Chris Ferris, Hyperledger TSC Chair & Hyperledger Fabric 1.1 release manager
The Hyperledger community is really starting to fire on all cylinders! Just yesterday, we added our tenth incubated project: Hyperledger Caliper – a tool for assessing performance and scale of a blockchain platform. Just over a month ago, the Hyperledger Sawtooth project published its first major release, and a few weeks ago, Hyperledger announced it added eleven new members. Finally, the levels of collaboration at the most recent Hackfest hosted by UCLA were nothing short of amazing.
Well, we have even more news: the Hyperledger Fabric maintainers are pleased to announce the availability of version 1.1.0. The new version can be upgraded in place from an existing 1.0.x installation and includes a number of new features as well as performance, scale and UX improvements. The documentation has been improved adding command references, new and improved samples and tutorials, operational tasks and a new architectural reference for some of the key components and concepts.
Some of the key new features include:
- Node.js chaincode support- developers can now author chaincode using the most popular framework for the world’s most popular programming language
- Channel based event service – to enable clients to subscribe to block and block transaction events on a per-channel basis.
- Ability to package CouchDB indexes with chaincode, to improve performance
- Ability to generate certificate revocation lists (CRLs)
- Ability to dynamically update client identities and affiliations
- Node.js SDK connection profiles to simplify connections to Fabric nodes
- Mutual Transport Layer Security (TLS) between Fabric nodes, and between clients and nodes
- Ability to encrypt ledger data for confidentiality using the chaincode encryption library
- Attribute-based Access Control in chaincode
- Chaincode APIs to retrieve client identity for access control decisions
- Performance improvements for transaction throughput and response time
We’re really pleased with the progress we’ve made since we announced Hyperledger Fabric 1.0 release last summer, as are many of the platform’s adopters such as Alibaba, Belltane, BlocLedger, IBM, Oracle, SecureKey, State Street and many others.
“Belltane is building a Healthcare Provider Credentialing Application for Physicians, Insurers, Hospitals, Regulators, and Medical Schools. Initially built on Fabric 0.6, the upgrade to 1.0 required extensive rewrites and a new architectural design. So we were quite pleased with the ease of the upgrade process from 1.0 to 1.1. Essentially we simply upgraded the various components (Fabric, Go, and Node.js SDK) and rebuilt our application and redeployed. We are now excitedly modifying our application to take advantage of some of the new functionality in 1.1, in particular, the management of user attributes from the within the crypto where we had previously been required to handle that externally. Thanks to the Hyperledger Fabric contributors for providing such a smooth upgrade path and the new capabilities!” – James Worthington, CEO, Belltane
“As a community contributor to Hyperledger Fabric, we were able in hours to seamlessly migrate our software solution to the newly available Fabric v1.1 release. In addition to the many features now available with v1.1, we’re excited about the opportunity to experiment with the technology preview features planned for v1.2. With BlocLedger’s focus on leveraging blockchain to track, authenticate, and securitize e-signed documents, we’re particularly interested in assessing the positive impact PrivateDB will have on our solution.” – Eric Vaughn, Co Founder and CTO, BlocLedger.
“It has been great to see the levels of community collaboration that helped to make this release a reality. IBM aggressively tested the preliminary releases of the Hyperledger Fabric 1.1 and we are eager to deliver some key new features to the many clients of the IBM Blockchain Platform. We are seeing great results and are actively preparing for the transition to 1.1.0. Our latest offering, IBM Blockchain Starter Plan, will be among the first products in the market to deliver on this new release.” – Jerry Cuomo, VP of Blockchain Technology, IBM and the company’s representative to the Hyperledger Board
“The strength of the development community was a key reason behind Oracle’s decision to join the Hyperledger Project, and Hyperledger Fabric 1.1 is a significant improvement we are excited to see materialize. Fabric 1.1 features, such as Node.js chaincode, enhanced security and improved performance can help address some of the key user concerns and we look forward to including these in Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service.” – Deepak Goel, senior director of blockchain software development, Oracle
“Since we started working with Hyperledger Fabric 1.0, we have recognized and benefited from a private-permissioned blockchain, allowing us to comply with data protection and confidentiality regulations. We are excited to see how version 1.1 will better protect consumers’ data and provide opportunities to collaborate with other members of the industry.” – Andre Boysen, Chief Identity Officer, SecureKey Technologies Inc.
“We see the transparency, scalability and accountability of Hyperledger Fabric to be the pillars of blockchain’s financial democracy, and we are very proud to be a part of those contributing to its building blocks.” – Moiz Kohari, chief technology architect, State Street Corporation.
So, if you haven’t given Hyperledger Fabric a try, maybe now is the time! We have a nice set of Getting Started tutorials that you can have up and running in just a few short minutes. There’s even a tutorial to upgrade an existing network from a previous 1.0.x install.
We encourage developers to join our efforts on all Hyperledger projects. You can plug into the Hyperledger community at github, Rocket.Chat the wiki or our mailing list. You can also follow Hyperledger on Twitter or email us with any questions: info@hyperledger.org.