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Contribution Details

Type Master's Thesis
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Analysis of Corda and Hyperledger Fabric regarding their applicability in specific areas
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Simon Albisser
Supervisors
  • Winfried Weigel
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Faculty Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics
Number of Pages 76
Date 2020
Abstract Text Since the emergence of Bitcoin in 2008 and with it the blockchain, a new technological field has opened up, the field of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). DLT enables immutable and cryptographically secure databases that are distributed and synchronized across multiple parties where there is no need for a central authority managing them. Since 2008 there has been a lot of development in this area, especially regarding applications in the economy. Two technologies in particular have attracted attention. One is Fabric from the Hyperledger project of the Linux Foundation and the other is Corda from the DLT company R3. These two platforms enable the setup of a private network based on DLT. The development of applications for Fabric and Corda is at the beginning. Therefore, it is important to find out which advantages and disadvantages each platform has in order to determine which platform is better suited for which area. This thesis shows whether Fabric or Corda is better suited for the field of digital currency, supply chain, trade finance and trading infrastructure. The two use cases we.trade (trade finance) and SDX (trading infrastructure) were used to find out how Fabric and Corda are designed and how they work in practice. For this purpose, the public documentation of Fabric and Corda and further literature was used. In addition, interviews with managers responsible for we.trade and SDX were conducted. Based on this, a SWOT analysis of the two was carried out regarding their applicability. Then, three specific characteristics of Fabric and Corda were identified to determine which of them is better suited in which application area and why. This work shows that neither Fabric nor Corda can provide a decentralized consensus in an untrustworthy environment, as possible consensus algorithms are not yet ready. It is also shown that the setup of Fabric is more versatile and simpler than that of Corda. Furthermore, the different network structure is shown. While Fabric works with subnetworks called channels, Corda allows all participants of a network to freely interact with each other. Since Fabric and Corda enable private networks and do not allow for decentralized consensus in untrusted environments, none is an appropriate technology for a digital currency. In the field of the supply chain, Fabric is preferred because of its versatility and simpler setup. In contrast, only Corda can be considered as technology for a trading infrastructure. This is due to the fact that only with Corda, in a large network with many different parties, everyone can freely interact with each other. In the field of trade finance both are similarly well applicable. In general, it can be said that Fabric primarily offers a solution for establishing a common platform for data exchange, storage and tracking. Corda, on the other hand, also offers this, but can also be used for highly complex networks where the exchange of assets (or tokens on the DLT) between untrusted parties plays an important role.
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