[3] The project’s objective is to advance cross-industry collaboration by developing blockchains and distributed ledgers, focusing on improving the systems’ performance and reliability (compared to cryptocurrency designs) so they can support global business transactions by major technological, financial, and supply chain companies.
[4] The project integrates independent open protocols and standards in a framework for use-specific modules, including blockchains with their own consensus and storage routines, and services for identity, access control and smart contracts.
[15] 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, Sberbank), business software companies like SAP, academic institutions (Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Blockchain at Columbia, UCLA Blockchain Lab), systems integrators and others (Accenture, Calastone, Wipro, Credits, Guardtime, IntellectEU, Nxt Foundation, Symbiont, Smart Block Laboratory).
[16] The governing board of the Hyperledger Project consists of ten members chaired by Robert Palatnick, (managing director and chief technology architect for DTCC), and a fifteen-member Technical Steering Committee chaired by Tracy Kuhrt, Associate Director, Blockchain and Multiparty Systems Architecture, at Accenture.
A Fabric Network comprises (1) "Peer nodes", which execute chaincode, access ledger data, endorse transactions and interface with applications; (2) "Orderer nodes" which ensure the consistency of the blockchain and deliver the endorsed transactions to the peers of the network; and (3) Membership Service Providers (MSPs), each generally implemented as a Certificate Authority, managing X.509 certificates which are used to authenticate member identity and roles.
[20] Fabric is primarily aimed at integration projects, in which a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is required, offering no user facing services other than an SDK for Node.js, Java and Go.
It supports issuance, storage, and presentations of verifiable credentials, providing the functionality to create and manage decentralized, self-sovereign identities.
The intent is for Caliper results to be used by other Hyperledger projects as they build out their frameworks, and as a reference in supporting the choice of a blockchain implementation suitable for a user's specific needs.
Hyperledger Caliper was initially contributed by developers from Huawei, Hyperchain, Oracle, Bitwise, Soramitsu, IBM and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
It provides a multi-tenant chain service efficiently and automatically on top of various infrastructures, e.g., baremetal, virtual machine, and more container platforms.
Built with JavaScript, leveraging modern tools including node.js, npm, CLI and popular editors, Composer offered business-centric abstractions as well as sample apps with easy to test DevOps processes to create robust blockchain solutions that drive alignment across business requirements with technical development.
Composer provided a GUI user interface "Playground" for the creation of applications, and therefore represents an excellent starting point for Proof of Concept work.