Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

These are derived in part from conversations on the slack channels.

1. What is the Hyperledger project? Why was it created?

• See the hyperledger.org homepage https://www.hyperledger.org/

2. How do I connect with the technical community?

• https://www.hyperledger.org/community

3. What are the projects and where do I learn more? How do I get started as a contributor?

• See the github-hosted README.md https://github.com/hyperledger/hyperledger

4. Is there a review group for use cases?

• Yes. Take a look at the Requirements Working Group's page https://github.com/hyperledger/hyperledger/wiki/Requirements-WG

5. Where is the document of APIs with definitions of methods and their descriptions, which is generated from source code?

• For Fabric, please see https://godoc.org/github.com/openblockchain/obc-peer

6. Where can I get more general background?

• General Audience - IBM on What is Blockchain?
• Capital Markets Audience - Bloomberg TV interviews Blythe Masters of DAH
• Identity management perspective - Chris Allen on Identity and Blockchain
• While not the same as blockchain / distributed ledger, Bitcoin is a useful point of comparison - Scott Driscoll on How Bitcoin Works Under the Hood

7. How do I provide feedback? How do I make suggestions? How do I log bugs?

• Please do share feedback… if there are specific things you would like to see addressed, please open an issue in the appropriate/relevant repository. There is an issue list for each repository. For example:
  • fabric's is https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric/issues
  • sawtooth-core's is https://github.com/hyperledger/sawtooth-core/issues
  • hyperledger's is https://github.com/hyperledger/hyperledger

8. "There are currently two incubator projects under the Hyperledger umbrella: Fabric and Sawtooth Lake. They seem to be independent to each other and functionally somewhat overlapping. Can they be integrated together? Apologize if this is a silly question."

• Not a silly question. Your observation of overlapping functionality is correct.
• As for integrating the two, there are some folks looking and interested in seeing what that would entail - for example, could we get POET running on the Fabric, or the PBFT running on STL?. Nothing formal has been proposed as of 2016-06-13.
• In addition, the business logic layers are also complementary... Fabric uses Chaincode in Dockers and Sawtooth uses Transaction Families deployed to the validators. Cross-pollinating those layers could also be interesting.

9. What different purposes do Sawtooth and Fabric serve?

• Sawtooth is a modular blockchain built for scalability and to support pluggable components at each layer, e.g. consensus. It has a few novel aspects including the default consensus (PoET) and the transaction family concept in the business logic layer (smart contracts if you like that term).
• Fabric is also modular and includes an experimental consensus (sieve) and transaction logic deployed on chain executed in dockers (chaincode).

10. Can you point me to some relevant industry whitepapers and blogs?

• Vitalik Buterin's Ethereum White Paper - A NEXT GENERATION SMART CONTRACT & DECENTRALIZED APPLICATION PLATFORM.
• SWIFT Position Paper on distributed ledger technologies
• SWIFT Institute working paper on The Impact and Potential of Blockchain on the Securities Transaction Lifecycle
• DTCC whitepaper on Embracing Disruption. Will need to provide contact information in order to download.
• United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General whitepaper on Blockchain Technology: Possibilities for the U.S. Postal Service
• R. G. Brown's blog on "Thoughts on the future of finance"
• Marley Grey of Microsoft on "Introducing Project Bletchley"