A Beginner’s Guide to Blockchain Development

April 24, 2018



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The essence of learning how Blockchain development works lies in understanding why businesses are opting for it in the first place.

There are a number of reasons that are behind this mass adoption of technology irrespective of what industry you look at.

Let us look at some of them.

Benefits of Blockchain

1.Transparency

Since Blockchain is an open technology, everything that happens on the platform is open for all the involved parties to view. Also, there is no way for someone to make changes in the information entered in the blockchain without others not seeing or approving it first.

This level of transparency makes the technology one of the most secure technologies of the present time. In fact, it is because of this transparency that a number of banks and even governments are now moving towards Blockchain for their processes.

2.Reduced Transaction Costs

Blockchain technology takes out middlemen from the picture irrespective of what transaction is being talked about.

Whether you are looking to get a property verified or whether you are applying for a bank loan and the establishment is asking for your documents, with blockchain you no more need to pay the price for fetching documents or for getting the property verified as every information is now available for everyone to access.

3.Lowered Transaction Time

With the elimination of middlemen comes the added benefit of lowered transaction time.

You no more have to wait in lines and for days to hear back from your property lawyer on the genuinity of the property, nor you will have to go to and fro with your hospital admin department to give you the original birth certificate.

Benefits like these added with the availability of open source platforms for dApps development have been pushing businesses to integrate Blockchain in one form or another in their mobile app.

Now that you know the benefits that Blockchain technology comes with, let us now touch bases on how Blockchain works, its technology stack and what to look for in a Blockchain app developer, exactly in that sequence.

Here we go.

How does Blockchain Work?

Blockchains are a chain of interlinked set of transactions and events.

Every party who is involved with the chain, sign their part of transactions through the help of keys (that are not shared with anyone), which makes sure that every since transaction is authenticated and verified.

Next, two hash get added in the specific block, one of them gives tamper protection to the block and the other safeguards the data that was added before a block.

These hashes enable recording of the data of all the transaction, which happened in one block.

Because hash acts as a shield between every two blocks, it is impossible for any of the involved entity to play around or make amends within the block without notifying the others in the chain.

With the rough idea of how Blockchain works now with you, let us now look into the technology stack that makes blockchain app development possible.

The Blockchain Technology Stack

Ethereum – It is a public,open-source, blockchain-based distributed operating system and computing platform that enables development of the smart contract functionality.

GoLang – GoLang is the programming language used for Blockchain App Development. The language provides cross platform support, is concurrent, and is simple and fast.

Solidity – It is a programming language that is used for the implementation of smart contract on different blockchain platforms.

Tierion – Its APIs and tools are used for a number of purposes such as – document timestamping, audit trial of a business process, and verifying data & credentials.

Hyperledger – Hosted by LINUX, Hyperledger is used to create enterprise level, open source code bases and distributed ledger frameworks, which are used to support industry specific transactions.

Solc – Written in C++, Solc is a command line tool which is used for compiling the solidity files.

Remix – It is a web browser based IDE which allows you to write smart contracts in Solidity Language, and then deploy, run it.

Mist – A client for Ethereum, Whisper, and Swarm, Mist is used to inspect blockchain, send transactions, and whisper messages.

Etherscan – It is mainly a search engine which enables users to conveniently lookup, ensure, and then validate the transactions which have taken place in the Ethereum Blockchain.

Truffle – Used for ethereum based d-apps, Truffle is a development environment which offers a testing frameworks for the written code. On the platform one can find a number of services including – an interactive console, public and private networks, and automated contract testing.

Coinbase API – The API is used to integrate cryptocurrencies in new and existing blockchain apps. Using the Coinbase API, you can generate, buy & sell, send & receive, store, and retrieve real time currency valuation.

 How to Hire a Blockchain App Developer

Now that you have seen how Blockchain works, its technology stack, and what are the various benefits that it offers, let us now come to the point –

How to hire a blockchain app developer and start your blockchain app development process.

Unlike your other mobile app development needs, Blockchain comes with its series of complexities that can only handled by a company that understands the depths of Blockchain App Development and have a team developers who know the nuances of the industry.

Once you have shortlisted some agencies, these are the factors that you should base the developers’ finalization on –

  • A deep understanding of ledgers, consensus methods, blockchains, and cryptocurrencies.
  • Strong understanding of algorithms,decentralized technologies, cryptography, data security, and data structures.
  • Strong coding skills with experience in at least one of these languages: Go, JAVA, Python, C, C++.
  • An understanding of distributed storage, such as NoSQL or RDBMS
  • Expertise in anomaly detection,threat analytics, and performance management.
  • An experience in creating blockchain frameworks and blockchain based business decentralized applications.

Finally, if everything up until now is in line with what you are looking for, before you close the deal, ensure that you have looked into their previous work portfolio, checked their reviews on app rating websites, have discussed and are satisfied with their working style.

Once you have ensured that the brand is offering exactly what you are looking for in your blockchain based app, take the conversation further.

Hope the article would help with your blockchain app development journey.

So what do you think ? Why don’t leave your comments below?

Also, hey, don’t forget to share this awesome article 🙂


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