FISCO BCOS: Challenging Hyperledger Fabric with a Consortium Chain from China
- FISCO BCOS (in the following referred to as BCOS, respectively) is an opensource blockchain platform built by Financial Blockchain Shenzhen Consortium (FISCO) Taskforce Team (prominent team members include WeBank, Tencent Cloud, and Shenzhen Securities Communication).
SHENZHEN, China, Oct. 18, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The argument for a consortium chain being public or private (Permissionless or Permissioned blockchain) has long been debated. While famous Distributed Ledger Technologies like Hyperledger Fabric and R3 Corda have taken the path of coinless private consortium, FISCO BCOS, an opensource platform from China, has decided to be coinless and open to the public. From Nov. 12th to Nov. 14th, BCOS will make its international debut at Singapore Fintech Festival.
FISCO BCOS：The Building Block of Open Consortium Chain
FISCO BCOS is operated by FISCO - one of the largest blockchain consortiums in China. Founding members include WeBank (a digital bank initiated by Tencent), Tencent and Huawei, among others, and membership has since grown to 100+ members, including large banks. The Open Consortium Chain is a concept first introduced by WeBank. It is not a single blockchain, but rather a new type of blockchain application ecosystem - a set of blockchain applications aimed to serve the general public.
FISCO BCOS is the first blockchain platform built specifically to meet the regulatory requirements and service demands of the financial industry. Though blockchain technology has long been revered for its unique ability in providing consensus in recording transactions, it is also thought to have low concurrency, long delays, and probability-dependent completion. In today's highly competitive business environment, these are weaknesses that need to be overcome.
BCOS achieves this in several ways.
Platform Design:
- Optimized architecture greatly enhances transaction-handling capability. A single chain can handle thousands of transactions per second (>1000 TPS) with split-second confirmation. This addresses financial institutes' large transactional needs.
- Upgraded architecture and localized optimization to the single chain make secure and efficient concurrent computation & parallel expansion possible. Developers can thus effortlessly build additional servers to satisfy specific business requirements.
- Through the combination of Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) mechanism, multichain architecture, and cross-chain interactions, concurrent access problems and high frequency account limitations are resolved, effectively removing any hindrance to high frequency information exchange.
Security:
- Access node control, key management, and CA management help provide maximum security, from hosting, networking, and storing to application.
- It also supports functions that protect user privacy, including Zero-knowledge proof, Homomorphic encryption, Group signature and Ring signature.
Regulatory Support:
- Regulators and auditors can access and monitor the real-time data flow through observatory nodes.
- Multiple development interfaces provide developers convenience in writing and transferring smart contracts.
Since the launch of BCOS, dozens of use cases have been developed, ranging from finance and arbitration to copyrights and recruitment. BCOS has facilitated innovative initiatives and ideas, including cross-consortium collaborations, Open Chain Ecosystem, and Distributed Business Model. In addition to private member initiatives, many public members have launched applications in supply chain, finance, tourism finance, copyright transaction, recruitment, and gaming since BCOS became open-sourced.
For more information on BCOS and actual use cases, click here.
To track BCOS during their Singapore FinTech festival launch, follow their official Twitter account @FiscoBcos.
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