Hyperledger Private Data Objects
Private Data Objects (PDO) enables sharing of data and coordinating action amongst mutually distrusting parties. Interaction is mediated through a “smart contract” that defines data access and update policies that are carried with the object regardless of where it resides or how often it changes hands. The smart contracts policies are enforced through execution in a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE).
PDO uses a distributed ledger, in this case the Hyperledger Sawtooth distributed ledger, to ensure that there is a single, authoritative instance of the object, and to provide a means of guaranteeing atomicity of updates across interacting objects. PDO performs contract execution and storage off the blockchain, with only a hash of blockchain state stored on the distributed ledger.
There is also an ongoing experimental effort to add support for Microsoft Confidential Consortium Framework (CCF) based ledger. Currently, the PDO/CCF combo is restricted to virtual enclaves, and lacks docker as well as automated test support.
PDO provides benefits for both application developers seeking to define and implement privacy-preserving distributed ledgers, and for service providers seeking to provide blockchain services.
For the application developer, smart contracts implemented with PDO ensure that contract state is completely hidden from all participants, including contract validators, and allows contracts to be stored off-chain. Policies and data are bound up together in the PDO smart contract; polices travel with the data no matter how the smart contract object is shared or with whom. The PDO smart contact provides an enforceable agreement for multi-party data sharing and analytics.
For service providers, PDO provides scalable performance; separation of contract execution from ordering allows the performance of contract execution to scale with available hardware. Because PDO contract execution occurs off the blockchain, redundancy is limited to the applications requirements rather than the entire blockchain, providing fewer potential targets for compromise.
Documentation
Instructions for installing/building Hyperledger Private Data Objects can be found in the build documentation.
The usage document describes what you can do with a functional PDO installation.
For more information about how Private Data Objects work, see the specification document.
A paper with a more formal overview of Private Data Objects is available HERE.
A presentation about Private Data Objects is available HERE.
Project Status
Hyperledger Private Data Objects operates as a Hyperledger Labs project. This code is provided solely to demonstrate basic PDO mechanisms and to facilitate collaboration to refine PDO architecture and define minimum viable product requirements. The code provided in this repository is prototype code and not intended for production use.
Initial Committers
- Andrea Miele (andmiele1 - [email protected])
- Abdulkareem Adesokan (aaadesok - [email protected])
- Bruno Vavala (bvavala - [email protected])
- Byron Marohn (byron-marohn - [email protected])
- Eugene Yarmosh (EugeneYYY - [email protected])
- Holly Harmon (harmonh - [email protected])
- Marcela Melara (marcelamelara - [email protected])
- Mic Bowman (cmickeyb - [email protected])
- Michael Steiner (g2flyer - [email protected])
- Prakash Narayana Moorthy (prakashngit - [email protected])
- Tom Barnes (TomBarnes - [email protected])
Sponsor
Dan Middleton ([email protected])
License
Hyperledger Private Data Objects software is released under the Apache License Version 2.0 software license. See the license file for more details.
Hyperledger Private Data Objects documentation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may obtain a copy of the license at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.