A system for providing a representational state transfer, REST, proxy service in a blockchain cloud service, the system comprising: a container runtime service running an instance of the blockchain cloud service in a container; a distributed ledger and management console component in the container runtime service, wherein the distributed ledger and management console are provisioned as components of the blockchain cloud service in the container of the container runtime service; a REST proxy service executing in a container of the container runtime service, wherein the REST proxy service includes a plurality of REST application programming interfaces, APIs, which are configured to translate REST calls from client applications into remote procedural calls, for use by the client applications in communicating with the distributed ledger; wherein the management console includes a plurality of APIs comprising a plurality of client APIs configured to be invoked by a client application and a plurality of backend APIs for communicating with a plurality of nodes of the distributed ledger; wherein the plurality of client APIs are configured to receive input from a blockchain cloud service console user interface and/or a REST-client to use one or more of the plurality of backend APIs in provisioning the distributed ledger as a blockchain cloud service, wherein the plurality of client APIs are configured to receive input from a blockchain cloud service console user interface and/or a REST-client to use one or more of the plurality of backend APIs in managing the blockchain cloud service, wherein managing the provisioned blockchain cloud service includes one or more selected from: starting and stopping a peer node, an orderer node, a fabric Certificate Authority node, and a blockchain cloud service gateway node; and adding and removing a peer node, an orderer node, and a blockchain cloud service gateway node. a container runtime service running an instance of the blockchain cloud service in a container; a distributed ledger and management console component in the container runtime service, wherein the distributed ledger and management console are provisioned as components of the blockchain cloud service in the container of the container runtime service; a REST proxy service executing in a container of the container runtime service, wherein the REST proxy service includes a plurality of REST application programming interfaces, APIs, which are configured to translate REST calls from client applications into remote procedural calls, for use by the client applications in communicating with the distributed ledger; wherein the management console includes a plurality of APIs comprising a plurality of client APIs configured to be invoked by a client application and a plurality of backend APIs for communicating with a plurality of nodes of the distributed ledger; wherein the plurality of client APIs are configured to receive input from a blockchain cloud service console user interface and/or a REST-client to use one or more of the plurality of backend APIs in provisioning the distributed ledger as a blockchain cloud service, wherein the plurality of client APIs are configured to receive input from a blockchain cloud service console user interface and/or a REST-client to use one or more of the plurality of backend APIs in managing the blockchain cloud service, wherein managing the provisioned blockchain cloud service includes one or more selected from: starting and stopping a peer node, an orderer node, a fabric Certificate Authority node, and a blockchain cloud service gateway node; and adding and removing a peer node, an orderer node, and a blockchain cloud service gateway node. <EOS>