Interoperability between DLT following a Gateway-based approach: the Case of Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric

Distributed ledger technologies (DLT) usage is currently limited to a single platform as they don't have design-based interoperability capabilities. In general, it's challenging for a DLT to communicate with another one. Although several DLT solutions have been proposed and applied in specific application areas, building a general purpose interoperability solution for any DLT remains a challenge. In previous work, we proposed a tailor-made interoperability solution between Hyperledger Fabric and Corda. This paper extends that work to enable interoperability between Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum. The main contributions of this paper are proposals for a new Ethereum connector, a new request-response interaction model and the introduction of future payments to enable the payments of services. A prototype was developed and evaluated through a case scenario, performance tests and cost analysis. Performance tests showed bottlenecks under heavy load scenarios due to Ethereum's design. Costs analysis showed that the approach is suitable for purchasing high-priced services. These promising results constitute a step forward in developing a general-purpose solution for DLT interoperability.