FireFly

Hyperledger FireFly is an implementation of a multi-party system that simplifies data orchestration on top of blockchain and other peer-to-peer technologies.

This chart bootstraps a FireFly deployment on a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm package manager. It can be used to deploy a single FireFly node for an individual organization within a multi-party system.

Prerequisites

Kubernetes 1.18+
Helm 3.7+
PV provisioner support in the underlying infrastructure
Recommended: cert-manager 1.4+

Get Repo Info

Helm's experimental OCI registry support is used for publishing and retrieving the FireFly Helm chart, as a result one must log into GHCR to download the chart:

export HELM_EXPERIMENTAL_OCI=1

helm registry login ghcr.io

NOTE: you must use a GitHub personal access token when authenticating to the GHCR registry as opposed to using your GitHub password.

Install Chart

helm install [RELEASE_NAME] --version 0.2.0 oci://ghcr.io/hyperledger/helm/firefly

See configuration below.

See helm install for command documentation.

Uninstall Chart

helm uninstall [RELEASE_NAME]

See helm uninstall for command documentation.

Upgrading Chart

helm upgrade [RELEASE_NAME] --install --version 0.2.0 oci://ghcr.io/hyperledger/helm/firefly

See helm upgrade for command documentation.

Using as a Dependency

You can also use the FireFly chart within your own parent chart's Chart.yaml:

dependencies:
  # ...
  - name: firefly
    repository: "oci://ghcr.io/hyperledger/helm/"
    version: 0.2.0

Then download the chart dependency into your parent chart:

helm dep up path/to/parent-chart

See helm dependency for command documentation.

Deployment Architecture

FireFly provides a REST API with an event-driven paradigm that simplifies building multi-party interactions via decentralized applications. In order to do so, FireFly leverages extensible connector plugins that enable swapping out the underlying blockchain and off-chain infrastructure easily.

As a result, a FireFly node has several infrastructural dependencies:

Blockchain connector (either Fabconnect -> Fabric, or Ethconnect -> Ethereum) for a private blockchain
A Fabric chaincode or Ethereum smart contract deployed to the underlying blockchain
Private data exchange (HTTPS + mTLS)
Database (PostgreSQL)
Shared storage (IPFS)
Optional tokens connectors (ERC1155, ERC20, etc.)

As depicted above, the chart only aims to provide a means for deploying the following components:

Component	Status	Optional	Enabled by Default
FireFly Core	βeta	❌	N/A
FireFly Ethconnect	⍺lpha ⚠️	✅	❌
FireFly Fabconnect	Unimplemented 🙈	N/A	N/A
FireFly DataExchange HTTPS	βeta	✅	✅
FireFly Tokens ERC1155	βeta	✅	❌
FireFly Tokens ERC20 / ERC721	⍺lpha ⚠️	✅	❌

NOTE: "Status" is meant to indicate the level of stability of the chart's support for the particular component. It is not meant to indicate the maturity of the component itself, though the component's maturity does have an impact on the community's ability to support it via the chart.

All other infrastructural dependencies such as the blockchain, PostgreSQL, and IPFS are considered out of scope for the chart, and must be pre-provisioned in order for FireFly to be fully functioning.

Configuration

The following describes how to use the chart's values to configure various aspects of the FireFly deployment.

Configuration File Templating

FireFly itself has a robust YAML configuration file (usually named firefly.core) powered by Viper that allows one to define all the necessary configuration for the FireFly server, and the underlying connectors it will use.

The chart provides a top-level config value which then contains sub-values such as postgresUrl, ipfsApiUrl, organizationName, adminEnabled, etc. These sub-values are meant to provide an opinionated, safe way of templating the firefly.core file. Based on which values are set, it will correctly configure the various connector plugins as well as determine if additional ports will be exposed such as the admin, debug, and metrics ports.

The following values are required in order for FireFly to startup correctly:

config.organizationName
config.organizationKey
config.postgresUrl
config.ipfsApiUrl and config.ipfsGatewayUrl
either:
- config.fireflyContractAddress, and then either config.ethconnectUrl or ethconnect.enabled (see Ethereum below for more details)
- or, config.fabconnectUrl and config.fabconnectSigner

You can find documentation regarding each of these values, as well as all the other config values, in the comments of the default values.yaml. You can see how the values are used for templating the firefly.core file by looking at the firefly.coreConfig helper function in _helpers.tpl.

NOTE: although config.dataexchangeUrl is available, by default dataexchange.enabled is true which will deploy a DataExchange HTTPS and automatically configure FireFly to use it.

If you would rather customize the templating of the firefly.core with your own values, you can use config.templateOverride:

config:
  templateOverride: |
    org:
      name: {{ .Values.global.myOrgNameValue }}
    # etc. ...

See config.go for all available FireFly configuration options.

Additional Environment Variables

If there are configurations you want to set via your own ConfigMaps or Secrets, it is recommended to do so via environment variables which can be provided with the core.extraEnv list value. FireFly will automatically override its config via environment variables prefixed with FIREFLY_. For example, if you want to set to the config value log.level you would set the env var FIREFLY_LOG_LEVEL.

For a more detailed example using core.extraEnv, one could provide basic auth credentials for IPFS from a Secret like so:

core:
  extraEnv:
    - name: FIREFLY_PUBLICSTORAGE_IPFS_API_AUTH_USERNAME
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: my-ipfs-basic-auth
          key: username
    - name: FIREFLY_PUBLICSTORAGE_IPFS_API_AUTH_PASSWORD
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: my-ipfs-basic-auth
          key: password

In the case of PostgreSQL credentials, environment variables will have to be set for FireFly and its migrations Job:

# database section of the config needs to be set to indicate Postgres
config:
  databaseOverride: |-
    type: postgres
    postgres:
      migrations:
        auto: false
# pass Postgres URL as a secret to both FireFly and the migrations job
core:
  extraEnv:
    - name: FIREFLY_DATABASE_POSTGRES_URL
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: custom-psql-config
          key: url
  jobs:
    postgresMigrations:
      enabled: true
      extraEnv:
        - name: PSQL_URL
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              name: custom-psql-config
              key: url

Ethereum

Configuring FireFly to use an Ethereum blockchain such as Geth, Quorum, or Hyperledger Besu requires first having an instance of FireFly Ethconnect deployed and connected to the JSONRPC port of an Ethereum node in the underlying network. You can either configure the chart to use a "remote", pre-provisioned Ethconnect instance, or the chart can create a "local" Ethconnect instance for you alongside your FireFly.

NOTE: Ethconnect itself has two modes: local registry versus remote registry mode. If you are provisioning Ethconnect yourself using the chart or other means, then it will likely be in local registry mode. This means FireFly will interact with contract instances using the /contracts/{address} API. However, if you are using Ethconnect provisioned via a cloud provider such as Kaledio then it will be in remote registry mode and FireFly will need use the /instances/{address} API instead.

Regardless of how you provision Ethconnect, the chart will need the following config to tell FireFly how to submit and sign batch pin transactions via its smart contract (one of the core operations):

config:
  organizationKey: "{organizationWalletAddress}"
  fireflyContractAddress: "/contracts/{fireflyContractAddress}"

where:

config.organizationKey: is the Ethereum address of the organization's wallet / key which will be used for signing transactions
config.fireflyContractAddress: the Ethconnect URI representing the deployed FireFly smart contract i.e. /contracts/0x965b92929108df1c77c156ba73d00ca851dcd2e1 or /instances/0x965b92929108df1c77c156ba73d00ca851dcd2e1. See Smart Contract Deployment for how to you can deploy the contract yourself.

Remote Ethconnect

Assuming you have an Ethconnect instance ready, the chart will need the following additional configuration to have FireFly (and any enabled tokens connectors) connect to it:

config:
  ethconnectUrl: "https://ethconnect.acme.org"

Chart-managed Ethconnect

Assuming you have an Ethereum node ready, the chart can be configured to automatically provision Ethconnect for you given the following:

ethconnect:
  enabled: true

  config:
    jsonRpcUrl: "https://eth.acme.org"

  jobs:
    registerContracts:
      enabled: true

Because the chart-managed Ethconnect is in "local registry mode", it will not be aware of any pre-deployed smart contracts without first registering them. By default, the chart will run a job which will attempt to register the presumably, pre-deployed FireFly and ERC1155 contracts provided via the config.fireflyContractAdderess and erc1155.contractAddress values.

NOTE: With the ongoing work on Custom On-Chain Logic within FireFly, the support around contract registration and deployment is subject to change in the near future.

If you are unable to pre-deploy the contracts, you can disable registration and boot up FireFly in a "pre-init" state instead:

config:
  preInit: true

core:
  jobs:
    registration:
      enabled: false

ethconnect:
  enabled: true

  config:
    jsonRpcUrl: "https://eth.acme.org"

  jobs:
    registerContracts:
      enabled: false

This will allow you to install the chart, deploy your smart contracts to the chart-managed Ethconnect, then you can upgrade the chart with pre-init disabled to have FireFly finish its startup and network registration:

config:
  preInit: false

core:
  jobs:
    registration:
      enabled: true

Smart Contract Deployment

Currently, the chart offers no way for one to manage the FireFly smart contract. Instead, the chart assumes it is already pre-provisioned via Ethconnect by one of the organizations.

If you have the contract available as gateway contract on Ethconnect, you can then deploy it via the API:

curl -v \
 -X POST \
 -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
 -d '{}' \
 "${ETHCONNECT_URL/gateways/${FF_CONTRACT_GATEWAY}?ff-from=${ORG_WALLET_ADDRESS}&ff-sync=true"

The JSON returned by the API will have the Ethereum address of the smart contract in the address field.

NOTE: the FireFly smart contract only needs to be deployed by one organization within the blockchain network. All organizations within a FireFly network must use the same smart contract instance in order for transactions to work properly.

If the contract is not available as a gateway contract on your Ethconnect instance, see the Ethconnect docs for deploying a contract.

Fabric

Configuring FireFly to use a Hyperledger Fabric blockchain requires first having an instance of FireFly Fabconnect deployed and connected to the gRPC port of a Fabric peer in the underlying network.

As was noted in Deployment Architecture, the chart will eventually include support for deploying Fabconnect. For now, you can either deploy Fabconnect yourself or use a cloud provider like Kaleido which provides Fabconnect alongside its Fabric peer nodes.

Once you have a Fabconnect instance ready, FireFly then needs three pieces of configuration:

config.organizationKey: the name of the organization's Fabric identity which will be used for signing transactions
config.fabconnectUrl: the HTTP/S URL of the Fabconnect instance FireFly will use
config.fabconnectSigner: the name of the organization's Fabric identity which will be used for signing transactions. See Identity Management for how to you can create and enroll the identity using Fabconnect.

These will enable the FireFly deployment to connect to the Fabric blockchain and submit batch pin transactions via its chaincode on behalf of the organization it's representing.

Chaincode

By default, the chart assumes the FireFly chaincode is deployed to the default-channel with the name firefly_go. If the chaincode was deployed to a different channel or with a different name you can set config.fabconnectChannel and config.fireflyChaincode accordingly.

For deploying the chaincode yourself, consult the Fabric documentation.

Identity Management

The Fabric identity FireFly will use for signing transactions on behalf of the organization must be pre-enrolled with the Fabric CA before deploying FireFly and registration its organization. Fabconnect provides an /identities REST API which makes creating an identity and enrolling it easy. For example, the following Bash script performs the necessary API calls to create and enroll an identity named ${ORG_NAME}:

identityRegistrationResponse=$(curl --fail -s \
  -X POST \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d "{ \"name\": \"${ORG_NAME}\", \"type\": \"client\" }" \
  "${FABCONNECT_URL}/identities")

enrollmentSecret=$(echo -n $identityRegistrationResponse | jq -r .secret)
curl --fail -s \
  -X POST \
  -H  'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d "{ \"secret\": \"${enrollmentSecret}\" }" \
  "${FABCONNECT_URL}/identities/${ORG_NAME}/enroll" | jq -r

You can use Bash or whatever scripting / programming language you prefer to enroll the identity. If you wish to enroll the identity without having to first deploying Fabconnect, please consult the Fabric CA documentation.

Ingress Example

If you have an Ingress controller deployed to your cluster, and the chart supports deploying an Ingress for the FireFly REST API and websocket subscriptions. For example, if you are using the ingress-nginx controller alongside cert-manager you can secure FireFly with TLS and the necessary settings:

core:
  ingress:
    enabled: true
    className: nginx # assuming you are using the default ingressClassName for nginx-ingress
    annotations:
      # recommended for handling blob data transfers and broadcasts
      nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-body-size: 128m
      # recommended for having websocket connections live longer than the default 60s
      nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-read-timeout: "1800"
      nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-send-timeout: "1800"
      # example cert-manager ClusterIssuer for Let's Encrypt
      cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: letsencrypt-prod
    hosts:
      - host: firefly.acme.org
    tls:
      - secretName: firefly-tls
        hosts:
          - firefly.acme.org

Database Migrations

The database schema FireFly uses for its state must be configured via migrations. The chart offers the ability to automatically apply the migrations matching the version of FireFly in use via a Job:

core:
  jobs:
    postgresMigrations:
      enabled: true

The Job will be named with the FireFly version in use, and will be automatically replaced and re-run whenever the version is updated indicating the expected schema could have potentially changed.

Additionally, FireFly itself can apply its own schema migrations. However, this is not recommended for production use where an organization could have multiple FireFly nodes sharing the same database:

config:
  postgresAutomigrate: true

It is recommended to use the migrations Job from above in favor of the automatic migrations.

Auto-Registration

FireFly requires that the organizations within the multi-party system, as well as the individual FireFly nodes be registered with the rest of the network. This can be accomplished using the FireFly REST API, however the chart offers a registration Job which will ensure the organization is registered before then registering the node:

core:
  jobs:
    registration:
      enabled: true

DataExchange HTTPS and cert-manager

The DataExchange HTTPS uses mTLS to securely send messages to other peers. By default, the chart assumes an mTLS certificate with the proper subject and commonName is provided via dataexchange.tlsSecret.name.

However, the chart offers the ability to automatically provision and wire up the DataExchange with an mTLS certificate using cert-manager:

dataexchange:
  tlsSecret:
    enabled: false
  
  certificate:
    enabled: true
    issuerRef:
      name: selfsigned-ca
      kind: ClusterIssuer

NOTE: the certificate cannot be signed by a self-signed or public CA issuer because cert-manager will not set the subject and commonName properly (see cert-manager/cert-manager#3651). We recommend using an internal CA issuer instead. An example setup of a CA issuer signed by a self-signed issuer can be found here.

If your DataExchange HTTPS is communicating via Ingresses, you will need to enable TLS passthrough in order for mTLS to work. For example, when using ingress-nginx an annotation can be set on the Ingress:

  ingress:
    enabled: true
    annotations:
      nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/ssl-passthrough: "true"
    class: nginx
    hosts:
      - host: firefly-dx.acme.org

NOTE: the tls section of the Ingress does not need to be configured since mTLS is required. Instead, it assumes the provided hosts must match the tls[0].hosts and that the secret is either pre-made or provided by cert-manager.

Tokens Connectors

ERC1155

By default, the chart comes with the FireFly Tokens ERC1155 connector disabled.

The ERC1155 connector requires its ERC1155 smart contract to be deployed via Ethconnect. To do so, you can follow the same process for deploying the FireFly smart contract. Once the smart contract is deployed, you can enable the ERC1155 connect and provide the contract address to the chart:

erc1155:
  enabled: true
  contractAddress: "/instances/0xf778b86fa74e846c4f0a1fbd1335fe81c00a0c91"

ERC20 / ERC721

By default, the chart comes with the FireFly Tokens ERC20 / ERC721 connector disabled. ERC20 is the token standard used for fungible tokens as part of this connector, whereas ERC721 is used for the non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Unlike other token connectors, ERC20 / ERC721 is stateless and currently comes with experimental support for automatically deploying its smart contracts to your Ethconnect instance and preparing them to be used by their respective token pools:

erc20Erc721:
  enabled: true

  erc20:
    enabled: true
    tokenName: "FF"     # enter the symbol / name for your fungible tokens here

  erc721:
    enabled: false
    tokenName: "NFFT"   # enter the symbol / name for your NFTs here

  job:
    deployContracts:
      enabled: true

see the values.yaml for more information around configuration options depending on if you are using an Ethconnect instance in local or remote registry mode.

NOTE: With the ongoing work on Custom On-Chain Logic within FireFly, the support around contract deployment is subject to change in the near future.

Prometheus Support

FireFly comes with an metrics endpoint exposed on a separate HTTP server for Prometheus scraping.

By default, the FireFly Prometheus metrics server is enabled. You can turn the server off, or configure its exposed port and path using the following values:

config:
  metricsEnabled: true
  metricsPath: /metrics

core:
  service:
    metricsPort: 5100

Additionally, if you are managing Prometheus via the Prometheus Operator, you can enable a ServiceMonitor for FireFly with:

core:
  metrics:
    serviceMonitor:
      enabled: true

Automated Deployments

Due to Helm's OCI registry support being experimental, below describes how to configure common deployment automation tooling for consuming the FireFly chart.

GitOps

Flux V2

Flux V2 is a GitOps controller for Kubernetes which currently does not support Helm OCI registries. Instead, one can use a GitRepository resource pointed at a specific release tag:

apiVersion: source.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta1
kind: GitRepository
metadata:
  name: firefly-helm
spec:
  interval: 10m
  url: "https://github.com/hyperledger/firefly"
  ref:
    tag: helm-v0.1.0
  ignore: |
    /*
    !/charts/firefly

then within a HelmRelease resource you can refer to the chart via the GitRepostiory:

apiVersion: helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v2beta1
kind: HelmRelease
metadata:
  name: firefly
spec:
  chart:
    spec:
      chart: /charts/firefly
      sourceRef:
        name: firefly-helm
        kind: GitRepository
  interval: 1m
  values: |
    # ...

ArgoCD

ArgoCD is another GitOps controller for Kubernetes which does support OCI Helm registries. In order to use the FireFly Helm chart via an ArgoCD Application, you must first add the OCI Helm registry for Hyperledger. For example, you can do so using the CLI:

argocd repo add ghcr.io/hyperledger/helm --type helm --name hyperledger --enable-oci --username ${USERNAME} --password ${PAT}

To declaratively add the registry consult the documentation.

Terraform

Terraform is a CLI tool that enables engineers to "plan" and "apply" infrastructure defined as code in the HCL language. Terraform offers a Helm provider for managing Helm releases and their values declaratively. Terraform does not currently support OCI registries.

As a result, you can configure Terraform to use the FireFly chart by either:

Creating a wrapper parent chart with the FireFly chart dependency pre-downloaded and vendored. See Using as a Dependency for more information.

Pre-downloading the FireFly chart directly using:

helm pull --version 0.0.1 oci://ghcr.io/hyperledger/helm/firefly

then referring to via its filepath location:

resource "helm_release" "firefly" {
  name = "firefly"
  chart = "firefly-0.0.1.tgz"
  // ...
}

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README.md

README.md

FireFly

Table of Contents

Prerequisites

Get Repo Info

Install Chart

Uninstall Chart

Upgrading Chart

Using as a Dependency

Deployment Architecture

Configuration

Configuration File Templating

Additional Environment Variables

Ethereum

Remote Ethconnect

Chart-managed Ethconnect

Smart Contract Deployment

Fabric

Chaincode

Identity Management

Ingress Example

Database Migrations

Auto-Registration

DataExchange HTTPS and cert-manager

Tokens Connectors

ERC1155

ERC20 / ERC721

Prometheus Support

Automated Deployments

GitOps

Flux V2

ArgoCD

Terraform

Files

README.md

Latest commit

History

README.md

File metadata and controls

FireFly

Table of Contents

Prerequisites

Get Repo Info

Install Chart

Uninstall Chart

Upgrading Chart

Using as a Dependency

Deployment Architecture

Configuration

Configuration File Templating

Additional Environment Variables

Ethereum

Remote Ethconnect

Chart-managed Ethconnect

Smart Contract Deployment

Fabric

Chaincode

Identity Management

Ingress Example

Database Migrations

Auto-Registration

DataExchange HTTPS and cert-manager

Tokens Connectors

ERC1155

ERC20 / ERC721

Prometheus Support

Automated Deployments

GitOps

Flux V2

ArgoCD

Terraform