger project. Anybody can come in, contribute, work with other developers, collaborate, regardless of whether they are sponsored by the Hyperledger project or the Linux Foundation. That’s how the Linux Foundation runs all its projects, and I think we have a good reputation for that. We can work with large enterprises, and we can work with small companies that are not familiar with open source software development. We can work with corporate consultants who are nervous about the Apache license, and we can simply integrate into the future Hyperledger project. That’s what we can offer to projects that want to join.”

Regulatory challenges

The public blockchain space is new, but it has been around for almost a decade. We’ve seen regulatory moves before Ethereum, but whether the steps taken so far are the right ones is a matter of opinion, and reaching community-wide consensus on complex and difficult issues has become a reality, and it was done in two months, which is much less time than a presidential election.

The biggest decision-making factor is also a matter of opinion. We can identify three dominant factors based on facts, namely developers, miners, and exchanges, and the media helps to play the role of the three. However, in a sense, none of them is important, because anyone can fork at any time, it’s just a matter of how to convince others to join.

It is still difficult to foresee what kind of more formal human control, if any, would be imposed on the system. Behlendorf comments on this point:

“I think the Hyperledger project can leave these issues to the community to solve. The community is training professionals in public chain management, and we don’t need to do anything ourselves. The difficulty of these problems is certain, and anyone related to tokens cannot avoid this problem. And it means that the software must be modified and this adjustment must be promoted to the entire mining network before a certain deadline.”

“It’s hard to agree on how to write the right code. It’s even harder to choose the right code to ensure that a certain token is dominant. The fact is that different tokens may have corresponding growth environments, and they can use the same software support, maybe just with slightly different parameters; but there must be a clear distinction between software writing and token management.”

However, the process by which developers make decisions and recommendations needs to be regulated, Behlendorf explained:

“Each Hyperledger-based project has its own technical decision makers who can make their own internal decisions. Developers have their own roadmaps and can decide what to build.”

Every six months, all contributors in the community can elect a Technical Steering Committee (TSC). Its responsibilities are to ensure project progress, publish results regularly, seize every opportunity for integration and cooperation, discuss any issues that affect project progress, propose and review new projects, and have them signed and confirmed by the Governing Board. Committee members hold weekly telephone conferences, the content is public, and the meeting minutes are published.

The Board of Directors is another level of the project, responsible for the business management of the Hyperledger project, ensuring the proper use of sponsor resources, supervising the work of the team, and so on. Members are drawn from senior members and the TSC Chair, as well as two representatives elected by the General Members. So there are currently 16 people in total.

They meet regularly in private on a monthly basis and have only an indirect influence on the technical direction of the project. Most developers and development issues are managed by a specific project management team, and then decisions are made by the TSC.

This is a reasonable organization with clear responsibilities and high reliability; the disadvantage is that the project is discussed layer by layer, which takes a long time. In addition, the private meetings of the board of directors reduce the credibility and it is impossible to identify the beneficiaries, just like the organizational form of Ethereum's Foundation.

If any of the Hyperledger projects become controversial, there will be a lively public debate, and anyone can fork, since all projects are open source. Linux has been the subject of much controversy, many of which are probably as controversial as the Bitcoin block size controversy. And the Internet Council's track record has not been very effective. ICAAN, for example, has had its share of controversy and even made clearly wrong decisions, and Linux has not made any progress because the developer community has no access to the actual users on the contact list.

However, the more such two-way cooperation there is, the better. Private chain developers can undoubtedly bring many useful elements of public chains, and vice versa for public chain teams. There are many problems they can overcome together, or they can integrate their own solutions.

Adopt a new private blockchain protocol or a revised version of the public blockchain?

Ultimately, both public and private chains will need to connect and learn from each other, and each will have its own unique use cases, just like the relationship between the Internet and intranets (used internally by many companies); therefore, cooperation is necessary, especially in standard setting and tackling protocol problems.

The important question at this stage is whether these challenges can be addressed by developing new consensus protocols for private chain use cases, or by modifying the consensus protocols of existing public chains, as many enterprises are currently doing.

Of course, both solutions have their own advantages. A private chain-specific consensus protocol may be more suitable for a specific purpose; however, adjusting the public chain can firstly unite the forces and resources of multiple parties to develop a protocol, which can minimize the lack of talent and problems, and reduce duplication of work; secondly, it allows everyone to have a core foundation, making standard setting easier; thirdly and most importantly, modifying the public chain to add a permission factor can provide a more secure private chain.

Security is the shortcoming of blockchain and the most important element of both blockchains. Current private chain protocols such as Fabric are open source. Although security has been enhanced, there are still limitations. If a vulnerability is found, people working on the project will definitely be willing to disclose it; however, there are also some people who want to fix the vulnerability and apply it in the running system. Unless they are paid developers, the benefits of disclosing the vulnerability are almost zero, so it all depends on personal willingness.

The public chain provides a reward mechanism for publishing such valid account vulnerabilities, of course, because hackers may steal a lot of money. This situation is terrible, and we need to do everything we can to ensure the absolute security of the code; but the modified version of the private chain can take advantage of hacker attacks, because it does not cost anything to discover and publish vulnerabilities in time and fix them. If Codra or Fabric has such a vulnerability, the private chain system will definitely publish it.

Therefore, we can clearly see that it seems that we should not build a new private chain consensus mechanism, but can achieve it by adjusting the public chain, just like many companies are doing now. In this way, everyone can focus on the absolutely secure core code, and then provide suitable private chain solutions for financial and industrial IoT applications on this basis.

Behlendorf said that the hybrid model is acceptable, which may be a trend that will continue to develop in this field. Let us look forward to more exciting content from Behlendorf at the Shanghai Blockchain International Week this week.