The Hyperledger Project was created by the Linux Foundation in December 2015.
The objective of the project is to advance cross-industry collaboration by developing blockchains and distributed ledgers, with a particular focus on improving the performance and reliability of these systems (as compared to comparable cryptocurrency designs) so that they are capable of supporting global business transactions by significant technological, financial and supply chain companies.
The Hyperledger Project is aspiring to integrate independent open protocols and standards as a framework for use-specific modules, including blockchains with their consensus and storage routines, as well as services for the identification, access control, and smart contracts.
In early 2016, the project began accepting proposals for incubation of codebases and other technologies as core elements. One of the first proposals was for a codebase combining previous work by Digital Asset, Blockstream's libconsensus, and IBM's OpenBlockchain.
The amalgam of those three projects was later named Fabric. In May, Intel's distributed ledger named Sawtooth was incubated.
Early on there was some confusion that Hyperledger would develop its bitcoin-like cryptocurrency, but Behlendorf has unreservedly stated that the Hyperledger Project itself will never build its cryptocurrency.
On 12 July 2017, the project announced its production-ready Hyperledger Fabric 1.0.
Members and governance
Brian Behlendorf was appointed the executive director of the project next year, after the founding members were announced in February 2016.
Early members of the initiative included blockchain ISVs, (Blockchain, ConsenSys, Digital Asset, R3, Onchain), well-known technology platform companies (Cisco, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, NEC, NTT DATA, Red Hat, VMware), financial services firms (ABN AMRO, ANZ Bank, BNY Mellon, CLS Group, CME Group, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Deutsche Börse Group, J.P. Morgan, State Street, SWIFT, Wells Fargo), Business Software companies like SAP, Systems integrators and others such as: (Accenture, Calastone, Credits, Guardtime, IntellectEU, Nxt Foundation, Symbiont).
On October 2016 the Hyperledger announced that Baidu, the Chinese "Google" has joined the project as a Premier Member.
The governing board of the Hyperledger Project consists of twenty members chaired by Blythe Masters, (CEO of Digital Asset), and a twelve-member Technical Steering Committee chaired by Christopher Ferris, CTO of Open Technology at IBM.
Hyperledger blockchain platforms
Hyperledger Burrow
Burrow is a blockchain client including a built-to-specification Ethereum Virtual Machine. Contributed by Monax and sponsored by Monax and Intel.
Hyperledger Fabric
Hyperledger Fabric is a permission blockchain infrastructure, originally contributed by IBM and Digital Asset, providing a modular architecture with a delineation of roles between the nodes in the infrastructure, execution of Smart Contracts (called "chaincode" in Fabric) and configurable consensus and membership services. A Fabric Network comprises "Peer nodes," which execute chaincode, access ledger data, endorse transactions and interface with applications. "Orderer nodes" which ensure the consistency of the blockchain and deliver the endorsed transactions to the peers of the network, and MSP services, Implemented as a Certificate Authority, managing X.509 certificates which are used to authenticate member identity and roles.
Fabric is primarily aimed at integration projects, in which a DLT is required, offering no user-facing services other than an SDK for Node.js, Java, and golang. Fabric supports chaincode in golang, Javascript, and Java, and is therefore potentially more flexible than a closed Smart Contract language.
Hyperledger Iroha
Based on Hyperledger Fabric, with a focus on mobile applications. Contributed by Soramitsu.
Hyperledger Sawtooth
Contributed by Intel, Sawtooth utilizes a novel consensus mechanism known as "Proof of Elapsed Time," a lottery-design consensus protocol that builds on trusted execution environments provided by Intel's Software Guard Extensions (SGX). An effort is underway to mount the Hyperledger Burrow EVM application engine as a Sawtooth transaction processor.