The first two chapters were focused on setting the stage and defining the landscape of a blockchain project. We now understand how the technology works within a business framework and how the various Hyperledger projects aim to solve the problem of time and trust.

With an understanding of the components that make up Hyperledger Fabric, we will now delve into application design and implementation considerations. The next few chapters will take you through the steps of creating your very own smart contract and then integrating it to an application.

In order to make these exercises relevant, we will leverage a business use case with its roots in some older civilizations: trading and letters of credit.

The chapter's objective will be to introduce the business concept of letter of credit, walk you through the sample scenario we selected, and conclude by setting up our development environment.

In this chapter, we will:

• Explore letters of credit
• Review our simplified business scenario
• Set up our development environment