Background

A cellular operator is starting a new wireless network in a developing country where a non-trivial percentage of the population may not have access to the banking system. In addition to managing the cellular contracts with subscribers, the operator eventually wants to provide other services such as money transfer and purchase or exchange of goods via smartphones. The operator wants to manage this through a distributed ledger system, but wants it to be independent of existing blockchains such as Bitcoin and Etherium which require payment back to those systems and are beholden to the developers and users of those systems.

Requirements and recommendations

1) Native blockchain

a. Not built on Bitcoin, Etherium, etc.

b. History not stored on Bitcoin, Etherium, etc.

2) Recommend looking at Hyperledger Fabric or Hyperledger Iroha as starting points

3) Permissioned, not public

a. Anyone can join (subject at some point to a cellular subscription), but only trusted entities can verify transactions

4) Modular, plugable consensus

a. Start with Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT)

5) Modular, plugable encryption

6) Subchain support

7) Must not preclude supporting a coin or token at a later date

8) Support for smart contracts

a. C++ support preferred, but not required

9) Support for mobile apps at a later date

10) No GNU GPL licensed open source allowed

a. Open source software licensed under other licenses, such as the Apache 2.0 license https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 is allowed upon approval of the license