Building Blockchain Networks - Amazon Managed Blockchain and Migrating Off the Discontinued QLDB
Explains how to build blockchain networks with Amazon Managed Blockchain, plus where Amazon QLDB (discontinued July 31, 2025) fits and its official migration path to Aurora PostgreSQL.
Amazon QLDB End of Support (July 31, 2025) and Migration Path
Of the two services covered in this article, Amazon QLDB reached its end of support on July 31, 2025. Official AWS documentation pointed to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL as the migration target and published a migration procedure (full load plus ongoing replication) based on ledger export with AWS DMS and AWS Glue. The official recommendation for a tamper-evident audit trail within a single organization is now an audit-table design on Aurora PostgreSQL. Amazon Managed Blockchain remains available, and multi-organization distributed ledgers should continue to use it. The QLDB sections below are kept as a historical reference describing the service as it worked at the time.
Blockchain Technology and AWS Distributed Ledger Services
Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that ensures tamper resistance and transparency of data among multiple participants. Amazon Managed Blockchain (AMB) provides, as a managed service, both node access to the public Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains and private networks built on Hyperledger Fabric, simplifying network creation, member invitations, and node management. Amazon QLDB (Quantum Ledger Database), on the other hand, is a centralized ledger database that records all data change history in a cryptographically verifiable manner. Building a blockchain network on-premises requires complex operations including node provisioning, certificate management, consensus algorithm configuration, and network scaling. Managed Blockchain handles all of this as a managed service, letting you focus on application development.
Building a Network with Amazon Managed Blockchain
Managed Blockchain lets you create a Hyperledger Fabric-based private network in just a few clicks. When creating a network, you set a voting policy to define the approval process for new members. Each member creates peer nodes, deploys chaincode, and executes private transactions through channels. Managed Blockchain integrates with AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for secure network certificate management. CloudWatch node metrics monitoring and CloudTrail API call audit logs are available out of the box. Connectivity to public blockchains is also provided: Ethereum in the form of a JSON-RPC endpoint on a dedicated (single-tenant) node, and Bitcoin in the form of a serverless API on shared infrastructure, supporting smart contract development and reading chain data. It is ideal for use cases that require highly reliable data sharing across multiple independent organizations, such as supply chain traceability, trade finance, and digital asset management. You can create a Managed Blockchain network via the CLI: aws managedblockchain create-network --name SupplyChainNet --framework HYPERLEDGER_FABRIC --framework-version 2.2 --framework-configuration Fabric={Edition=STARTER} --voting-policy ApprovalThresholdPolicy={ThresholdPercentage=50,ProposalDurationInHours=24,ThresholdComparator=GREATER_THAN} --member-configuration Name=OrgA,FrameworkConfiguration={Fabric={AdminUsername=admin,AdminPassword=Password123}} to build a network by specifying the framework edition, the voting policy, and the initial member settings.
Verifiable Ledger Database with Amazon QLDB
Amazon QLDB is a ledger database that records all data changes in an immutable journal and guarantees verifiability through a cryptographic hash chain. Traditional relational databases cannot fully prevent audit log tampering, but QLDB guarantees the integrity of change history at the database engine level. It supports SQL-like operations through the PartiQL query language and uses a document-oriented data model. QLDB's streaming feature delivers ledger changes in real time to Kinesis Data Streams, enabling integration with downstream analytics and notification systems. It excels in use cases where data integrity and traceability are legally required, such as financial transaction audit trails, regulatory compliance records, and insurance claim history management. It runs on a serverless architecture with automatic scaling and requires no pre-provisioned storage capacity.
Choosing Between and Integrating Managed Blockchain and QLDB
Managed Blockchain and QLDB are each optimized for different use cases. Managed Blockchain is the right choice when multiple independent organizations need to share data without a pre-existing trust relationship. Use cases where a single trusted authority guarantees data accuracy and verifiable change history is required were the domain QLDB served; after its discontinuation, an audit-table design on Aurora PostgreSQL or similar takes its place. The pattern of combining the two carries over as a configuration that manages internal transaction records in Aurora PostgreSQL while sharing transactions with external partners through Managed Blockchain. A serverless architecture using Lambda and API Gateway lets you efficiently build the backend for blockchain applications. A hybrid configuration with DynamoDB can achieve both fast read queries and ledger verifiability.
Managed Blockchain Pricing
(As of August 2026; US East (N. Virginia, us-east-1) and Asia Pacific (Tokyo, ap-northeast-1)) Hyperledger Fabric billing has five axes: membership, on-demand peer nodes, peer node storage, data written to the network, and standard AWS data transfer charges; the network itself is not charged. Membership costs $0.30 per hour (N. Virginia) and $0.34 per hour (Tokyo) for the Starter edition and $0.55 per hour (N. Virginia) and $0.63 per hour (Tokyo) for the Standard edition, includes the certificate authority (CA) and shared network costs, and is billed per second. Peer nodes cost $0.034 per hour (N. Virginia) and $0.044 per hour (Tokyo) for bc.t3.small, billed per second with a one-minute minimum. Peer node storage is $0.10 per GB-month (N. Virginia) and $0.12 per GB-month (Tokyo), and data written is $0.10 per GB (N. Virginia) and $0.11 per GB (Tokyo) for the entire transaction payload. The editions differ not only in price but also in limits: Starter allows up to 5 members per network and up to 2 peer nodes per member, with instance types limited to bc.t3.small and bc.t3.medium. Standard allows up to 14 members and up to 3 peer nodes per member, offers the bc.t3 / bc.m5 / bc.c5 families, and provides higher ordering service transaction throughput and availability. Starter is positioned for testing and small-scale use, Standard for production use. Because there are many billing axes with mixed units, check the official pricing page for per-instance-type rates and the latest regional values. QLDB's pricing was retired along with the service. Today, choose Managed Blockchain when distributed consensus across multiple organizations is required, and an audit-table design on Aurora PostgreSQL for a single-organization tamper-evident ledger.
Summary - Practical Use of Distributed Ledger Technology
Amazon Managed Blockchain provides the foundation for using blockchain and distributed ledger technology in enterprise environments. QLDB, which used to be paired with it, was discontinued on July 31, 2025, and the official migration path for single-organization verifiable ledgers is now an implementation on Aurora PostgreSQL. Managed Blockchain remains the right tool for multi-organization data sharing, and as a fully managed service it minimizes infrastructure overhead so you can focus on business logic, a key differentiator from on-premises blockchain platforms.
References (Official AWS Resources)
The primary sources for this page are the official AWS website and documentation. Check the official pages below for the latest specifications and pricing.
If this page and the official documentation disagree, treat the official documentation as authoritative.