The Hyperledger Project | Hacker News Reader

The Hyperledger Project

hyperledger.org

How is it related to this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8009663

The name was donated by the company that bought Hyperledger last year, and one of the codebases being donated also descends from the original Hyperledger codebase.

So after all there is code somewhere! https://github.com/hyperledger/hyperledger/issues/1

Can someone give me a decent explanation of how blockchain will speed up a securities settlement?

E.g: Big Bank sells 200m of some bond to a hedge fund. Bond is actually "given up" to a third party who hold bond on HF's behalf. Appreciate there's a whole load of operational shenanigans that go into making this happen. Just not sure what, or how blockchains will help.

No clue. That's what Levine is always asking. Perhaps it helps in that you can rely on the blockchain if the counter parties fall? (although that's a big if)

Maybe because it's not legacy code.

There are usually several systems involved in a settlement, all run by different parties - the bank (broker), the custodian (which holds the certificate) and the counterparties that are trading. They all have representations of the same trade that are mostly out-of-sync, and reconciling these systems incurs delays.

With the blockchain, none of these parties need necessarily trust each other, but all can share the same system which shows the current state of the transaction. All parties can observe a ledger that is distributed in real time. So they don't need any reconciliation steps anymore and all trades are "T0" (same day) settled

Ripple is working with banks on inter bank settlements and they are NOT using a blockchain. A consensus algorithm makes a lot more sense.

has anyone seen this deprecated project floating around? https://github.com/danoprey/depreciated seems like actual elixir code that must have been bought by http://www.digitalasset.com/

I've been watching this for a bit

It's not the Hyperledger TFA is about. (Confusing, I know, because DAH is a participant of the Linux Foundation Hyperledger project.)

Mission of Hyperledger Project (“HLP”).

The mission of HLP is to:

a. create an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework and code base, upon which users can build and run robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support business transactions.

b. create an open source, technical community to benefit the ecosystem of HLP solution providers and users, focused on blockchain and shared ledger use cases that will work across a variety of industry solutions;

c. promote participation of leading members of the ecosystem, including developers, service and solution providers and end users; and

d. host the infrastructure for HLP, establishing a neutral home for community infrastructure, meetings, events and collaborative discussions and providing structure around the business and technical governance of HLP.

...

Governance

HLP shall be composed of Premier, General and Associate Members. All Premier and General Members must be current corporate members of The Linux Foundation (at any level) to participate in HLP as a member. Anyone may propose a contribution to HLP’s technical codebase regardless of membership status. All participants in HLP, including Associate Members, enjoy the privileges and undertake the obligations described in this Hyperledger Project Charter, as from time to time amended by the Governing Board with the approval of The Linux Foundation (“LF”). During the term of their membership, all members will comply with all such policies as the LF Board of Directors and/or the HLP may from time to time adopt with notice to members.

...

Licensing

a. Members agree that all new inbound code contributions to HLP shall be made under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (available at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0). All contributions shall be accompanied by a Developer Certificate of Origin sign-off (http://developercertificate.org) that is submitted through a Governing Board and LF-approved contribution process. Such contribution process will include steps to also bind non-Member Contributors and, if not self-employed, their employer, to the licenses expressly granted in the Apache License, Version 2.0 with respect to such contribution.

b. All outbound code will be made available under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

...

I found the copy on the landing page to be too fancy and ornate to be useful. From a brief glance, it seems that they want to tie as many businesses together as possible into one private blockchain-based network in order to make payment verification and settlement quicker/more secure. Banks are already looking into this and exploring their own private blockchain network. [1]

This means that all payments to and from companies within the hyperledger network will be recorded and made known to all other participants in the network. If it works they will move on to transparently recording production logs, which will ostensibly help in keeping producers honest about their manufacturing process and help drive down error tolerance.

Two main problems I see immediately:

1. Tiered supply chains are so complex that it will require a huge onboarding effort to get enough companies on the ledger to make it useful to any one company.

2. Companies, much like individuals, love privacy! I'm assuming the protocol will include some type of identity-cloaking cryptographical overhead that will increase latency/complexity and reduce the benefit of having an open ledger.

Still, a really cool idea and application of blockchain tech that will be a great experiment of building a massive, ambitious network from scratch.

[1] http://www.wired.com/2015/12/big-tech-joins-big-banks-to-cre...

>From a brief glance, it seems that they want to tie as many businesses together as possible into one private blockchain-based network in order to make payment verification and settlement quicker/more secure. Banks are already looking into this and exploring their own private blockchain network. [1]

Hasn't Bitcoin already started such a network? What would be the benefit of a private network? Will banks really be able to bring more computing power (and thus, have the largest chain) than the Bitcoin public?

Bitcoin has already seen some unfortunate consequences of running on an open network.

Chinese mining syndicates hold a significant share of control over the Bitcoin network, and are therefore able to control the destiny of Bitcoin. They decided against the Bitcoin XT fork, for example and stand in the way of its adoption.

All democratic, naturally. Possibly a good thing for Bitcoin stability.

But can you imagine American banks ceding control of their settlement infrastructure to a network / protocol whose rules could be dictated by China?

If a disagreeable change is made, you can always just fork to a new chain. Are banks scared that the mining syndicates will hunt down and attack their forked chains?

What good would that do anybody?

The rules can't actually be dictated by the miners - e.g. they can make invalid blocks but clients won't accept them. They can censor transactions, though that can only delay it until a non-colluding miner includes it.

The Bitcoin XT chain fork is a bit different in that it explicitly tied itself to miner voting. That's not necessary, you could really tie it to anything.

On a private network, you can decide who is allowed to mine new blocks (and also their hashrate).

This keeps mining costs low, and means your data stays private. And it means you don't rely on Bitcoin (which I guess might be a big plus for banks).

Handling assets other than BTC is kludgey in Bitcoin. Financial people probably aren't in love with Bitcoin's irrevocable transactions either.

Private ledgers generally don't/shouldn't use mining at all, so computing power doesn't matter.

Also smart contracts on top of Bitcoin and Ethereum have some fundamental problems.

https://makebitcoingreatagain.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/5-cha...

Why not just use a big SQL database that they all control? What's the difference between that and a private blockchain?

Youre talking only about the storage which doesn't matter. You still need a system built around the database to handle known ordering of entries and immutability. So you can either hack something together or just use a blockchain which is pretty well understood and simple tech.

There is a continuum of different threat models and solutions, with the big SQL database on one end, the proof-of-work blockchain on the other end, and stuff like Stellar and PBFT in the middle. Unfortunately the field is pretty immature and people tend to pick a solution and then rationalize up a threat model to match.

Bitcoin's blockchain is absurdly expensive to record data on. It's much better suited to only proving data existed by a certain date by recording its hash value.

There's also no real benefit to having the largest chain (designing a cryptocurrency specifically to build as large a blockchain as possible would be relatively trivial) or wasting computing power calculating endless streams of pseudo-random numbers.

As for benefits of a private network: Privacy, while still being able to easily form consensus of records among all parties involved.

> The distributed ledger is a permanent, secure tool that makes it easier to create cost-efficient business networks without requiring a centralized point of control.

Really a fucking shame it is only business for networks.... A fish doesn't understand it is in water.

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