Summary
A blockchain network operator's or developer's role does not end with the creation and bootstrapping of a network. They will be required to periodically maintain and augment such a network and any distributed application deployed on it for various business reasons other than administrative tasks like bug fixes. Operators and developers need to be skilled not just in design and implementation but also in monitoring, analytics, and assessing the impact of network modifications.
In this chapter, we have described various ways in which a Hyperledger Fabric network or a smart contract can change over its lifetime. We described in detail, using our trade application for demonstration, how organizations and peers can be added to a running network, how channel configurations can be augmented, how platforms can be upgraded, and how smart contracts and their associated definitions can be modified in a live network without adversely affecting the application state.
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