By Jamie Redman,
A blockchain platform called Iroha, created by members of the Japanese startup Soramitsu, has recently joined the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger project for incubation. Iroha is the third project to receive incubation status, joining IBM’s Fabric project and Intel’s Sawtooth Lake.
Iroha Becomes the Third Hyperledger Incubation Project
Members of a few blockchain companies including Soramitsu, NTT Data, and the Israeli startup Colu have developed the Iroha protocol from scratch. On October 13, the project officially joined Hyperledger’s incubation program. Iroha developers say they designed the project to provide “secure and decentralized data management platform for financial institutions, as well as many other fields.”
The project uses a custom consensus algorithm called “Sumeragi” which the programmers claim is incredibly fast. In fact, they said the platform aims to provide transaction finality within two seconds. In order to scale the platform for this type of speed, Iroha says it utilizes C++ for processing and UDP multicast. Developers state the project aims to be “complementary” to Intel’s Sawtooth Lake and IBM’s Fabric as well.
“The project seeks to complement Fabric, Sawtooth Lake and other potential projects by creating reusable components in C++ that can be called from languages such as Go,” developers stated in its recent introductory paper. “In this way, Iroha is additive to existing projects and the long-term goal is to realize a robust library of reusable components that can be selected and used freely by those running distributed ledgers on Hyperledger technology.”
A Collaborative Effort
Recently Bitcoin.com reported on the University of Tokyo, the University of Aizu, the Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM), and Soramitsu forming a blockchain collaboration. These organizations with Sompo Holdings are exploring and working on use cases “to increase the viability of the Iroha platform.”
Sompo Holdings will work with derivatives on top of the Iroha blockchain. Additionally, joint research between these groups operating in Fukushima Prefecture will test Iroha. Soramitsu is also developing a KYC system withRakuten Securities.
Developers say the platform has a simple architecture and the ability to perform Java-based smart contracts. They also claim to have asset issuance and loyalty point systems capability on both a mobile and web development platform. Iroha also has multiple use cases including settlement, contract management, securities clearing, supply chain management, and many more.
“Iroha core provides the distributed ledger infrastructure comprising the data membership services, consensus algorithm, peer-to-peer network transmission, data validation, and chaincode infrastructure,” the Iroha paper explains.
Open Source Development On Iroha Contribution Is Welcomed
Soramitsu said it’s committed to building distributed ledger systems that can benefit society. The company added that those who’d like to contribute to Iroha should contact them. The startup is interested in people who can build “a digital identity KYC service for financial institutions.” The project is open source, and anyone can contribute to Iroha via its GitHub repository.