The primary purpose of the Bitcoin blockchain is to support a decentralized peer-to-peer payments system. It was meant to be a transparent, permissionless, and a public system, where anyone can enter and leave as they wish, just like in any other bearer payment system such as transacting cash. However, when the use cases for the blockchain expanded beyond the simple payment system into the business areas such as personal healthcare systems and financial systems, privacy and restricted access became imperative and warranted. Even in the public payment system, it became apparent that the whole chain may not be relevant and need not be recorded by all the participants. For example, business transactions in a Buffalo School District may not be relevant to the transactions of Nairobi Tourism Board. Such thoughts resulted in the creation of permissioned blockchain, where only nodes with permission can transact, and take part in the blockchain operations. Thus, we have the characterization, the permissioned blockchain. Permissioned blockchain is also known as a consortium blockchain based on its common use cases in specific vertical business domain such as the automobile or food services consortiums. In this module, we'll explore the contributions of two major technology organizations. The Linux Foundation's Hyperledger Fabric, and Microsoft Azure blockchain as a service. The former is a permissioned blockchain platform, and the latter leverages its popular Cloud offering to allow users to stand up several blockchain platforms. These are indeed diverse technologies. Let's go explore. On completion of this module, you will be able to explain the goals and working of Linux Foundation's Hyperledger project, explain the architecture and working of Hyperledger Fabric, explore tools and application development for Hyperledger Fabric, and provide a high level overview of Microsoft Azure's blockchain as a service. The Linux Foundation initiated the Hyperledger project in 2015 to promote cross industry collaborations. The goal was and remains to bring together stakeholders, technology providers, and developers to advance the development and adoption of blockchain solutions. Some of us recall a similar situation when Unix became a popular operating system resulting in numerous non-standard commercial versions; Solaris, AIX, BSD, and so on. Finally, culminating in the open-source version of the Linux operating system. A comparable moment is happening on the blockchain front with a Hyperledger effort. This kind of collaboration among industrial partners and community of developers also helps in understanding the collective needs of the users and in minimizing the duplication of the efforts in design and engineering. It can also improve the pace of advancement especially in this nascent technology where numerous challenges are still waiting to be solved. There are many other advantages to this concerted effort, and you can read about them in the references we have provided in the resources section of the course. Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to explain the Hyperledger initiative and list some implementations of Hyperledger Frameworks and tools. The Hyperledger is an ecosystem supporting not only blockchain protocol, the distributed ledger, and the smart contract, but it also supports the framework and tools for active engagement and collaboration of developers, businesses, and other stakeholders. The overarching goals are to promote the development of a safe, reliable, efficient, innovative, quality driven open-source components and platform to support enterprise adoption of the blockchain technology. The Linux Foundation, the members, and associates have established a home, and an environment for supporting these goals. The basic framework for Hyperledger is defined by the Linux Foundation. The member organization can then design their blockchain by extending this definition. This project also helps to build tools and frameworks and support educational and application development activities. It is expected that under the umbrella of well-defined specifications, blockchain modules created by various members will be pluggable into each other's technology environment.
