Eight Leading Blockchain Frameworks- An Overview

Blockchain technology was announced through the paper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008.

Blockchain is defined as a peer-to-peer network which timestamps records by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that can't be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. A blockchain can be permissioned, permission-less or hybrid.

Blockchain is unique because the essence of a Blockchain based system lies in ensuring the integrity of a data record based on the previous data records. This means that in a Blockchain database, a data record, once registered cannot be altered. This feature makes Blockchain ideal for decentralized and secure processing of events and transactions. Secured processing ensures that the transacting parties cannot hack the system and any attempt to do so can be easily detected along with the identity of the culprit.

Key Use Cases of Blockchain:

Organized Supply ChainMultiparty financial transactionTracking of quantifiable or tangible assetsDecentralization of business processes

The huge media coverage and a huge amount of investment have led “blockchain” become a word which almost everyone is acquainted of. We will learn about the most famous & promising frameworks of blockchain in this article.

The most popular frameworks of blockchain are:

1. Corda

Corda is an open-source Blockchain platform for building permissioned distributed ledger systems. Like other distributed ledgers, R3 Corda provides safe data storage and immutable data record.

Noteworthy that only Corda enables to develop interoperable blockchain networks which transact in strict privacy. At the moment, it’s probably the only distributed ledger platform that has a pluggable consensus.

Important features:

Communications are point to point, only the participants of the particular transaction are able to see it.

Uses UTXO technology of Bitcoin which allows it to work with all kinds of complicated assets.

The “notary” gives the uniqueness service sees just one set of hashes which represent the transactions instead of the details of the transactions.

Parties to a transaction are allowed to use the key randomization with automated and self-regulating identity management for de-anonymizing the transactions.

Corda uses Intel SGX i.e. Software Guard Extensions technology for letting the records get verified while staying encrypted to all the parties.

2. BigchainDB

BigChainDB is an open-source distributed ledger system designed for storing large data amounts and enabling developers to deploy Blockchain proof-of-concepts and applications.

The database provides decentralized control, low latency, immutability, powerful query functionality, and a high speed of transaction processing. The system doesn’t have its own currency but allows the issuing and transfer of any assets, tokens, and crypto-currencies. It supports custom digital assets and establishes access permissions at a transaction level.

It has many use cases, including areas like intellectual property, human resources, government, and land registry.

Important features:

You can run and write any MongoDB inquiry for searching the contents of all the stored assets, transactions, blocks and metadata.

It is Byzantine fault tolerant, which means, even if 1/3rd of the nodes are down, the remaining network will still be coming to a consensus on next block in about 1 second.

You can use this for designing your own personal network with transactions, custom assets, transparency and permissions.

The permissions can be set at the transactional level.

It can be used for private and public networks.

3. Ethereum

Ethereum is an open-source Blockchain platform that runs smart contracts and provides programming tools for their creation. This platform simplifies both the development of next-generation decentralized applications (DApps) and online contractual agreements.

Ethereum allows designing and issuing of crypto-currencies and tradeable digital tokens. This platform offers many useful features, including Turing-complete languages, command line tools (built in Go, C++, Python, Java, etc.), and Ethereum wallet, the last enabling developers to hold and protect crypto-assets and simplifying smart contract development.

Important features:

Ethereum can be used for creating a tradeable Digi-token.

Ethereum can be used for the crowdfunding as well without have to centralize the clearinghouse or the arbitrator.

There are about thousands of decentralized applications of Ethereal.

A crypto-currency known as “ether” is required for accessing, building and interacting with the Ethereum applications and smart contracts.

ETH and GETH are the command line tools for the Ethereum blockchain.

4. Hyperledger Burrow

Hyperledger Burrow, a joint proposal of Monax and Intel, was accepted into the Hyperledger Incubator in April 2017 by the Technical Steering Committee. ErisDB changed its name and license when it became part of Hyperledger projects, becoming the only Apache-licensed implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

The purpose of Burrow is to implement smart contracts in enterprise networks. Burrow is a node (client) that executes smart contracts on an authorized block chain compatible with the EVM. Burrow as a node is built from three main components: the consensus engine, the permissioned Ethereum virtual machine and the rpc² gateway (remote procedure call).

Important features:

Hyperledger Burrow uses the web sockets for allowing the subscription to the events.

It exposes JSON-RPC and REST endpoints. These let the interaction with the application state and the blockchain network.

This virtual machine is built for observing the Ethereum operation code specification. All the transactions are applied and are valid to the app state in the order which the consensus engine finalizes them in.

Permissions on virtual machine are imposed by secure native functions.

All the accounts in the Hyperledger Burrow have authorizations.

5. Hyperledger Sawtooth Lake

Hyperledger Sawtooth Lake is a Blockchain platform, representing an enterprise solution that supports both permissioned and permission-less developments. The platform helps software engineers easier create, deploy, and run distributed ledger systems and applications.

Sawtooth Lake is a modular suite written in Python and providing smart contract abstraction allowing developers to write contract logic in a programming language they want. Transaction business logic in Hyperledger Sawtooth is decoupled from the consensus layer. A consensus mechanism is called Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) and uses the SGX trusted computing module, built into the Intel processors of the latest generations.

Hyperledger Sawtooth can ensure a secure infrastructure for the creation and exchange of digital assets.

Important features:

The nodes of Sawtooth communicate through the messages (which contain info about blocks, peers and transactions), serialized with the help of sent over TCP and Google’s Protocol Buffers.

The Sawtooth nodes use the access control lists for controlling who can link to the network and synchronize with the present ledger state, who can send the consensus messages & participate in consensus process and who can submit the transactions to the network.

Sawtooth also supports RAFT consensus protocol. Designed for low latency transactions and high throughput, RAFT is a crash-fault tolerant voting style consensus algorithm.

6. Multichain

Multichain is an open-source distributed ledger system, based on Bitcoin Blockchain and designed for processing of multi-currency financial transactions.

The platform provides various levels of access control and permissions and enables fast solution deployment. In Multichain, various networks can simultaneously be on a single server.

Important features:

Multichain allows eight permission options for controlling who can send, connect and receive the transactions, create streams, assets and blocks.

Multichain transactions can have a number of outputs and inputs, and each one of them can link to different addresses on blockchain.

Multichain supports re-issuance, issuance, receiving and sending of unlimited assets. It also backs native currency.Multichain aids external key management along with the feature of signing the transaction outside of the regular node.

7. Hyperledger Fabric

Blockchain Hyperledger Fabric is one of the most popular Hyperledger projects. This platform serves as the basis for building Blockchain-based solutions with a modular architecture and supports the use of one or more networks. Enabling to ensure high levels of flexibility, reliability, and scalability, Hyperledger Fabric suits best for developing enterprise solutions.

It contains channels for sharing confidential information and endorsement policies for transactions. Also, transactions include signatures of all endorsing peers and are submitted to ordering service. Fabric is one of the best platforms for the creation of permissioned blockchains.

Important features:

Hyperledger Fabric (HF) has a commanding service that authorizes the total order of all the transactions.

HF has a character given by a modular membership service provider.Authorizing peers carry out a task of transaction proposals and every transaction consists of state updates, cryptographic signs of the admissible endorsing peers and dependencies.

The membership service provider of the Fabric links the peers with the cryptographic identities & maintains the permitted nature.

Consensus in the Fabric is commutable because the orders are not aware of the app state and don’t participate in the validation or the execution of the transactions. Fabric miens a peer to peer gossip service which advertises the blocks output by the commanding service to all the peers.

8. Quorum

Quorum is an Ethereum based DLT. The objective behind this to provide a permissioned implementation of Ethereum which supports transactions and contract privacy. The functioning of Quorum is similar to Ethereum but with a few differences.

Here is how Quorum is different from Ethereum blockchain:

Network and peer permissions managementEnhanced transaction and contract privacyVoting-based consensus mechanismsBetter performance

Important features:

Quorum aids the private contracts and private transactions by private/public state separation and uses peer-to-peer encrypted message exchanges for directed transfer of the private data to the network participants.

Cakeshop gives tools to manage a local blockchain node, setting up the clusters, working with the contracts and exploring the state of chain.

Quorum aids peers and node permitting, with the help of smart contracts for ensuring that only the known parties are able to join the network.Quorum gives Istanbul BFT and Raft-based consensus.

Hope you liked learning about what each of these platforms has to offer. Comments & suggestions – Anillamba0606@gmail.com

References:

https://dev.to/dianamaltseva8/10-most-popular-promising-blockchain-platforms-djo

https://www.newgenapps.com/blog/10-blockchainplatforms-to-watch-out-in-2018

https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/cyberdefense-strategies-financial-services/