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