Hyperledger FireFly

When “blockchain” gets muttered, most CTOs picture Metamask pop-ups or neon-gradient DeFi dashboards. Most non-CTOs picture Monkey NFTs, Dogecoin memes, or crypto-currency price uncertainty. Early in our journey, we had the same pictures because we didn't know any better.

Enter Hyperledger FireFly.

Early days prototype

Our starting point for understanding the possibilities of blockchain technology was Hyperledger FireFly. Our key driver at the time was for a private, permissioned blockchain which we had complete control over. And with Hyperledger FireFly, we were able to build a prototype of a private blockchain network which we could use to test our ideas. Here's what our Miro looked like in October 2022:

FireFly lives one layer above smart contracts. Think of it as a REST-native message bus that happens to notarise every payload on-chain. You post JSON, it handles ordering, persistence, privacy groups, and token mints. That's my kind of tool. And since our early prototyping, Microsoft slipped the Kaleido Asset Platform powered by FireFly into Azure Marketplace, complete with pay-as-you-go pricing and ARM templates. No fanfare, just a new tile next to your usual Postgres and Redis offers.

Traction

Open-source traction suggests it’s more than a checkbox feature:

• 390 → 549 GitHub stars since September 2023 = a steeper slope than Fabric (which I also like) or Besu managed in their early days.
• 1.3 release added multi-event contract listeners and better TypeScript typings, making the Node SDK production-grade = imo, if you want traction, concentrate on Node.

Great to see the product maturing, so what’s in it for a startup juggling Azure Functions and other cloud services?

• Ledger-backed audit without blockchain headaches = pair FireFly’s off-chain data layer with Azure SQL Ledger; auditors get Merkle proofs, devs get T-SQL 👌
• Zero-friction Node integration. One npm i @hyperledger/firefly-sdk later, your existing Express middleware can issue asset-transfer transactions exactly like it calls Stripe. Nice.
• Multi-chain future-proofing. Need Polygon today but private Besu tomorrow? FireFly abstracts the chain, just swap connectors when the use-case changes. For those clients that like the product, and love privacy.

Steps to get started

• Spin up the Kaleido Asset Platform from Azure Marketplace = few mins to deploy.
• Use the built-in FireFly Explorer to watch messages settle and token balances update.
• Prototype a “keep the receipts” system: a POST to /tokens/mint in your Node service, a webhook back when the asset is on-chain. Time to first on-chain business event: < 2 hrs.

The reality

FireFly won’t magic away compliance, you still need KYC hooks and key-management discipline. And the community, while growing, is tiny compared to mainstream Node frameworks. But if you’re hunting for a pragmatic bridge between Azure cloud-native stacks and regulated digital assets, the numbers and the momentum say it’s worth a sprint.

I thank Microsoft for it's contribution to putting PCs in every home. But, man, their pricing and product model leaves a lot to be desired, as usual. FireFly alone comes in at $2,500/month, the whole Kaleido Asset Platform at $10,000/month, but the Kaleido Blockchain-as-a-Service is free. Classic Microsoft pricing.

• If you just need cloud-cost hygiene and IaC maturity → Firefly. You’ll start free, then graduate to the $5 k or $35 k annual tier when you hit multi-account sprawl.
• If you’re building a bespoke Web3 backend → Kaleido BaaS. Spin up a dev network for pennies; expect a low-thousands monthly bill once you’re running 3-5 validator nodes in production.
• If you’re issuing regulated tokens or running an institutional asset exchange → Kaleido Asset Platform. The $120 k sticker is steep, but it’s cheaper (and audit-ready) compared with stitching custody, compliance and indexing yourself.