Certificate Authority introduction

Hyperledger fabric is a permissioned blockchain, thus, each network participant must have a digital identity (certificate) to convience other participants that it has rights to perform actions in the network or even be part of the network and Fabric CA is used to manage these identities.

Fabric CA offers functionalities like registering/renewing/deleting identities, issuing crypto materials for the registered identity, revoking identities, generating CRLs (Certificate Revocation List) and more.

There are 3 types of identities, peer, client, orderer and admin. Each of these identities has its own role in the network. Let’s go through them:

peer

A peer identity is used by peer nodes that form consensus in the network

client

A client identity is used by external applications that are willing to be integrated to the network.

orderer

An order identity is used by orderer nodes that ensure transaction ordering

admin

An admin identity used by organization admins that perform administrative tasks in the network.