Hyperledger Fabric: Evaluating Endorsement Policy Strategies in Supply Chains

Abstract

Hyperledger Fabric is a permissioned blockchain solution, in which network participation is controlled by predefined rules. This makes it an attractive platform for enterprise settings. In Fabric, endorsement policies are used to specify the peers that must confirm a transaction before it can be considered as valid and appended to the ledger. This work examines various implications of Fabric's endorsement policy component, for which different endorsement policy strategies (and subsequent tradeoffs) are evaluated by modeling two real-world supply chain case studies. This work discusses how vulnerable endorsement policies can lead to admitting inauthentic data on the ledger. To address this issue, several approaches are proposed to balance integrity with limited disclosure of confidential information, with or without hosting a network peer directly. Furthermore, the concept of multi-tenancy in blockchain networks is introduced as a way of reducing the technological barrier in technology adoption.

Impact of endorsement policy on the performance of blockchain‐based VANET

“…Authors have focused on the endorsement policy to balance integrity and confidentiality. 22,23 The endorsement policy specifies the number of peers who must confirm the transaction before it is considered valid. The authors have inspected different endorsement policy strategies for supply chain applications.…”

“…For example, to represent the administrator of organization 1, the "org1.admin" principle will be used. 22 A complete policy consists of an expression that may contain one or more of the principles or subexpressions represented as:…”

“…The policy is expressed in the form of principle as “MSP.ROLE”; here, MSP denotes the Membership Service Provider ID, and possible ROLES are member, admin, client, and peer. For example, to represent the administrator of organization 1, the “org1.admin” principle will be used 22 . A complete policy consists of an expression that may contain one or more of the principles or subexpressions represented as: $$$$ \mathrm{Endorsement}\ \mathrm{Policy}:E\ \left(P,P,\dots, E\ \left(P,P\dots \right)\right).$$…”

Impact of Block Data Components on the Performance of Blockchain-Based VANET Implemented on Hyperledger Fabric

“…TP is sent to a single or extra endorsing peers for transaction simulation, execution, and endorsement [25]. The Endorsers' identity details like certificate (256 bytes str) and public key (256 bytes str) are stored along with their signature (256 bytes str) in the E s section.…”

“…The transaction is validated only when received endorsement results from the required number of peers. It is checked at the time of ordering by the OSN [25]. The details like certificate, public key, and signature of all the involved endorsing peers are taken with the transactions for future verification.…”