Blockchain Frameworks

Blockchain provides immense benefits for finance, government, healthcare, IoT, and many other sectors. The increased transparency, reliability, immutability, low transaction costs, and no job for the middleman make it unavoidable for companies to try it. Though the records are decentralized and distributed, it secures from interfering and tampering. This enhances trust in blockchain technology. If you have decided to switch to the blockchain, the first consideration for building apps will be choosing the right blockchain framework to build the applications that fit your needs.

There are many blockchain frameworks or platforms available. We have listed out the top Blockchain Frameworks that are worth considering.

What is Blockchain Frameworks

Blockchain Frameworks or platforms enable the user to build or develop blockchain-based applications. There is a distinction between frameworks that are permissioned and permissionless. But most of the frameworks are permissionless. Ethereum, Hyperledger fabric, Corda, etc., are the most popular blockchain frameworks.

Choose the Right Blockchain Framework

This part will be helpful to pick the best blockchain framework for your business based on requirements. Check the elements explained below before you make a choice of selecting a framework.

Blockchain Type: To know about choosing a blockchain type, you must know what it is. Refer to Blockchain Types here. There are different types of blockchains available namely Public, Private, Hybrid, and Consortium. Choose the framework based on the blockchain type you require.
Community: You should know how popular, how active the development and how large the framework community is. This helps you to solve issues and grow. Make sure the platform code has been tested multiple times or it’s still in the development stage.
Supported Language: Look for the programming languages the platform supports. Solidity is the most used programming language.
Consensus Algorithm: It is essential to know what consensus algorithm the blockchain platform uses. There are different consensus algorithms like Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, Proof of Elapsed Time, Proof of Burn, and so on.
Smart Contracts: Smart Contracts are a set of rules that run on the blockchain automatically. Ensure the blockchain platform supports Smart Contracts.
Growth Extension: When the network participants and transactions increase, the blockchain should be able to adapt to the growth.

Popular Blockchain Frameworks

Explore below 3 handpicked popular Blockchain Frameworks. The most popular Blockchain Frameworks are,

1. Ethereum
2. Hyperledger
3. Corda

Ethereum

Founded by Vitalk Buterin in the year 2013. Ethereum is the first and most popular blockchain development platform. It introduced the feature Smart Contract to the world in 2015. You can build apps and organizations, hold assets, transact and communicate without any interference from a central authority. The smart contracts are run on the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum also includes EVM, which is an Ethereum Virtual Machine on which smart contracts and Ethereum accounts are run. With the EVM, you can create dapps(decentralized apps) to run in Ethereum. The dapps can be created for diverse fields such as logistics, real estate, health care, and more. Ethereum is a permissionless(public) blockchain type. It uses the Proof of Work consensus algorithm which is quite slow in speed. The programming language used in Ethereum is Solidity. Ethereum itself has a cryptocurrency called Ether.

Hyperledger

Linux Foundation founded Hyperledger in 2016. Hyperledger is an umbrella-type project and open source. It is an enterprise-grade blockchain technology. It is open for collaboration of individual developers and other members to meet and joins in the development of blockchain technologies. It offers tools for finance, banking, IoT, supply chains, and more. Hyperledger offers a suite of stable frameworks, tools, and libraries. The most known Hyperledger frameworks are,

Hyperledger Fabric: It is a permissioned blockchain, used for creating highly scalable applications. It is the popular Hyperledger framework, created by IBM.
Hyperledger Sawtooth: It is contributed by Intel. Sawtooth uses ‘Proof of elapsed time” {PoET) consensus protocol. It supports Ethereum smart contracts via ‘seth’.
It supports smart contracts but doesn’t have cryptocurrency. Hyperledger has a modular architecture that is intuitive. It has a strong community and active contributions.

Corda

Corda is developed by R3. It lets you build apps and run on scalable, permissioned, and peer-to-peer DLT platforms. It is designed initially for financial institutions but then they have expanded to fields like healthcare, insurance, digital assets, and finance. It supports smart contracts. The smart contracts can be written in Java or Kotlin language and they are run on a Java Virtual Machine. It has no mining feature and no cryptocurrencies or tokens. You can use many consensus algorithms.