Hyperledger Rolls Out Aries

Hyperledger announced via a blog post on May 14 that it had rolled out a set of tools that it had dubbed Hyperledger Aries, which is focused on the interoperability between various types of blockchain data.

Advancing Interoperability

Hyperledger Aries is a suite of tools that enable the exchange of blockchain-powered data. These tools also support P2P (peer-to-peer) messaging and also ease interactions between diverse blockchains as well as other DLTs (distributed ledger technologies).

According to the announcement, Hyperledger launched this project for various reasons. A few of those objectives were so that it could provide code for P2P interactions and also increase interoperability.

Hyperledger Aries includes a cryptographic wallet, an encrypted P2P messaging system, a layer of blockchain interface (known as a resolver) for the creation and signing of transactions on the blockchain, API-like (application programming interface) use cases, an implementation of the DKMS (Decentralized Key Management System), as well as an implementation of W3C verifiable credentials that are also ZKP-capable.

This project is a derivative of two other Hyperledger initiatives – Ursa and Indy. Ursa is a project that is aimed at security, while Indy is a project focused on indentity management.

Once the project is fully launched, this new set of tools will be made available on GitHub.  The hope is that with this suite of tools, in the next two years, paper IDs will be completely done away with.

Projects on Hyperledger

A member of the Hyperledger project, Intel launched a commercial blockchain based package on the Hyperledger ecosystem in February this year. This package was targeted at businesses that wanted to create their own blockchains.

Prior to that, in December of last year, the Hyperledger Steering Committee had given its approval for the launch of the Ursa project. The focus of this project was to avoid wasting effort on duplicated projects by the creation of a modular cryptography software library.

Another focus of the project was to improve security by making analysis easier and making it less possible for more inexperienced people to create implementations that were less secure.

Also, in December of 2018, 12 new members were onboarded to the Hyperledger collaboration.

This included Alibaba Cloud, the subsidiary of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, the financial services multinational giant Citigroup, Deutsche Telekom, one of the biggest telecom services providers in the European region, as well as we.trade, the European blockchain trading platform.