Blockchain projects based on Hyperledger Fabric and IBM Cloud Services

Grant Thornton Luxembourg Technology Hub Services stem from the ambition to complement the current consulting offering for financial institutions with dedicated technology advisory services in domains such as Blockchain, Cybersecurity and Innovation.

Improving processes through emerging new technologies

Our clients understand more and more every day that they must improve their processes through emerging new technologies, in order to develop their business model and keep their strategic advantage. For this reason, they are looking for a professional advice and a strategic vision that provides them with the necessary tools to define their technology needs in the short, medium and long term. Our mission is to build a bridge between innovative technology and successful businesses. We strongly believe that innovation and new technologies are the engine of your business evolution.

Becoming an IBM Business Partner

Grant Thornton Luxembourg has become an IBM Business Partner in Luxembourg, certified to develop blockchain projects using Hyperledger Fabric, a Linux Foundation framework, running on IBM Cloud. 

After extensive research, Grant Thornton Luxembourg found Hyperledger Fabric as a platform that meets all the requirements for building small and large-scale blockchain projects on top of existing corporate IT architectures. Hyperledger Fabric is a global collaboration between leaders in the area of finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing and technology, with the goal of significantly advancing cross-industry blockchain technologies.

Overall, Fabric can be defined as a flexible plug-and-play implementation of blockchain technology that allows highly scalable blockchain applications with variable degrees of permission, allowing members to achieve a high level of privacy. The technical features provided by Fabric fit enterprise environments extremely well, allowing developers to shape the final distributed application based on the project's constraints. 

Here are a few reasons why we believe Hyperledger Fabric is a good choice:

1. Modular architecture: this allows components such as consensus and membership services to be plug-and-play, providing a lot of flexibility in terms of adapting to different use cases. Using different modules, companies can create their own, individual blockchain network, add important characteristics and reach high scalability of more than 1000 transactions per second.
2.  Chaincode: Fabric allows smart contracts which can incorporate business logic, called “chaincode”. Smart Contracts written in chaincode are important as they can read and update the ledger state. Moreover, smart contracts enable users to create and automate transactions and update the state of ledger assets.
3. Private channels: these enforce privacy on a large blockchain network by sharing data only with members of the same, predefined channel. Channels help to meet privacy requirements by creating subgroups of business partners who have a lot of common transactions.
4. Private transactions: the use of these mean that not every transaction can be seen by every user of the network. Private transactions allow privacy at a more fine-grained level than channels. This feature is useful especially in situations where no party outside of the transaction should have access to the data. Private transactions can also be combined with anonymous client authentication to avoid leaking the connection between the identity of the transaction's creator and the ledger stored data.
5. Zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) enables a party who possesses a secret (the prover) to prove to another party (the verifier) that its secret satisfies a certain set of properties (knowledge) without revealing the actual secret (zero-knowledge).
6. Enterprise backing: Fabric has strong backing from enterprise companies, like IBM, Intel and Cisco. This provides a large degree of stability, inspiring confidence in those who may still be unsure about blockchain’s future.

Our commitments to generate key benefits for our customers:

• To prioritise open and transparent communication because we know that this is critical when we want to build a successful business.
• To deliver the entire suite of consultancy, training and tools needed for innovative technology initiatives.
• Our unique combination of business advisory, professional services and technical expertise, ensure our customers that we can manage the project from ideation to execution stage, delivering a complete turn-key solution.
• We have built a multi-disciplinary team, with relevant experience in blockchain, cybersecurity and innovation, able to roll out any complex and innovative projects.
• To develop relevant business cases, to create strategy roadmaps, scenario and risk management plans, guiding our customers to a full rollout of innovative solutions in blockchain and cybersecurity market.
• To lead Proof of Concepts, to demonstrate cost reduction, business model innovation, business process acceleration and knowledge transfer.
• We have experience and credibility to advise all stakeholders’ levels, to address business opportunities instead of technology issues.