Keynote 1

Marko Vukolić

Hyperledger Fabric: a Distributed Operating System for Permissioned Blockchains

Fabric is a modular and extensible open-source system for deploying and operating permissioned blockchains and one of the Hyperledger projects hosted by the Linux Foundation (www.hyperledger.org). Fabric supports modular consensus protocols, which allows the system to be tailored to particular use cases and trust models. Fabric is also the first blockchain system that runs distributed applications written in standard, general-purpose programming languages, without systemic dependency on a native cryptocurrency. This stands in sharp contrast to existing blockchain platforms that require "smart-contracts" to be written in domain-specific languages or rely on a cryptocurrency. Fabric realizes the permissioned model using a portable notion of membership, which may be integrated with industry-standard identity management. To support such flexibility, Fabric introduces an entirely novel blockchain design and revamps the way blockchains cope with non-determinism, resource exhaustion, and performance attacks. Although not yet performance-optimized, Fabric achieves, in certain popular deployment configurations, end-to-end throughput of more than 3500 transactions per second (of a Bitcoin-inspired digital currency), with sub-second latency, scaling well to over 100 peers. In this talk we discuss Hyperledger Fabric architecture, detailing the rationale behind various design decisions. We also briefly discuss distributed ledger technology (DLT) use cases to which Hyperledger Fabric is relevant, including financial industry, manufacturing industry, supply chain management, government use cases and many more.

Short Biography: Dr. Marko Vukolić is a Research Staff Member at Blockchain and Industry Platforms group at IBM Research - Zurich. Previously, he was a faculty at EURECOM and a visiting faculty at ETH Zurich. He received his PhD in distributed systems from EPFL in 2008 and his dipl. ing. degree in telecommunications from University of Belgrade in 2001. His research interests lie in the broad area of distributed systems, including blockchain and distributed ledgers, cloud computing security, distributed storage and fault-tolerance.

Keynote 2

Hans-Peter Schwefel

Evolution of Electricity Distribution Grids into Cyber-Physical Systems - A Dependability Perspective

The distribution grids have to provide electric power to geographically distributed consumers. Since several years ago, they in addition need to dependably connect a large share of the renewable distributed generation. This electricity infrastructure has in the last few years been complemented by communication and information technology systems, which can be used for the monitoring and operation of the distribution grid. Furthermore, an increasing number of digital data sources and actuation options have become available and many of the connected systems have become connected and 'intelligent'. As a consequence, the distribution grid has started to evolve into a cyber-physical system. This talks first looks at the status of that evolution and points out future evolution paths from a technical perspective. Subsequently, the opportunities and challenges of intelligent electricity distribution grids are discussed utilizing a selection of example use-cases for increased distribution grid dependability and operation efficiency.

Short Biography: Hans-Peter Schwefel is founder and CEO of the company GridData GmbH, Germany, and Professor at the Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Denmark. In parallel to his position at Aalborg University, he has previously been Scientific Director of the Research Center for Telecommunications in Vienna, Austria in 2008-2016. His research focuses on data quality and dependability aspects in distributed critical infrastructures. Before he joined Aalborg University, he was a project manager at Siemens Information and Communication Mobile, supervising research projects and responsible for the development of technical concepts for next generation mobile networks. He obtained his doctoral degree in Computer Science from the Technical University in Munich, Germany. Hans has been principal investigator in several international research projects that target intelligent energy distribution grids; most notably in SmartC2Net in the European Framework Programme 7, and in Net2DG in the European Horizon 2020 program. He is co-chair of the IEEE Emerging Technologies Initiative on Smart Grid Communications.

Sponsored By	Organized By	Supported By