Hyperledger

Hyperledger is an umbrella project of open-source blockchains and related tools started by the Linux Foundation in December 2015. It's a global collaboration of leaders in finance, banking, IoT, supply chain, manufacturing, and technology.

Hyperledger aims to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies by encouraging a collaborative approach to developing distributed ledgers. Unlike other blockchain projects that are open to the public (like Bitcoin or Ethereum), Hyperledger blockchains are permissioned, meaning that the participants are known and identified. This makes Hyperledger particularly suitable for enterprise contexts where privacy and performance are key considerations.

Hyperledger Projects

There are several projects under the Hyperledger umbrella, including:

Hyperledger Fabric: A platform for distributed ledger solutions underpinned by a modular architecture delivering high degrees of confidentiality, flexibility, and scalability. It is designed to support pluggable implementations of different components and accommodate the complexity and intricacies that exist across the economic ecosystem.

Hyperledger Besu: An Ethereum client designed to be enterprise-friendly for both public and private permissioned network use cases. It can be run on the Ethereum public network, a test network, or a private network.

Hyperledger Indy: A distributed ledger built specifically for decentralized identity. It provides tools, libraries, and reusable components for creating digital identities rooted on blockchains.

Hyperledger Sawtooth: A modular platform for building, deploying, and running distributed ledgers. It includes a novel consensus algorithm known as Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET).

Hyperledger Aries: Infrastructure for blockchain-rooted, peer-to-peer interactions. It’s a collection of shared, reusable, interoperable tools that can be used to create, transmit and store verifiable digital credentials.

Hyperledger and Decentralized Identity

Hyperledger is playing a key role in the decentralized identity space, particularly through the Hyperledger Indy, Aries, and Ursa projects.

Hyperledger Indy provides tools for creating and managing decentralized, self-sovereign identities using distributed ledgers. Hyperledger Aries extends upon Indy by providing a shared, reusable, interoperable toolkit designed for initiatives and solutions focused on creating, transmitting, and storing verifiable digital credentials. Hyperledger Ursa is a shared cryptographic library that would enable people (and projects) to avoid duplicating other cryptographic work and hopefully increase security in the process.

All these projects aim to create a universal digital identity solution, giving control of personal data back to the individuals.

In conclusion, Hyperledger is providing key building blocks for a new generation of secure and private digital identity solutions, which can be used across various industries and use-cases.