Do you know about AWS Blockchain and its implications for developing your career? The following discussion would dive into the basic details of blockchain on AWS, its benefits, blockchain services on AWS, and the different use cases.
If you are thinking of cryptocurrency when you hear the term ‘blockchain,’ then you are yet to discover the breadth of blockchain technology. The association of blockchain technology with cryptocurrency transactions is one of the foremost misconceptions of any individual regarding blockchain technology.
Taking the misconceptions to the next level, blockchain technology is also believed to be a suitable choice only for finance or technology businesses. However, enterprises and business leaders are slowly recognizing the capabilities of blockchain technology.
Furthermore, the intersection between cloud computing and blockchain is leading to various changes in the approaches for conducting business. So, the introduction of blockchain on AWS is a promising career opportunity for tech professionals of the future. As a result, it is inevitable to notice a growing interest in an AWS Blockchain tutorial in recent times.
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What Does AWS Blockchain Include?
Blockchain networks serve as credible tools for businesses in maintenance and security of records for various digital transactions throughout multiple parties. However, the lack of a centralized authority also creates challenges while offering some considerable benefits. Therefore, managed blockchain offerings have become quite popular for businesses working on leveraging blockchain technology without independent network setup and management.
AWS Blockchain is the perfect example of fully managed services for using blockchain technology. Blockchain on AWS refers to a small yet powerful assortment of offerings that support the enterprise blockchain initiatives of organizations. The Amazon Quantum Ledger Database, Amazon Managed Blockchain, AWS Blockchain Partners, and AWS Blockchain Templates are the prominent entries when it comes to discussions about blockchain on AWS. So, let us take a review of how enterprise blockchain on AWS looks like!
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Features of the AWS Blockchain Offerings
The AWS Blockchain ecosystem is tailored for addressing diverse business issues in the deployment of blockchain projects through cloud platforms. Here are some of the notable traits that characterize the overall enterprise blockchain landscape on AWS.
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Specifically Tailored for Blockchain Development Needs
The foremost highlight that you can observe in blockchain on AWS is the tailor-made nature. AWS has created objective-oriented blockchain tools that can support different needs. The needs can include a centralized ledger database for maintaining a cryptographically-verified and immutable record of transactions. On the other hand, users can also develop a multi-party, completely managed blockchain network for eliminating intermediaries.
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Wider Applications
Another notable aspect in an AWS Blockchain tutorial refers to the large-scale usage of AWS for blockchain workloads. In comparison to other Blockchain as a Service providers, AWS has an upper hand when it comes to blockchain deployments. With around 25% of all the Ethereum workloads all over the world running presently on AWS, it is possible to consider feasibility of blockchain applications on AWS. The most notable enterprise customers for Hyperledger Fabric include names such as Guardian, Contura Energy, Nestle, Sage, Sony Music, SGX, BMW, Splunk, and many others.
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Improved Productivity in Blockchain Development
The next important highlight about AWS blockchain refers directly to the prospects for productivity with blockchain implementation.
AWS offers better simplicity, efficiency, and speed in development of blockchain and distributed ledger technology applications. For example, the Amazon Managed Blockchain can help in reducing the major work associated with setting up blockchain networks.
It can help in lowering the time taken for hosting Hyperledger Fabric frameworks by almost 60%. Furthermore, the fully managed blockchain service also improves the ease of network operations with support for AWS CLI, Amazon CloudWatch Logs, and AWS CloudFormation. Subsequently, Amazon QLDB also presents two to three times better speed in comparison to traditional frameworks. In addition, it also offers document data models and operators similar to SQL for management of transactions.
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Featuring More than 70 Blockchain Solutions
The AWS Blockchain ecosystem is also favorable for enterprises on the basis of proven productivity. The supported blockchain protocols include Corda, Ethereum, and Hyperledger Fabric.
Presently AWS has more than 70 proven blockchain solutions from partners involved in support for all crucial blockchain protocols. It also supports Hyperledger Sawtooth, RSK and many others.
So, it is clearly evident that an AWS Blockchain tutorial can be highly beneficial for developing and deploying blockchain solutions on the AWS cloud. Therefore, a closer reflection on each individual tool in blockchain on AWS can provide further clarity regarding the applications of AWS Blockchain.
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Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB)
The Amazon QLDB or Quantum Ledger Database is a completely managed ledger database solution. It can provide a comprehensive transaction log with better transparency, cryptographic verification standards, and immutability, under the ownership of central trusted authorities. Amazon QLDB can be a suitable alternative for tracking every modification in application data.
In addition, it also ensures the maintenance of a detailed and auditable history of modifications over the course of time. Amazon QLDB in AWS Blockchain serves as a completely new class of database offering for reducing the need for engaging with complicated development efforts in building personal ledger-like applications.
QLDB allows immutability of change history of the data and verification about lack of unintended modifications in the application data. QLDB features a transaction log with immutability, also known as a journal, for tracking each change in application data while maintaining a comprehensive and auditable history of changes.
The SQL-like API, along with complete support for transactions and a document data model with comprehensive flexibility, helps developers considerably. Furthermore, Amazon QLDB in AWS Blockchain also offers the streaming capability for achieving an almost real-time data flow for developing real-time analytics and event-driven workflows.
In addition, the streaming capability can also help in replicating data to other AWS services for achieving improved analytical processing. The serverless nature of QLDB also ensures that it is automatically scalable for supporting the demands of your application. At the same time, the serverless nature of QLDB takes away the need for managing servers or configuring the read and write limits. Most important of all, QLDB charges users only for the services they use.
Amazon Managed Blockchain
The next important addition in the world of AWS Blockchain refers directly to Amazon Managed Blockchain. The Amazon Managed Blockchain is basically a proven solution for creation and management of highly scalable blockchain networks with ease. It is a fully managed service that enables users to join public networks easily.
In addition, it also supports the creation and management of private networks with scalability by leveraging renowned open-source frameworks such as Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric. Amazon Managed Blockchain can enable users to join public networks or to set up and managing private scalable networks with few clicks only.
The importance of Amazon Managed Blockchain in AWS Blockchain is evident in the reduction of overheads in creating networks. It also helps in reducing the overheads involved in joining a public blockchain. Subsequently, it also helps in automatic scalability for addressing the demands of multiple applications executing millions of transactions.
After the network is established and operational, Amazon Managed Blockchain can improve the ease of blockchain network management and maintenance. Furthermore, it is also crucially productive in management of your certificates alongside allowing new members to join the network.
Why Choose Amazon Managed Blockchain?
Since Amazon Managed Blockchain is the prominent mention when it comes to AWS Blockchain, let us reflect on its benefits. The benefits of Amazon Managed Blockchain could clearly showcase the reasons for the substantially growing demand for blockchain on AWS.
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Benefits of ‘Fully-Managed’
The fully-managed nature of Amazon Managed Blockchain allows users to create blockchain networks spanning across different AWS accounts. It can help a group of members in sharing data and executing transactions without any single, centralized authority.
Rather than self-hosting the infrastructure, companies using blockchain technology don’t have to provision their hardware, set up security and networking components, and configure software manually. The voting API in Amazon Managed Blockchain allows voting privileges for network participants for the addition or removal of members.
After adding a new member, Amazon Managed Blockchain allows the member to launch and configuring various blockchain peer to peer networks. In addition, Amazon Managed Blockchain also offers facilities for monitoring blockchain network. Furthermore, Amazon Managed Blockchain can also replace nodes with poor performance automatically.
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Enhanced Security and Scalability
The benefits of Amazon Managed Blockchain service on AWS Blockchain also include scalability and security. Managed Blockchain allows the features for easy scalability of blockchain network according to the growth of network. When network members need additional capacity for new transactions and verification, the member can use APIs for adding a new peer node quickly.
The wide variety of instance types with different combinations of memory and CPU can offer desired flexibility for resource selection. Most important of all, Managed Blockchain can ensure security of blockchain network with the AWS Key Management Service (KMS) technology. As a result, it can also resolve the requirements for setting up individual secure key storage.
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Flexibility for Different Blockchain Frameworks
Amazon Managed Blockchain is a crucial entry in AWS Blockchain due to its support for selecting enterprise blockchain protocols. Presently, Amazon Managed Blockchain provides support for two renowned blockchain frameworks such as Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum.
Interestingly, Hyperledger Fabric supports applications that depend on strict permission and privacy controls with a specific set of members. On the other hand, Ethereum is a favorable option for blockchain networks with a highly distributed nature, focused on data transparency for all members. In addition, Enterprise Ethereum can be a promising alternative for a public Ethereum blockchain network.
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Improved Reliability
The final beneficial aspect of Amazon Managed Blockchain in the AWS Blockchain landscape refers to reliability. Amazon Managed Blockchain offers an absolute assurance of reliability for the ‘ordering service.’ The ordering service is a component in Hyperledger Fabric that helps in delivering transactions throughout the blockchain network.
On the other hand, the default ordering service of Hyperledger Fabric does not provide storage for complete transaction history. As a result, it creates difficulties in tracking or recovering transaction history according to your requirements. The ordering service of Amazon Managed Blockchain is based on Amazon QLDB technology.
The immutable change log of the ordering service in Amazon Managed Blockchain helps in accurate maintenance of transaction history of blockchain networks. Therefore, AWS Blockchain can ensure that users can save their data with assurance of safeguards for data integrity.
AWS Blockchain Templates
Therefore, you can clearly witness how Amazon QLDB and the Amazon Managed Blockchain serve as crucial highlights in an AWS Blockchain tutorial. Another important aspect involved in the world of blockchain on AWS refers to blockchain templates. The blockchain templates on AWS help in creating and deploying blockchain networks faster by leveraging desired enterprise blockchain frameworks.
Blockchain also works as a decentralized database technology for maintenance of a continuously expanding set of transactions and smart contracts. The AWS Blockchain templates can help users with configuration and launch of AWS CloudFormation stacks for creating blockchain networks. Different blockchain templates on AWS feature different AWS resources and services assigned to them. Furthermore, the specifications of the user also determine the type of services and resources in a blockchain template on AWS.
AWS Blockchain templates are capable of leveraging different AWS services for deploying blockchain according to the options selected by them. The notable services associated with blockchain templates on AWS include EC2, Amazon VPC, Amazon ECS, and Application Load Balancers. Let us take a look at the functionalities offered by these services and resources for blockchain on AWS.
Amazon EC2 is a suitable alternative for obtaining compute capacity to run a blockchain network. Amazon VPC or Virtual Private Cloud helps with the facility of network access to Ethereum resources created by users. At the same time, users can leverage Amazon VPC for customizing configuration to ensure security and accessibility. Blockchain templates on AWS also support Amazon ECS or Elastic Container Service.
Amazon ECS helps in orchestrating cluster-based container deployment across EC2 instances for the blockchain network. The Application Load Balancer support in AWS Blockchain templates also allows a single point of contact to access the available user interface.
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Conclusion
On a concluding note, you can clearly note that the combination of the cloud and blockchain can induce positive outcomes. The best things about both technologies come together to offer the most feasible business solutions with assurance of productivity. In the long run, the development and deployment of blockchain solutions through cloud platforms would gain mainstream recognition.
So, you should start learning more about AWS Blockchain if you want to take your blockchain career ahead. The flexibility, security, and scalability benefits of blockchain on AWS are the foremost reasons to consider its potential.
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*Disclaimer: The article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide any investment advice. Claims made in this article do not constitute investment advice and should not be taken as such. 101 Blockchains shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this article. Do your own research!
