Blockchain as a Service:Specifications and pricing

Alibaba Cloud BaaS supports three mainstream engines: Ant Blockchain, Hyperledger Fabric, and Quorum. The Hyperledger Fabric and Ant Blockchain have been GA and this topic describes the billing methods of these two engines.

For Quorum, you can apply for free trial on the Homepage of BaaS.

Billing details for BaaS based on Ant Blockchain

The billing items include: Blockchain instances.

Billing item: blockchain instances

• Description: Instances that are used to run the BaaS platform, which contain four nodes by default. All instances are dedicated instances. The CPU, memory, storage, and I/O resources assigned to an instance are exclusive to this instance, which improves the stability and reliability.

  • The operator of the network needs to create a consortium first, and then create a blockchain instance, invite the participants to join the consortium. Note: At the same time, one blockchain instance can only exist in one consortium.

  • Participants of the network can join the consortium after confirming the operator invitation.

• Billing method: subscription

• Billing details: see the following table.

Table 2. Instance specifications and billing details

Billing details for BaaS based on Hyperledger Fabric

The billing items include:

• Billing item 1: blockchain network instances

• Billing item 2: storage space

Billing item 1: blockchain network instances

• Description: Instances that are used to run the BaaS platform. All instances are dedicated instances. The CPU, memory, storage, and I/O resources assigned to an instance are exclusive to this instance, which improves the stability and reliability.

  • The operator of the network needs to create a consortium instance first, and then invite the participants to join the consortium.

  • Participants of the network need to create an organization instance and then join the consortium after they confirm the invitation sent by the operator. Note: At the same time, one organization instance can only exist in one consortium.

    Note

    One Fabric blockchain network is composed of 1 consortium instance + N organization instances, N>=1. The number of organization instances N is determined by the number of business participants and whether there is an exclusive requirement. If a participant needs exclusive blockchain node and ledger, as well as chaincode deployment, blockchain user creation and other management functions, the participant needs to create a separate organization instance. An organization instance can be shared if the participants has no exclusive requirement. Consortium instance and organization instances can be purchased and created by a single cloud account or by different cloud accounts.

• Billing method: subscription

• Billing details: see the following table.

  • Test network: Starter Edition. Owned by a single customer, this network has one Starter Edition consortium instances and two Starter Edition organization instances to simulate a minimum multi-party transaction scenario, which is suitable for getting started and testing smart contracts.

  • Production Network: Basic Edition and Enterprise Edition. Instances of this two editions are used for building a production network of multiple parties, meanwhile the network should include one consortium instance and N organization instances (N≥1).

Table 1. Instance specifications and billing details

Billing item 2: storage space

• Description: The storage space is used to store blockchain ledgers and related data. It is based on Alibaba Cloud NAS performance storage type. The blockchain network instance has provided some free storage space. During the running process, when the data exceeds the limit of free storage space, the system scales out automatically to ensure the session continuity and the availability of connections.

• Billing method: pay-as-you-go. Expenses incurred within an hour are deducted from the balance at the next hourly interval. Make sure that the account balance is sufficient when you use this service.

• Billing details : space exceeding the free quota will be billed based on a pay-as-you-go basis. fees are calculated based on the following formula: Fees = Actual capacity × Unit price per hour.