Blockchain company Digital Asset unveils Hyperledger platform technical details for the first time

Digital Asset Holdings, for this high-profile blockchain company, the information the industry seems to know only revolves around some things about the company's CEO Blyth Masters. As for what this platform is doing and what technology it uses, there is not much useful information.

Last month, the company announced that it had handed over its code to the Linux Foundation for collaborative development, and a few days later, it announced that it had received $52 million in funding from 13 financial institutions.

The open ledger project, known as the Linux Foundation, has received commitments from some big names, including IBM, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Digital Asset is unique among them in that, in addition to contributing code, the company also provided the “Hyperledger” brand name, which Digital Asset acquired in 2015.

However, so far, not many technical details have been released about Digital Asset’s blockchain technology.

The company, founded in 2014, previously defined itself as a software provider that uses "distributed infrastructure" to provide "asset settlement" services to customers. However, according to the detailed technical statement of the project released last Friday, Digital Asset has described itself as an "enterprise-grade blockchain service and client API service."

The announcement went on to say:

“Hyperledger uses an append-only log of financial transactions and is designed to rely on multiple organizations but without central control.”

Digital Asset’s written expression suggests that Hyperledger will be defined as: a “communication and consensus layer” responsible for coordinating data services across multiple clients and a “data backbone” dedicated to improving the global financial infrastructure.

“Hyperledger’s goal is to allow the data backbone concept to be extended to multiple organizational layers,” it continued, adding, “We will open source this project and believe it will serve as an important component of a new financial infrastructure.”

Digital Asset points to the “latest stable version” of the code, which is reviewed by the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Project and Technical Steering Committee.

The company also promised a number of upcoming improvements, including the unveiling of some features for the Blockstream Elements project.

Attitude towards Bitcoin

Notably, Digital Asset’s admission that it would leverage the ideas of the open-source bitcoin blockchain comes despite the fact that CEO Blyth Masters has previously remained silent on bitcoin in her public speeches.

“Hyperledger leverages the same UTXO/script transaction decision making as Bitcoin and extends it with the functionality required for financial services,” the startup wrote.

The announcement goes on to note that while the company does not believe Bitcoin is “suitable for many uses in regulated financial infrastructure,” it does provide valuable insights into how blockchains should be secured.

“Much of Bitcoin’s design and mature cryptographic technology has been under attack, and its multi-billion dollar token has been protected,” Digital Asset wrote.

The statement provides an assessment of the Bitcoin network by private or permissioned ledger companies that are seeking to build alternative systems to Bitcoin.

Byzantine Fault Tolerance

Digital Asset also reportedly confirmed that it will offer an alternative consensus system to proof-of-work (POW) mining, Bitcoin’s consensus system that uses a decentralized network of computers to secure the Bitcoin blockchain and transaction processing.

Digital Asset said Hyperledger includes a “prototype” of an implementable Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus module that would serve as an alternative process to the mining process.

“For this consensus module, we are working with other members of the project to ensure a scalable, secure, Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus protocol that can provide settlement finality for financial institutions,” the statement said.

The concept, which has been under development since the original Hyperledger team was founded in 2014, appears to still be in the evaluation phase.

Original article: http://www.coindesk.com/digital-asset-new-details-hyperledger-blockchain-platform/
By Pete Rizzo
Translator: Overnight porridge
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/hyperledger-blockchain‎)