NPCI Launches India’s Own Blockchain-Backed Open-Source Project ‘Falcon’: All Details

India has maintained a rather sceptic stance towards accepting cryptocurrencies as part of its financial systems, but is keeping an open approach towards exploring blockchain technology. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), on August 29, announced the launch of Falcon — an open-source project that aims to simplify the management and use of blockchains based on ‘Hyperledger Fabric' and supported on Kubernetes clusters. Essentially, Falcon is expected to help developers innovate on blockchain-based payment solutions.

“Whether you're a blockchain enthusiast, developer, or enterprise seeking to harness the power of distributed ledger technology using Hyperledger Fabric, Falcon is your go-to solution for efficient, reliable, and automated Fabric network deployment,” the NPCI wrote in its official statement.

This offering from the NPCI is expected to help blockchain developers to use the distributed ledger technology to facilitate efficient, reliable, and automated deployment of network as well as Web3 solutions.

What is Hyperledger?

Hyperledger Fabric was initiated by Digital Asset and IBM, as per Investopedia. Hyperledger fabric is an enterprise-level permission blockchain network. The framework serves as a foundation for creating blockchain-based products and solutions.

What are Kubernetes Clusters?

Developed by Google engineers Joe Beda, Brendan Burns, and Craig McLuckie in 2014, Kubernetes is an open-source platform that assists the management of packaged software codes, also called containerised applications. A Kubernetes cluster is a set of nodes that run containerised applications.

“Kubernetes automates operational tasks of container management and includes built-in commands for deploying applications, rolling out changes to your applications, scaling your applications up and down to fit changing needs, monitoring your applications, and more—making it easier to manage applications,” Google Cloud has explained in its blog post.

About NPCI's Falcon Plans

Falcon will combine the elements of Kubernetes and Hyperledger to simplify the creation and maintenance of advanced grade blockchain solutions.

Many have congratulated NPCI for launching Falcon, predicting that it could “accelerate last mile delivery of blockchain based solution and enhance developer experience.”

Back in 2020, the NPCI designed ‘Vajra', a blockchain-based system for automating payment clearing and settlement processes for NPCI products.