Hyperledger Community Terminology/Glossary

Owned by Bobbi Muscara
Last updated: Jan 19, 2020
3 min read



  • What is a project?
    • A project is a top-level DLT or component that has been ratified by the TSC.
    • Projects should ship
    • The bar for new projects is high.
      • Burrow
      • Fabric
      • Indy
      • Iroha
      • Sawtooth
      • GRID (should be a sub-project of Sawtooth, or a lab)
    • What are the benefits?
    • What kind of Support does it get?
  • What is a sub-project?
    • What are the benefits?
    • What kind of Support does it get?
    • What is the relationship to the Project?
  • What is a tool?
    • A tool is a project that works with one or more of the DLT projects, as ratified by the TSC.
    • Tools should ship
    • The bar for new tools is lower than projects, but still high
      • Caliper
      • Cello (should be a sub-project of Fabric)
      • Composer (should be sub-project of Fabric, or a lab)
      • Explorer (probably a sub-project of Fabric)
      • Quilt (should be a lab)
      • URSA
  • Proposed Current State of the World
    • Projects
      • Burrow
        • Burrow is a top-level DLT designed to bring support for the Ethereum smart contract standard to permissioned blockchains.
        • Burrow is interroperable with Sawtooth and has planned interop with Fabric.
      • Fabric
        • Cello
          • Cello is a tool for provisioning DLT networks. Currently it can only provisions Fabric networks.
          • Cello plans to support provisioning other DLT networks by supporting Kubernetes.
        • Composer
          • Composer is a tool for designing business logic and translating it into DLT smart contracts.
        • Explorer
      • Indy
        • Ursa
      • Iroha
      • Sawtooth
        • Grid
    • Labs
      • Quilt
  • What is a Library?
  • What is a framework?
  • What is a Platform?
  • How a sub-project can graduate into top-level project?
    • Demonstrate interop across multiple existing top-level projects.
  • Different Levels of interop for each?
    • Platform have a ready SDK
    • Full support for API across multiple platforms
    • Information exchange level VS asset exchange level
    • Different levels?
      • Level 1 – show roadmap and/or prototype code for talking to multiple DLT platforms (not necessarily Hyperledger)
      • Level 2 – demonstrate working code.
      • Level 3 – active tracking of API changes with automatic detection via routine CI/CD compatibility testing.
    • Different types of interop
      • Interfacing with one only one DLT at a time, but capable of talking to multiple DLTs.
        • Example: Explorer should be able to talk to all DLTs but it's purpose is to talk to one at a time.
        • Example: Caliper should be able to measure perf of multiple DLTs (not exclusive to HL) but it's purpose is to talk to one at a time.
      • Interfacing across multiple DTLs at the same time.
        • Example: Quilt needs to talk to multiple DLTs at the same time to lock an asset in one DLT and create it in another at the same time.
  • What are the interop requirements for Tools and Libraries? 
  • Can we reward platforms for being interop with other platforms?
  • What is a SIG?
    • A SIG is a group of people that want to discuss a particular area where blockchains may be useful.
    • They may produce white papers, use cases, or code.
    • SIGs may or may not ship
    • SIGs consist of SMEs for the vertical of the SIG
    • SIGs are governed by ECO
      • Healthcare
      • Public Sector
      • Social Impact
      • Telecom
      • Trade Finance
  • What is a WG?
    • A WG is focused on guiding development in specific areas
    • A WG may or may not ship
    • A WG develops guidelines and frames the expertise of the SMEs more broadly so they can work in a wider scope than an individual project
      • Architecture
      • Identity
      • Learning Materials
      • Perf & Scale
      • Smart Contracts
      • TWGC is probably a sig? It's somewhere between a WG and a SIG. It is a Technical group because of the great firewall issues and translation issues.
  • What is a lab?
    • Labs were created to provide a low-impact to LF staff incubation ground for code to be tried out and try to build momentum.
    • The lab must find a sponsor on the TSC or among lab stewards.
    • Labs start with code first.
    • The roles and responsibilities of stewards is unclear.
    • The goal is to allow projects to graduate from a lab to a project or tool without a lot of handholding by LF staff.
    • Labs are not really expected to ship anything
    • No blog posts about labs, no PR, etc. The bar is low.
  • What is SEMVER?
    • SEMVER, Semantic Versioning, is how all projects and tools are supposed to be versioned.
  • What is FMR?
    • FMR, First Major Release, is tied to a gate for having SEMVER 1.0.0
  • Who governs FMR?
    • FMR is a gate governed by the TSC.
  • Who cares?
    • It is expected that projects and tools that pass FMR will have some level of support as they move forward.
  • Community Maturity
  • Vendor Diversity
  • What is Incubation, active, inactive?
    • If this is a measure of community maturity, how do we described the attributes of the community maturity such that being "immature" doesn't harm the marketing of the project.
    • The "Status" seems to be too prominent in our marketing and too visible in our wiki.
      • What we want outsiders to see is our technical readiness and the opportunities that exist for getting involved.
      • What we want insiders to see is the maturity metrics of the communities associated with each project.
  • CII badge
  • Policy on Websites, twitter etc.