Status
Description
Burrow is a permissively licensed (Apache 2.0) EVM smart contract machine and Byzantine Fault Tolerant permissioned ledger that uses Tendermint consensus and implements some novel extensions to the EVM whilst remaining EVM-compliant. It provides EVM execution within the Ethereum account model and an internal token to meter computation in the permissioned setting with transactions finality. Burrow is named after the trans-dimensional intergalactic tubules used by marmots to communicate.
Key Characteristics
Burrow has three primary aims:
To be a good compliant and simple EVM library friendly towards integrators (see for example https://github.com/hyperledger/sawtooth-seth)
To be a fast, light, lean single-process full Tendermint/EVM permissioned ledger with transaction finality
To provide a practical base for EVM extensions in a many-chain world
Burrow is not trying to be:
Highly pluggable (see Sawtooth or Fabric)
Hard to deploy
Documentation
Documentation is available on the main repo of Burrow and burrow.js. Having gone through a period of consolidation we need help creating more high quality general tutorial documentation and specific task/component documentation.
Project Management
Burrow is being heavily tested as the core of the Agreements Network. It sits at the intersections of a number of emerging technologies:
- EVM contracts and host-native code contracts - Public permissioned networks - permissioned Ethereum and public Tendermint/Cosmos - Layer 2 scaling - acting as a side-chain or state channel
We aim to provide a robust blockchain node for running multiple interconnected chains in a many-chain world. As well as blurring the public/private chain divide.
Roadmaps
Repositories
Burrow's repository is on github here: https://github.com/hyperledger/burrow
The Burrow binary contains everything you need to specify, configure, run, and deploy smart contracts to a chain.
burrow spec
- for describing template genesis stateburrow configure
- for realising a specific configuration (including key generation)burrow keys
- both a standalone key signing daemon and key generation toolburrow deploy
- a declarative Solidity compilation, chain management, testing, and smart contract deployment toolburrow dump
- a forensics, auditing, and data extraction toolburrow snatives
- a tool for interacting with Burrow's 'secure natives' - host code that is callable as if it were an EVM contractburrow start
- for starting a blockchain node
For deploying contracts you will need a local installation of Solidity.
Monax maintains Bosmarmot a satellite monorepo to Burrow that contains:
burrow.js - a Javascript client library for interacting with Burrow smart contracts
Vent - an EVM event to SQL database mapping layer - currently under development.
For previous versions of standalone Burrow you can find:
docker images: https://hub.docker.com/r/hyperledger/burrow
Deployment
Burrow can be deployed in any environment but we have focussed on deploying related sets of validators (or validator pools) using Kubernetes/Helm and you can find helm charts here: https://github.com/helm/charts/tree/master/incubator/burrow.
Contributing
Please fork, branch, and make pull requests to the develop branch.
Our build, CI, and testing process is executed via our Makefile, see the comments there for details.
License Scans
Communication
Mailing List
Chat (for questions and ephemeral discussions)
#burrow - General usage questions
#burrow-contributors - Contributor discussions
Meeting
Quarterly updates
2018
2017
History
Burrow was approved for incubation on the 6th of April 2017 by the Hyperledger TSC.
Recent space activity
Space contributors