In a traditional IT scenario, data is stored in a central location. Users rely on a trusted central authority to manage and update data and expect the authority not to modify the data with malicious intent. It is often impossible to find a single entity that all users can trust, which never fails and cannot be compromised.
Blockchain Overview
Blockchain is a decentralized distributed ledger enabling parties who might not necessarily trust each other to validate data in a series of cryptographically linked data structures called blocks. With blockchain, a new system is possible where each network participant maintains a local copy of the Ledger they can independently validate. All parties use a consensus protocol to communicate and validate subsequent ledger updates, which fully distributes and decentralizes trust.
The cryptographically linked data structure stored by each participant is append-only. After data is verified and added to a block, the network does not allow the data to be deleted, only appended. Each block consisting of ledger transactions is cryptographically linked or chained to the previous block using a cryptographic hash function. This feature makes the blockchain auditable and has the property of being independently verifiable by all network participants.
Blockchains are designed to support the following operational models, permissionless (public) or permissioned.
Permissionless or Public |
Permissioned |
|---|---|
Users are anonymous or pseudonymous. |
Users are known and trusted. |
No authorization is required to initiate transactions. |
Users with appropriate permissions can initiate transactions. |
Anyone can participate as a miner to create blocks in the blockchain. |
Users sign in using cryptography technology and participate in the consensus process to create blocks in the blockchain. |
Anyone can read the transaction data in the shared public ledger. |
Select users control the transaction data validation. |
VMware Blockchain Overview
VMware Blockchain offers a decentralized trust platform that removes the need to rely on a central data repository, which is a single point of failure. VMware Blockchain is a permissioned distributed trust platform implemented using a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) State Machine Replication protocol.
VMware Blockchain comprises Replica nodes that retain the blockchain state and Client nodes that provide access to that blockchain state. The blockchain state is a single, consistent, and trusted data repository.
The blockchain platform contains an execution engine that receives requests from the Client nodes and executes the requests. The execution result is logged on-chain, which changes the blockchain state. The Client nodes also query the Replica Network to retrieve a subset of the state without altering it. The Replica Network controls the data a particular Client node can access, which means various Client nodes are privy to different data.
The fault-tolerant platform consists of a Replica Network that uses a consensus mechanism to implement a BFT State Machine Replication protocol. This protocol ensures the consistency of the data even in environments where less than one-third of the Replica nodes are down, not synchronous, or even malicious.
The Replica nodes should operate in an isolated fault domain under the same data center or even in a different data center belonging to different partners in the network, which dramatically increases the fault tolerance.
VMware Blockchain is a solution that can be used on the vSphere and Amazon Web Services (AWS) platforms. Users can choose to leverage the vSphere infrastructure capabilities or their AWS EC2 infrastructure as the underlying platform for VMware Blockchain deployments.
For the AWS platform, existing commercials, terms, SLAs, maintenance activities monitoring, storage utilization, and workload remain in effect for the user.
You can use the VMware Blockchain Orchestrator application to create a blockchain deployment that consists of Replica and Client nodes natively on vSphere and EC2 instances.
VMware Blockchain Orchestrator allows you to configure the deployment parameters such as the location of nodes, Client node grouping, and monitoring and logging for all the deployed VMware Blockchain nodes.
VMware Blockchain uses the Digital Asset Modeling Language (Daml) to implement decentralized applications (DApps) and a Daml Execution Engine to run the application commands within the VMware Blockchain nodes.
VMware Blockchain Implementation Use Case
The main VMware Blockchain use case includes:
Sector |
Use Case |
|---|---|
Financial services |
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