Hyperledger Foundations has been in a continuous process of launching innovative, industry-relevant Hyperledger projects. Hyperledger Besu is yet another project from Hyperledger, which is designed to allow enterprises to build both public and permissionless Ethereum use cases.
Ethereum is a popular and fast-scaling blockchain protocol that runs hundreds of blockchain projects and innovative decentralized applications in its ecosystem. Industries spanning web3, DeFi, supply chain, gaming, NFTs, and DAOs have already been utilizing Ethereum-based use cases to streamline their operations and overcome real-world business challenges.
Hyperledger Besu, as an independent Ethereum client, brings form and function to Ethereum’s enterprise-grade applications. Developers trying to build on Ethereum are required to implement an Ethereum client such as Besu to interact with the nodes and network in the ecosystem.
Briefing Hyperledger Besu
Hyperledger Besu is a Java-based, open-source Ethereum client built under Apache 2.0 that allows enterprises to build enterprise-grade solutions while extracting EVM implementation from the Ethereum blockchain. Besu is one of the Hyperledger Foundation’s (Linux) top DLT projects compatible with Ethereum public, private, and test networks such as Ropsten, Rinkeby, and Gorli.
The platform helps developers to implement the Ethereum protocol into their blockchain solutions. Talking about the consensus algorithm, Besu includes proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, proof-of-authority, and Istanbul Byzantine Fault Tolerance (IBFT). Thereby, the blockchain network facilitates the development of extreme use case-specific decentralized solutions. Enterprises can quickly deploy an Ethereum node through a node service provider and start building Ethereum solutions as per the requirements.
Want to learn more about deploying an Ethereum node using Hyperledger Besu?
What makes Hyperledger Besu useful for web3 developers?
Hyperledger Besu supports a range of features, making the platform a perfect choice for web3 developers. For example, Besu offers a command line interface, HTTP- and WebSocket-based APIs that run, maintain, and monitor Ethereum nodes and networks.
The client API of Besu supports high-level functionalities for custom smart contract development, deployment, and enterprise-wide operational use case.
To enable this development, Besu supports tools such as Truffle, Remix, and web3j. It implements JSON-RPC APIs that make integration with Ethereum tools simple and quick. All these allow developers to build a variety of enterprise-grade dApps, private, permission, and consortium blockchain networks.
Besides the tools and resources, Hyperledger Besu includes novel features that set this blockchain network apart. The following are the main features:
Ethereum Virtual Machine
EVM on Hyperledger Besu is a Turing-complete Ethereum virtual machine that enables the development and execution of smart contracts within the Ethereum blockchain network.
Consensus mechanisms
Hyperledger Besu includes multiple consensus algorithms, allowing developers to build precise enterprise solutions with the abilities of transaction validation, block validation, and block production. Based on the requirement, developers can implement proof-of-work, proof-of-authority, and IBFT 2.0 consensus algorithms on public and private network deployments.
Storage capacity
Hyperledger Besu has the potential to securely store data on the Blockchain and grant data access to the dApps seamlessly. Besu stores data into two subcategories, Blockchain, and World State data, using the RocksDB key-value database that locally persists the chain data.
Peer-to-peer Networking
Besu enables peer-to-peer networking for inter-client communication through Ethereum’s dev2p network protocols as well as an additional subprotocol for IBF2; Discovery, and RLPx. The Discovery, as the name suggests, finds peers on the network, and RLPx establishes communication between various peers inside the network.
User-facing APIs
Developers building on Hyperledger Besu are provided with mainnet Ethereum and EEA JSON-RPC API across HTTP and Websocket protocols and GraphQL API.
Network Monitoring
Hyperledger Besu is integrated with advanced node monitoring and analytics capabilities, and thus it proactively monitors the nodes using a method called Prometheus or the debug_metrics JSON-RPC API. Whereas the protocol uses Alethio tools like EthStats Network Monitor and Block Explorer for network monitoring.
Scalability and interoperability
Besu implements various techniques for enhanced scalability, which includes parallel transaction processing, consensus engine optimizations, and off-chain transactions.
With these, the protocol achieves infinite scalability while reducing the transaction cost significantly and the network congestion, including parallel transaction processing, consensus engine optimizations, and support for off-chain transactions. This scalability enables high throughput and reduces network congestion, making it suitable for enterprise-scale applications.
Additionally, Hyperledger Besu enables interoperability across all the Hyperledger Foundation, be it Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Aries, Hyperledger IROHA, and more.
Privacy and permissioning
Hyperledger Besu includes privacy features to keep the transactions encrypted and private between the parties involved. Outsiders cannot access the transactions, or view the details related to listed parties or any content. To achieve this, Besu implements a Private Transaction Manager that ensures privacy compliance on the platform.
What are the top use cases of Hyperledger Besu?
Since its inception, Hyperledger Fabric has proved to be a smart blockchain platform that offers next-level permissioning and privacy features, allowing diverse industries to build enterprise-grade blockchain solutions and custom networks for use case-specific applications:
Supply Chain management
Supply Chain industries need to trace the goods at each step. If the consumer finds out the product is defective, the owner of the food company can go to the Blockchain and figure out where the issue occurred in the whole supply chain. Leveraging Hyperledger Besu, Supply Chain companies can build powerful Ethereum-based solutions that offer greater traceability and management of goods and services.
Healthcare
Healthcare sector today faces myriad challenges to securely store and manage patient’s data . Hyperledger Besu eliminates all these issues and allows healthcare companies to build decentralized healthcare solutions that securely store and share people’s data. Also, these healthcare solutions improve efficiency and accuracy, reducing data manipulation and tackling potential risks.
Finance & banking
Finance & banking sectors leverage Blockchain to record financial transactions across an immutable ledge, which is achieved using various decentralized solutions. Hyperledger Besu is optimized to facilitate the development of decentralized financial solutions such as payment management systems, digital asset tracking, tokenization, and custom smart contracts.
Government
Blockchain technology in the Government sector can revolutionize the way government entities handle operations in various sectors, such as enhanced traceability in supply chain management, transparency-enabled government systems like a decentralized token-based platform digital ballot box digital for voting, robust healthcare systems to prevent data unauthorized access and hacking of healthcare data, DeFi solutions to implement decentralization in the banking process, and many more. Hyperledger Besu supports the development of customized enterprise solutions that cater to the needs of all these sectors and thus eliminate the existing challenges.
Identity Management
Identity management has a great significance across industries such as finance, healthcare, and government as it eliminates fraud and maintains compliance. Hyperledger Besu enables the development of cutting-edge Ethereum-based solutions that empower enterprises and individuals to create, control, manage, and fully own digital identities.
Who all are building on Hyperledger Besu?
As an industry-agnostic, highly feasible Ethereum client, Hyperledger Besu has validated use cases across Finance, Supply Chain, healthcare, and Blockchain industries. Let’s have a look at the top companies leveraging the Hyperledger Besu ecosystem:
Allfunds
Allfunds, a prominent name in the wealthtech sector, uses Hyperledger Besu to develop robust solutions for the entire fund industry. The company leverages Besu blockchain to enable multi-party payment use cases, effortless value transfer, and regulatory compliance. Further, Allfunds implements blockchain privacy and smart contract elements for better fund management and disbursement.
LACChain
LACChain leverages Hyperledger Besu to develop the world’s largest permissioned, public Blockchain. The company had goals such as breaking silos in the Blockchain, creating a dependable decentralized infrastructure with full compliance, and reducing transaction fees. Besu, with its extensive capabilities, helped LACChain build an enterprise blockchain currently used by more than 101 entities globally.
Poste Italiane
Poste Italiane has created a powerful, blockchain-based customer loyalty system that improves the user experience by enabling a single point of access for all the recurring programs while providing benefits on the partners’ side, such as reducing dependency on any centralized system for accessing the programs and reducing integration complexities. The Besu technology also helps the organization to deliver real-time data, allowing customers to remain updated with the rewards and other information.
Public Mint
Public Mint is another leader in financial services that leverages Hyperledger Besu to build a banking & finance-focused platform that makes the company’s services easily accessible to everyone. Public Mint has goals such as making blockchain-based banking easy for all levels of users, providing high-level security and functionalities, and instant settlement of funds via wallets. The organization chose Hyperledger Besu as their technology partner and thus accomplished the allocated goals.
Ledger Leopard
RTI blockchain and Ledger Leopard have developed transport items tracking & returnable management systems using Hyperledger Besu. The company has goals such as simplifying the traceability of the Returnable Transport Items (RTI) blockchain while developing solutions as simple as online banking solutions. They ultimately chose Besu as a tech stack provider. They thus build desired enterprise applications with integrated features like career tracking through an RTI dashboard, customer linking/inviting without third-party intervention, and 100% uptime.
Conclusion
Hyperledger Besu is already a versatile and scalable Ethereum technology enabler for global organizations building enterprise solutions on top of it. However, Hyperledger Foundations is committed to making the protocol a more viable option for enterprise-level blockchain development in a consortium environment.
Zeeve is a leading infrastructure support provider for Hyperledger Besu projects. Enterprises planning to build Besu-based solutions and custom blockchains can get node support from Zeeve’s powerful and highly optimized node infrastructure. If you’re interested in building applications using Besu, connect with our blockchain experts or schedule a quick call for your project discussion.
