In a blog pst on Hyperledger website, Hyperledger group announced Hyperledger Besu as the latest project to join Hyperledger. Hyperledger Besu, a Java-based Ethereum client formerly known as Pantheon, is the first blockchain project submitted to Hyperledger that can operate on a public blockchain. Besu represents the growing interest of enterprises to build both permissioned and public network use cases for their applications.
The project’s design and architecture decisions have been aimed at clean interfaces and modularity, with the goal of making Hyperledger Besu a platform for open development and deployment. Besu is designed to be as modular as possible, with a separation of concerns between consensus algorithms and other key blockchain features, making these components easy to upgrade or implement. By creating clean interfaces between elements within the client (e.g., networking, storage, EVM, etc.), we believe enterprises will have a much easier time configuring Ethereum to meet their needs while also creating opportunities for other Hyperledger projects to integrate and use elements of Besu’s codebase.
Hyperledger Besu is an open source Ethereum client developed under the Apache 2.0 license and written in Java. It can be run on the Ethereum public network or on private permissioned networks, as well as test networks such as Rinkeby, Ropsten, and Görli. Hyperledger Besu includes several consensus algorithms including PoW, PoA, and IBFT, and has comprehensive permissioning schemes designed specifically for uses in a consortium environment.
Hyperledger Besu implements the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) specification. The EEA specification was established to create common interfaces amongst the various open and closed source projects within Ethereum, to ensure users do not have vendor lock-in, and to create standard interfaces for teams building applications. Besu implements enterprise features in alignment with the EEA client specification.
PegaSys, the protocol engineering team at ConsenSys, has been the primary contributor and maintainer of the codebase at the core of Hyperledger Besu since its launch in November 2018 as Pantheon. They built this Ethereum client with the goal of lowering barriers to entry for enterprises and maintaining and scaling mainnet. They have developed an active community using and building on the codebase. In addition, there are multiple applications building on top of Besu and consortiums using Besu in production. The PegaSys team is excited to work with the Hyperledger community to continue to strengthen Hyperledger Besu as a platform.
