Hyperlegder Sawtooth

Another open source blockchain initiative hosted by Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation is Hyperledger Sawtooth. One of its key advantages is that it allows enterprises to choose from several consensus mechanisms for different use cases. One novel consensus mechanism called proof of elapsed time can integrate with hardware-based security technologies to enable "trusted execution environments" of program code to run in secure enclaves, which are protected areas of computer memory. It also supports practical Byzantine fault tolerance which can allow nodes to reach consensus if hackers or other bad actors compromise some nodes. Sawtooth Raft uses a leader-based consensus algorithm that provides crash tolerance for a private and controlled group of users.

Shawn Amundson, principal consultant at Bitwise IO, said the most common applications are for developing supply chain systems and customizing Sawtooth for specific purposes, such as novel consensus algorithms.

A Sawtooth library enables developers of custom distributed ledgers to pick and choose which pieces of Sawtooth they use in their application. Sawtooth also supports Splinter for networking, which provides dynamic private circuits (groups of nodes); Hyperledger Transact for transaction processing to enhance smart contract capabilities; and Augrim for consensus, which expands the number of supported algorithms.