Innovations from Bitcoin and Blockchain-related technologies have given birth to a new species of distributed systems. Today, these distributed systems are entirely decentralized. On the technical side, the field is exploding with innovation. It can be hard to keep track as each week new discussions, algorithms, and projects pop up.
So, as a developer, how do you get started with Blockchain? Where to start to understand these technologies? And which algorithms should you learn to create your own blockchain, or dig into the existing ones?
Ethereum is used to build decentralized applications, a.k.a. DAPPs. These applications exist through small programs that live on the Blockchain, called smart contracts.
Before jumping into the platform and writing a smart contract, it’s really important to understand where your application data is stored. Code execution, servers and programming language are rarely critical to the design of an application. But data –its structure and its security– will constrain our design the most.
Blockchain-related technologies are in full-hype mode these days. The first time I came across the b-word, I had a déjà-vu from the 2010s hype around “NoSQL”. But what is the point of the Blockchain, exactly?
Blockchain Systems are supporting more and more innovations. From digital currency to supply chain tracking or artist platforms.
One core constraint of Blockchain-based consensus is the need to operate within a walled garden. Everything must be predictable, reliable and reproducible. This fact is limiting for most projects. What if you want to develop applications that interact with the outside?
For example,
A Facebook API to build a Chatbot on Blockchain; An Amazon AWS API for your Blockchain DApp; A Payment API to accept dollars on your Online Store.
Blockchain technologies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum are used to set up currencies, called cryptocurrencies, but this is not the only purpose. Thanks to the decentralized protocol you can simulate any applications. Today, with web3, the Ethereum JavaScript API, it is possible to develop decentralized applications: DApps.
At first, developing an application on the Blockchain might seem complicated. How can I implement an application that does not run on a server but within a decentralized system?
