Problem Statement 

The current existing implementation of Hyperledger Fabric with Raft consensus has many shortcomings such as transaction censorship and no mechanism to safeguard the network if a malicious leader gets elected. The network also has limitations on scalability which restrict the type of use cases that can be built such as real-time applications that use IoT devices. This impedes blockchain adoption and limits the type of applications and use cases that can be built on Fabric.

Description

The goal of this project is to build BiniBFT, a Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus library for Hyperledger Fabric which provides end-to-end security, high throughput with low latency and high scalability so that Fabric can be applicable for distributed and decentralized day-to-day applications.

Additional Information

• Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout , In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm https://raft.github.io/raft.pdf
• João Sousa, Alysson Bessani, (2014). State Machine Replication for the Masses with BFT – SMaRt https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286593169_State_machine_replication_for_the_masses_with_BFT-SMART
• Chrysoula Stathakopoulou , Tudor David, Matej Pavlovic(2021) , Mir-BFT: High-Throughput Robust BFT for Decentralized Networks  https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.05552v3.pdf 
• Guangda Sun, Xin Zhe Khooi, Yunfan Li, Mingliang Jiang, and Jialin Li (2022) , The Case for Accelerating BFT protocols using In-Network Ordering https://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.12955.pdf 

Learning Objectives

• Building and Integrating a BFT library with Hyperledger Fabric.
• Understanding how BFT consensus protocols work and optimizing algorithms for better performance.
• Developing an understanding of how DLT networks like Hyperledger Fabric work.
• Exploring the different ways in which BFT protocols can improve the performance and security of Fabric networks.

Expected Outcome

The following are the expected outcomes from this project :

• Creation of a BFT consensus library for Hyperledger Fabric.
• Documentation of how BFT protocols can be integrated with Fabric.

Relation to Hyperledger 

Hyperledger Fabric

Mentee Skills

Enthusiasm to do research on BFT consensus for blockchain, GO programming language, Hyperledger Fabric  

Mentor(s) Names and Contact Info

Dr Anasuya Threse Innocent, Director, BiniWorld Innovations Private Limited

binibft@biniworld.com, A Anasuya Threse Innocent