Fundamental comparison between Ethereum and Hyperledger (part 1)

by Lumai Mubanga

The fundamental design models between Ethereum and hyper ledger brings out similarities and differences worth noting. This article will point out fundamental comparisons and why users need to take note of them.

While Ethereum and Bitcoin are very similar in that they are designed as a single platform, Hyperledger is designed as a family of multiple platforms. This design model allows developers to deploy different types of applications for enterprises. These platforms are so flexible that they have different characteristics, allowing them to fit into different types of applications for the enterprises. Thus, the audience on Hyperledger needs to learn more about the differences of these platforms so that they can pick the right platform to develop your own applications.

We now compare Hyperledger and Ethereum on three fronts namely; target audience, incentives and control levels based on the design models.

Target audience

Designed for the enterprise, Hyperledger is mainly for Business-to-Business (B2B) applications. Ethereum, on the other hand, is designed for Business to Customer (B2C) applications. This is why Hyperledger design model (permissioned protocols) entails the registration of already registered clients while ethereum is permissionless. This further explains why Ethereum provides a public chain for the applications.

Designed as a permissioned blockchain, Hyperledger aims at enterprises applications. Therefore, only registered or permitted users are allowed to join the blockchain.

Incentives

Public blockchain like Ethereum requires some form of incentives for miners to work on the chain. Therefore, Ethereum needs to reward its miners with an incentive in order for the miners to work on it. To achieve this, the blockchain is tokenized with Ether. On the other hand, Hyperledger is a permissioned chain for the consortium. Therefore, they are willing to contribute to the blockchain and they are registered users. No incentives are required and hyper ledger has no tokens in its design model to reward miners.

Control levels

Hyperledger has heightened control on its users than Ethereum because, on the Ethereum platform, the real identity of the user is not known because it is permissionless. The behaviour of the users is more difficult to control.

When we consider the consensus algorithm, Ethereum is applying the proof of work in order to guarantee the security of the whole system and therefore it takes a longer time to process each transaction. Hyperledger On the other hand, the user or the developer can have a choice, more flexible to choose an appropriate consensus algorithm for their applications. In other words, the consensus algorithm used by the Hyperledger, can run faster and require fewer resources, less storage and can be more flexible.

Thus, the target audience, incentives for miners and control levels for chain users are some of the major differences between hyperledger and Ethereum blockchains.