Exploratory Study on Hyperledger Fabric Framework: Food Supply Chain as a Case Study

The wide use of supply chain management systems in various business sectors encouraged researchers and those who were concerned to explore and employ efficient technologies to improve such systems. The integration of blockchain into supply chains has proved its effectiveness at increasing the customer's trust level, as well as many other features, such as traceability, immutability, provenance awareness, etc. Moreover, the use of private permissioned blockchain networks, for instance Hyperledger Fabric (HLF), not only leverages the level of confidence, but also increases the speed of transaction execution. In this paper, an exploratory detailed study on Hyperledger Fabric framework is conducted. The study focused on the HLF network design, the consensus algorithms used in HLF, the HLF smart contracts and the transaction flow stages. Moreover, a number of illustrative case studies that used HLF into their networks designed for food supply chain management systems have been introduced. The basic design components in each of the applications are reviewed as well as the main goals and desired outcomes.