Amazon Managed Blockchain

Amazon Managed Blockchain is a fully managed service that makes it easy to join public networks or create and manage scalable private networks using the popular open-source frameworks Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum.

Blockchain makes it possible to build applications where multiple parties can execute transactions without the need for a trusted, central authority. Today, building a scalable blockchain network with existing technologies is complex to set up and hard to manage. To create a blockchain network, each network member needs to manually provision hardware, install software, create, and manage certificates for access control, and configure networking components. Once the blockchain network is running, you need to continuously monitor the infrastructure and adapt to changes, such as an increase in transaction requests, or new members joining or leaving the network.

Amazon Managed Blockchain is a fully managed service that allows you to join public networks or set up and manage scalable private networks with just a few clicks. Amazon Managed Blockchain eliminates the overhead required to create the network or join a public network, and automatically scales to meet the demands of thousands of applications running millions of transactions. Once your network is up and running, Managed Blockchain makes it easy to manage and maintain your blockchain network. It manages your certificates and lets you easily invite new members to join the network.

Get started with Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum using Amazon Managed Blockchain.

Benefits

Fully managed

With Amazon Managed Blockchain, you can quickly create blockchain networks that span multiple AWS accounts, enabling a group of members to execute transactions and share data without a central authority. Unlike self-hosting your blockchain infrastructure, Amazon Managed Blockchain eliminates the need for manually provisioning hardware, configuring software, and setting up networking and security components. With Managed Blockchain’s voting API, network participants can vote to add or remove members. Once a new member is added, Managed Blockchain lets that member launch and configure multiple blockchain peer nodes to process transaction requests and store a copy of the ledger. Managed Blockchain also monitors the network and automatically replaces poorly performing nodes.

Choice of Hyperledger Fabric or Ethereum

Amazon Managed Blockchain supports two popular blockchain frameworks, Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum. Hyperledger Fabric is well-suited for applications that require stringent privacy and permission controls with a known set of members, for example, a financial application where certain trade-related data is only shared with select banks. Ethereum is well suited for highly distributed blockchain networks where transparency of data for all members is important, for example, a customer loyalty blockchain network that allows any retailer in the network to independently verify a user’s activity across all members to redeem benefits. Alternatively, Ethereum can also be used for joining a public Ethereum blockchain network.

Scalable and Secure

Amazon Managed Blockchain can easily scale your blockchain network as the usage of applications on the network grows over time. When a network member requires additional capacity for creating and validating transactions, the member can quickly add a new peer node using Managed Blockchain’s APIs. Managed Blockchain provides a selection of instance types that comprise varying combinations of CPU and memory to give you the flexibility to choose the appropriate mix of resources for your workload. Additionally, Managed Blockchain secures your network’s certificates with AWS Key Management Service (KMS) technology, eliminating the need for you to set up your own secure key storage.

Reliability

Amazon Managed Blockchain improves the reliability of the “ordering service,” a component in the Hyperledger Fabric framework that ensures delivery of transactions across the blockchain network. Hyperledger Fabric’s default ordering service does not store a complete history of transactions, making it hard to keep track of and recover transaction history when needed. Managed Blockchain’s ordering service is built using Amazon QLDB technology and has an immutable change log that accurately maintains the complete history of all transactions in the blockchain network, ensuring that you durably save this data.

Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB)

Amazon QLDB is a fully managed ledger database that provides a transparent, immutable, and cryptographically verifiable transaction log ‎owned by a central trusted authority. Amazon QLDB can be used to track each and every application data change and maintains a complete and verifiable history of changes over time.

Ledgers are typically used to record a history of economic and financial activity in an organization. Many organizations build applications with ledger-like functionality because they want to maintain an accurate history of their applications’ data, for example, tracking the history of credits and debits in banking transactions, verifying the data lineage of an insurance claim, or tracing movement of an item in a supply chain network. Ledger applications are often implemented using custom audit tables or audit trails created in relational databases. However, building audit functionality with relational databases is time-consuming and prone to human error. It requires custom development, and since relational databases are not inherently immutable, any unintended changes to the data are hard to track and verify. Alternatively, blockchain frameworks, such as Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum, can also be used as a ledger. However, this adds complexity as you need to set-up an entire blockchain network with multiple nodes, manage its infrastructure, and require the nodes to validate each transaction before it can be added to the ledger.

Amazon QLDB is a new class of database that eliminates the need to engage in the complex development effort of building your own ledger-like applications. With QLDB, your data’s change history is immutable – it cannot be altered or deleted – and using cryptography, you can easily verify that there have been no unintended modifications to your application’s data. QLDB uses an immutable transactional log, known as a journal, that tracks each application data change and maintains a complete and verifiable history of changes over time. QLDB is easy to use because it provides developers with a familiar SQL-like API, a flexible document data model, and full support for transactions. QLDB’s streaming capability provides a near real-time flow of your data stored within QLDB, allowing you to develop event-driven workflows, real-time analytics, and to replicate data to other AWS services to support advanced analytical processing. QLDB is also serverless, so it automatically scales to support the demands of your application. There are no servers to manage and no read or write limits to configure. With QLDB, you only pay for what you use.

Get started with Amazon QLDB today!

Looking to build a blockchain application? Learn more about Amazon Managed Blockchain here.

Looking to build a blockchain application? Learn more about Amazon Managed Blockchain here.

Amazon QLDB benefits

Immutable and Transparent

Amazon QLDB uses a journal that tracks each application data change and maintains a complete and sequenced history of changes over time. Data on the journal cannot be deleted or modified. The full history of your database can be accessed and you can query and analyze the history to see how your data has changed over time.

Cryptographically Verifiable

With Amazon QLDB, you can trust that the history of changes to your application data is accurate. QLDB uses a cryptographic hash function (SHA-256) to generate a secure output file of your data’s change history, known as a digest. The digest acts as a proof of your data’s change history, allowing you to look back and validate the integrity of your data changes.

Performant and Highly Scalable

Amazon QLDB is highly scalable and can execute 2 – 3X as many transactions than ledgers in common blockchain frameworks. Blockchain frameworks are decentralized so to execute a transaction, they require a majority of members of the network to reach consensus on the validity of the transaction. On the other hand, QLDB has a centralized design, allowing its transactions to execute without the need for multi-party consensus.

Serverless

With Amazon QLDB, you don’t have to worry about provisioning capacity or configuring read and write limits. You create a ledger, define your tables, and QLDB automatically scales to support the demands of your application. To help you gain a better understanding of the operational health of your database, QLDB also allows you to monitor operational metrics for your read and write IOs.

Easy to Use

Amazon QLDB’s familiar database capabilities make it easy to use. QLDB supports PartiQL – a new, open source, SQL-compatible query language designed to easily work with all data types and structures. With PartiQL, you can easily query, manage, and update your data with SQL operators. QLDB’s document-oriented data model is flexible, enabling you to easily store and process both structured and semi-structured data. Also, QLDB transactions are ACID compliant and have full serializability- the highest level of isolation.

Highly Available

Amazon QLDB is designed for high availability, replicating multiple copies of data within an Availability Zone (AZ) as well as across 3 AZs in an AWS region, without any additional cost or setup. QLDB backs up your data continuously while maintaining consistent performance, allowing it to transparently recover from any instance or physical storage failures.

Streaming Capability

Amazon QLDB can stream data directly to Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. This QLDB streaming capability allows you to react quickly to new events (e.g., a change in account balance for a banking ledger application) and easily integrate with downstream services such as AWS Lambda and Amazon Elasticsearch, enabling you to easily develop event-driven workflows and perform real-time and historical data analysis.

Source:- https://aws.amazon.com/