A step-by step guide for blockchain developers

The FairWin team not only makes projects, but helps others to get on their feet. If you are thinking about launching your own blockchain startup, you may find these tips helpful.

Here we tried to break down the whole process of making a new project into a few stages. Following these tips can help you reach your goal.

Improving your vocabulary

Blockchain is like a torrent network. A program on your computer downloads files and afterwards shares them. But let`s call the program a blockchain client, not a torrent client. And here you download transactions, not videos or music. Seeder, leecher, date-time and amount — records are stored in the system. Everybody who possesses a blockchain client has his own duplicate of the whole blockchain databank and keeps all transactions that have ever been made.

Smart contract is like a slot machine. The best way to describe smart contracts is by comparing the technology to a slot machine. Normally, people go to a casino, pay them, and wait to get the chips. With smart contracts, you simply drop a bitcoin into the slot machine, and your money goes into your account.

Ethereum is like the Internet, DAPP is like a website. DApp — is a decentralized application that runs on the Ethereum platform much like websites use the Internet.

Ethereum is like money, tokens are like tickets. When we were children, we used to go to amusement parks. Sometimes they took our money at the entrance and gave us special tickets that we could use to enjoy ourselves on all the rides. Can you see the analogy? The amusement park is a DApp, tickets are tokens, money is Ether.

That`s it for now. You will pick up the rest as you go.

Selecting a business model

You can choose any business model, any sphere where blockchain can do any good. But the conventional way of launching a blockchain startup is by issuing tokens.

In simple terms tokens business model is similar to crowdfunding. The people buy shares (tokens) of your company. And in the future the shares (tokens) may be sold or exchanged for the services of your project.

All this was brought to us by Solidity (the Ethereum smart contract language), which makes it possible to issue your own cryptocurrency.

As you can see, tokens themselves can be a great motivator to get into all this.

What is in it for a user?

Ok, you have told the world about your project and collected the necessary funds. Now how can you bring it to your clients? Let`s talk about what a user should do:

• Get an address (a wallet). An address and a key to it are similar to a username and a password. You need them to interact with blockchain. The easiest way to get it is to use the generator at MyEtherWallet.com. It can be done almost instantly, and as a result, you will get an address and a key. The address is 42 characters long and the key is a small file. The key file is used to sign transactions and has to be kept in a safe place — it is not possible to restore it. On the other hand, your address works for all the smart contracts.
• Get some ether (ETH). Any transaction demands commission (0,001 to 0,01 ETH as a rule). You have to put a sufficient sum at your address to interact with your contract. One can buy ether on major exchanges. But there are some limitations. Users from countries where such exchanges are not available and those who can`t wait may use almost instant alternatives.
• Access a blockchain client. Any interaction with blockchain and with any smart contract is done by means of a blockchain client. This client is too weighty and hard to work with. So let`s assume that our users will not install it. What can we do to solve this problem?

Connecting a user with blockchain

We need to make our user feel comfortable with a graphical user interface (GUI). In Ethereum GUIs are not connected to blockchain. There are a few ways to link GUI to a smart contract.

• Smart contract with no GUI. As you can understand, this is the least usable way. Users can interact with smart contracts directly, with no GUI at all. In this case you need to have very elaborate documentation.
• Decentralized application (DApp). DApp is a GUI for your contract in a browser.
• A browser is able to connect both to the Internet and to a blockchain client. Thus, a smart contract looks like an ordinary web-site, except for a notification offering to select a keyfile on the disk.
• Mobile application

Building an infrastructure

• Smart contract with no GUI

No matter how you’ve implemented the GUI, you need to publish your contract. Publication of a contract is a transaction too. Commission for it is extremely small.

You can publish your documentation free of charge at readthedocs.com. Another way is to upload instruction videos to youtube.

• DApp

DApp is just a web page (HTML, CSS, JAvaScript). So the knowledge of these things will suffice at first.

• Mobile App

In this case you need a server with a running blockchain client to let your app contact the blockhain through it. Or you can embed a light client right into your app.

What your developer should know

• Smart contract with no GUI

Ethereum uses its own language for smart contracts called Solidity.

It is very simple and people with JavaScript experience will find it very familiar. But a developer has to write smart contracts very carefully, because they can be copied by third parties, thus turning them against you. Plus once published, a smart contract is not subject to change.

• DApp

DApp is HTML, CSS and JavaScript. A front-end developer will be enough.

• Mobile apps and back-ends

Any language can be used to write mobile and desktop applications. Follow the same advice as for the DApp. You may use ready-made libraries to connect your app to a blockchain client (full, light or remote).

• Conclusion

Of course this is not all there is to know about blockchain. But the knowledge of websites, Javascript and your business idea will do for the start. You will gain experience as you go.

Thank you for reading this, we hope the information was useful.

Here is a more in-depth analysis if you are interested.

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