FastFabric

Note: This is a fork of the Hyperledger Fabric repository (https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric) and contains a more stable implementation of the FastFabric (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8751452). The original code used for the publication can be found in the fastfabric branch.

This is a proof of concept and not meant to be used in a production setting. Helper scripts and instructions are included to run Fabric directly from the binaries created by this repository.

Prerequisites

• The Hyperledger Fabric prerequisites are installed
• $GOPATH and $GOPATH/bin are added to $PATH
• The instructions assume that the repository is cloned to $GOPATH/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric
• Add the cryptogenand configtxgen binaries to a new $GOPATH/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric/fastfabric/scripts/bin folder

Network Setup Instructions

All following steps use scripts from the fabric/fastfabric/scripts folder.

• Fill in the values for the variables in custom_parameters.sh based on the comments in the file.
• Run create_artifact.sh to create the prerequisite files to setup the network, channel and anchor peer.
• For the following steps it is advised to run them in different terminals or use tmux.
  • Run run_orderer.sh on the respective server that should form the ordering service
  • Run run_storage.sh on the server that should persist the blockchain and world state
  • Run run_endorser.sh on any server that should act as a decoupled endorser
  • Run run_fastpeer.sh on the server that should validate incoming blocks
  • Run channel_setup.sh on any server in the network.
  • Run chaincode_setup.sh on any server in the network. If you want to install different chaincode, modify the script accordingly. The command should have the form ./chaincode_setup.sh [lower limit of account index range] [upper limit of account index range] [value per account]. Example: ./chaincode_setup.sh 0 10 100

This should set up an orderer in solo mode, one or more endorsers, a persistent storage peer and fast validation peer. Important: Sometimes it takes a few seconds after channel_setup.sh for the peers to properly set up a gossip network and as a result the chaincode_setup.sh might fail. In this case wait a short while and try to run it again.

For a test you can run test_chaincode [any endorser server] to move 10 coins form account0 to account1. Example: ./test_chaincode localhost

To shut down all Fabric nodes run terminate_benchmark.sh

Fabric Client Instructions

All following steps use scripts from the fabric/fastfabric/scripts/client folder.

• First run node addToWallet.js to copy the necessary user credentials from the crypto-config folder into the wallet folder.
• Compile either the invoke.ts (a client that endorses and submits transactions in one go) or invoke2.ts script (a client that first caches all endorsements before submitting them in bulk to the ordering service) to Javascript (change the include line in tsconfig.json). See https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/typescript/typescript-compiling for help.
• Depending on your choice modify run_benchmark.sh to either run invoke.ts or invoke2.ts. Run it with the command .\run_benchmark.sh [lower thread index] [upper thread index exclusive] [total thread count] [endorser addr] [number of touched accounts] [percentage of contentious txs]. This allows to create multiple client threads on multiple servers (wherever this script is executed), to generate load. Example: ./run_benchmark.sh 0 10 50 localhost 20000 70. This spawns 10 threads on this server (and expects that the script is run on other servers to spawn 40 more threads) and calls an endorser on localhost to endorse the transactions. Because only a fifth of the total threads are spawned by this script, only the first fifth of the accounts are touched, in this case account0 to account3999 for a total of 2000 transactions. There is a 70% chance that any generated transaction touches account0 and account1 instead of a previously untouched pair to simulate a transaction conflict.