Blockchain has near-universal applicability as a distributed transaction platform for securely authenticating exchanges of data, goods, and services. IBM and the Beijing-based Energy-Blockchain Labs are even using it to help reduce carbon emissions in air-polluted China.
At the IBM InterConnect conference in Las Vegas today, IBM and Energy-Blockchain Labs announced a blockchain-based trading platform for "green assets" that's based on the Linux Foundation's open-source Hyperledger Fabric (which the foundation recently promoted from incubator to active status and elevated to version 1.0). A beta of the carbon trading platform will be released in May, the companies said, and the product will be commercially available later this year.
According to Cao Yin, Chief Strategy Officer of Energy-Blockchain Labs, the company estimates that the platform will use smart contract-based transactions to significantly shorten the carbon assets development cycle and reduce the cost of development by 20 to 30 percent. The blockchain-based exchange will let enterprises in China generate carbon assets more efficiently, in accordance with China's Carbon Emission Reduction (CER) quota and its 2020 reduction goals in keeping with the Paris Agreement. Blockchain's immutable ledger also makes it easier and less expensive for regulatory authorities to audit and oversee the carbon market.
China accounted for a whopping 28.2 percent of the world's carbon emissions in 2016 according to Statista. The US was second at 16 percent. China has a long way to go to reach its clean energy goals and to drastically improve air quality in its major cities and metropolitan areas, but tracking carbon assets on blockchain is a start.
What is Hyperledger?
Of the numerous blockchain standardization efforts out there, Hyperledger is the biggest and the one with the most industry support. The open-source initiative, which is overseen by the Linux Foundation, is working to create a standardized framework and code base for building blockchain-based ledgers across different industries.
Hyperledger's members are a good representation of the industries it's trying to unify. You've got tech companies (Cisco, IBM, Intel, Red Hat, Samsung, VMware, and more), big banks and financial institutions (JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and so on), blockchain startups (such as Bloq, Blockstream, and Symbiont), global manufacturers and device makers, and even insurance giants like Kaiser Permanente. The organization, which formed in 2015, tool several existing standards and stitched them together into what is now Hyperledger Fabric, the initiative's first open-source project to make it out of incubation (and underpin a commercial offering like IBM Blockchain).
Hyperledger Fabric is designed to allow blockchain deployments from different industries—be it finance and baking, Internet of Things (IoT), supply chain, manufacturing, and other technologies—to be interoperable with one another. For example: if American Express, German automaker Daimler, Chinese smartphone giant Huawei, and Japanese IT manufacturer Fujistu (all Hyperledger members) were involved in a complex global transaction, all of their blockchain-based ledgers would be able to talk to one another. Because each company's private blockchain platform is built on the same Hyperledger Fabric framework, the ledgers can securely share transaction data. It's an oversimplified explanation, but that's the general idea.
IBM Bolsters BaaS With New Enterprise Tools
In addition to the new version of IBM Blockchain based on the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger Fabric version 1.0, IBM also unveiled new open-source governance and automation tools for its enterprise Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform. The company announced new governance and deployment tools, and a new open-source developer tool called Fabric Composer.
IBM has so many overlapping, interlocking cloud platforms that it's worth taking a moment to explain what the revamped blockchain service is actually built upon. At the base is IBM Cloud, the company's Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform. The blockchain infrastructure itself (meaning, the standards by which the blockchain network itself is created and managed) is built on the Hyperledger Fabric v1.0 framework, which enables a rate of more than 1,000 blockchain-based transactions per second.
The developer tools and services are offered through IBM Bluemix. IBM packages it all up with its IBM LinuxONE enterprise server infrastructure for added security. Bottom line: The service gives developers tools to build and host enterprise blockchain networks on IBM Cloud.
The new blockchain governance tools are now commercially available; they are geared toward setting up roles and permissions within a blockchain network. Members can set rules and manage compliance guidelines from a single dashboard.
IBM's newly announced Fabric Composer is a tool that assigns each network a "Network Trust Rating" of 1 to 100 when setting up a blockchain deployment. Fabric Composer is a developer automation tool that speeds up the time it takes to build a blockchain network on the Hyperledger Fabric. It includes a quick user interface (UI) creation tool and builds application programming interfaces (APIs) that integrate the blockchain network you're building with an enterprise's existing system of record. This first commercial deployment of the open-source Hyperledger Fabric is now available through a beta program on IBM Bluemix.
Blockchain: Moving and Shaking
In addition to the IBM and Hyperledger announcements, there's a lot happening in the blockchain space right now. Google, a tech giant that, until now, hasn't had much to say on the subject, revealed that it's using a private blockchain ledger to help its DeepMind AI ensure the privacy of confidential health data. After a new academic report citing "inexcusable" oversight and transparency errors in DeepMind's handling of confidential medical data from the UK's National Health Service (NHS), the company needed a better way to ensure data trust and compliance. Blockchain may be it.
We also saw a great deal of research and innovation news come out of last week's DC Blockchain Summit. The Chamber of Digital Commerce, the blockchain trade association that hosted the summit, announced the formation of the Blockchain Intellectual Property Council (BIPC), which aims to balance open-source innovation with protection of proprietary information as more companies begin to file blockchain patents. The council's inaugural members include blockchain startups (including Blockstream and Bloq), companies such as Microsoft and Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and Overstock's t0 platform. Bloq also announced the launch of BloqLabs, an effort to foster open-source blockchain development projects combined with enterprise innovation. Bloq CEO and bitcoin pioneer Jeff Garzik likened BloqLabs to a Bell Labs-type "idea factory" for the blockchain space.
The DC Blockchain Summit also served as a stage for the launch of the Blockchain Research Institute, a multimillion dollar research effort into blockchain use cases, opportunities, and implementation challenges that will span the next two years. The institute's founding members range from tech companies (Accenture, IBM, SAP) and finance institutions (Nasdaq) to blockchain startups, global corporations (PepsiCo), and even the government of the Canadian province of Ontario.