New Linux blockchain technology ready for deployment

[Tim Kannegieter]

Apparently this new platform called Hyperledger Fabric 1.0should be useful for industrial IoT applications. I dont fully understand how this works or applies in IoT, but would welcome comment and examples.

https://www.hyperledger.org/announcements/2017/07/11/hyperledger-announces-production-ready-hyperledger-fabric-1-0

[Heath Raftery]

Fascinating. Quite an achievement. This is certainly a promising way to get started building a blockchain based application. Time will tell how effective it is in practice - currently the user base is heavily dominated by those with a vested interest in giving it the thumbs up!

I'm encouraged by their approach to scalability and confidentiality. These are well known problems in the blockchain that underpins Bitcoin and to some extent Ethereum. Sounds like they've taken a few pages out of the Monero playbook, which I personally think is likely to be the cryptocurrency of choice for discerning traders!

IOTA seems to have similar goals, though has a different approach to the challenges. To me Fabric feels a bit more professional/cohesive/supported but the proof will be in the pudding.

In either case, the applicability to IoT is, like most things hanging off the IoT bandwagon, tangential at best. Like any distributed ledger technology, anything that requires a trustworthy exchange of value could potentially benefit. The bog-standard application is financial transactions, but it's not hard to think of more IoT related applications: trading electricity micro generation and consumption; data consumption by device; pay-by-the-listen music; insurance adjustments based on location/activity/etc. But it's those pesky implementation details that will really bring to life just what problems this solution solves.

I'd love to have a (paid!) project to put this stuff to work on, but alas, I await for vicarious outcomes!