Are you curious what Hyperledger Sawtooth is? What are the features and advantages of Hyperledger Sawtooth? We will discuss these terms in this article. Let us start.The Linus Foundation developed Hyperledger Sawtooth to maintain ledgers truly distributed with enhanced security for smart contracts.
This platform is suitable for customized smart contracts because of its open-source enterprise blockchain-as-a-service.Hyperledger Sawtooth’s user-friendly design gives a flawless performance for enterprise usage. In this system, developers kept the development layer and major network separated to ensure the best smooth experience in the development process.
The core system remains unaffected during the development stage. The surge in resource sharing does not affect the core system. Programming languages like Go, C++, Python, JavaScript, Rust, etc., support the Hyperledger Sawtooth. It gives a wide range of exciting ways of implementing blockchain solutions or blockchain applications.
Characteristics of Sawtooth
Algorithms of Sawtooth Consensus
The consensus algorithm lies at the heart of the stability of the blockchain architecture and, more broadly, public ledgers. The Sakamoto Consensus Algorithm [2] is the most traditional, and it solved the limitations of the Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) Consensus. PoET, PBFT, and Raft are three distinct consensus techniques provided by Hyperledger Sawtooth.
PoET with Sawtooth
Sawtooth Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) is a Nakamoto-style algorithm for huge network populations. To determine which node will add the next block, PoET employs a “fair lottery” mechanism: each node creates a random wait time during which nodes must sleep. The node with the shortest wait time will be first to wake up and win the lottery. This step allows a new block to the blockchain. PoET is, of course, more energy efficient because nodes are not wasting energy attempting to insert blocks.
PBFT Sawtooth
Sawtooth Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) is a voting-based consensus technique that provides Byzantine fault tolerance (updated version of the original PBFT [3]). It has the disadvantage of having an exponentially increasing message count as nodes are added to the set.
The leader node proposed that a new block be added, and exchanged a series of messages among the nodes. The algorithm provides provable resistance to a percentage of malicious nodes, which varies depending on implementation.
The Sawtooth Raft
Raft is a consensus mechanism based on leaders that guarantees crash fault tolerance (CFT): the system’s keystone is the leader, who is considered to always act honestly. The leader’s blocks have not been forged, and its updates are reliable.
The leader has a cohort of nodes that simply propagate the leader’s updates, and if the leader crashes after a given timeout, a new leader is elected from among the followers.
This algorithm is naturally resistant to CFT. For example, on a six-node network, the quorum to elect a new leader is four (one more than half of the six available nodes).
Raft is more efficient (also in terms of energy) than PBFT and PoET because there is no competition to add blocks among nodes, wasting CPU time; updates are simply propagated as long as the leader is active.
Consensus in development mode
Let us briefly present Sawtooth’s devmode consensus algorithm to help developers understand how to construct a consensus algorithm from scratch.
Dev mode is, as you may have guessed, a consensus process that should only be used in development mode: it has no crash tolerance and employs a simple simplified random-leader selection.
Additional information about these algorithms
The techniques described above deviate from the traditional PoW consensus for several reasons:
Unlike lottery-style consensus algorithms like as Proof of Work (PoW) or Proof of Elapsed Time, Sawtooth is built for a scenario in which the collaboration between the blocks committed by nodes is definitive (PoET)
Developers usually regarded pBFT as a non-scalable algorithm. Node server assumption should not occur when pBFT is used in production.
pBFT should be utilized with a consortium of enterprise organizations, with each organization representing a network node organization. Each of these organizational nodes should then have clusters of instances and load balancers behind its endpoint to expand computational capacity and ensure fast response time.
Features of the Hyperledger Sawtooth
(1) Easier Application Development: The central core and application layers are not connected, making it easier to develop blockchain solutions without affecting the core.Another vital factor is the availability of a wide range of smart contracts. Business enterprises can select a preferred programming language and develop the application on it.
(2) Private and Public Network: Sawtooth platform offers two variants of the blockchain as per the requirement. Users can develop both permissioned and permissionless access with this platform.The developing companies can provide either permissioned or permissionless access, which is not possible on other platforms.
(3) Permissioning Features: It can solve all the issues related to the private blockchain in the Hyperledger Sawtooth. A detached permissioning option is available in every cluster of devices or nodes in the network.Nodes could not leak the sensitive information stored to outsiders. Every node needs an individual permissioning option assigned, ensuring a different level of clearance in every node.
(4) Modular Structure: The Hyperledger Sawtooth offers a modular structure that is very easy to customize as per enterprise needs. Simply put, if the enterprise wants to use any foreign feature, they can just plugin and use it.
(5) Parallel transaction execution: One of the crucial features of the Sawtooth is parallel transaction verification. This feature ensures the verification of various transactions simultaneously parallel to each other.In practical application, this feature minimizes the processing time by reducing the massive work pressure on the network.
Benefits of the Hyperledger Sawtooth
1. Immutable Transaction History:One of the vital features of this platform is its immutable transaction history. At any given point in time, there is a cryptographic linkage of transactions that assures the state of information. These logs are auditable and readily available.Byzantine-fault tolerance: Another crucial benefit is Byzantine-fault tolerance. This tolerance means that the network does not stop working and remains productive, even though one of its nodes goes offline or crashes.The complete network does not crash even though some nodes face operation issues. The fault tolerance is excellent in this system.
2. Parallel Scheduling: Both parallel and serial scheduling of the transactions can be done using the Hyperledger Sawtooth. Productivity increases in parallel scheduling, and support in minimizing latency occurs in serial scheduling.
3. Multilanguage Support: many programming languages like C++, Python, Rust, and JavaScript, support smart contracts developed on the Hyperledger Sawtooth Go, etc.
4. Dynamic Consensus: Developers can easily change all the blockchain settings and consensus algorithms using Sawtooth.Energy Efficiency: Other blockchain networks use a proof-of-work consensus algorithm, whereas Sawtooth uses a proof-of-elapsed time consensus algorithm, making it energy-efficient.
5. Loose Coupling Architecture: In a Sawtooth network, blocks are not dependent on each other. Independent blocks mean the changes made in one block do not affect the network, decreasing the possibility of an unexpected error, and simplifying the testing and maintenance of the ledger.
6. Permissioned and permissionless: Sawtooth can be permissionless, which means anyone can interact with the network by submitting transactions. At the same time, it could be permissioned closed networks representing users who cannot freely join the distributed ledger system.
7. Loose coupling architecture: The blocks in this network are not dependent on each other. This feature minimizes the possibility of unexpected errors and simplifies the process of ledger maintenance and testing.
8. Events: The creation and broadcast of the events across the network are possible on the Sawtooth.
Final Thoughts:
The Hyperledger Sawtooth has distinct salient features than other blockchain networks. These features make it easy to implement in organizations dealing with healthcare, finance, retail, and other organizations to develop a safe, decentralized, and reliable environment for their operations.If you have queries about strategizing the solution for your organization, you can comment in the box below. Team Blockchain Shiksha would be happy to help.©
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