What is Hyperledger Fabric?
Hyperledger Fabric is an open source, permissioned blockchain framework, started in 2015 by The Linux Foundation. It is a modular, general-purpose framework that offers unique identity management and access control features, which make it suitable for a variety of industry applications such as track-and-trace of supply chains, trade finance, loyalty and rewards, as well as clearing and settlement of financial assets.
What is Blockchain Technology?
Blockchain is a technology that makes it possible to build applications where multiple parties can record transactions directly, without the need for a trusted, central authority to ensure that the transactions are verified. Blockchain enables this with the help of a peer-to-peer network where each participant in the network has access to a shared ledger where the transactions are recorded. These transactions are by design, immutable and cryptographically verifiable. At a high-level, blockchain technology consists of three components: a distributed ledger, consensus algorithm, and smart contracts.
- A ledger is a transactional log that keeps a complete record of the entire history of data changes. Ledgers are immutable and append-only by design, and the committed transactions are independently verifiable by each member in a network. In a blockchain technology, each member of the network maintains a copy.
- Consensus algorithms help ensure that the members in the network have an agreed-upon method to allow transactions and data to be committed to the ledger and execution of smart contract code. If the consensus requirements aren’t met, then the transaction or operation is considered invalid.
- Smart contracts are code that is executed on the blockchain network. Often times, they define the rules of a business contract and are executed programatically when the preconditions for the contract are met.
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