The EOS blockchain lays claim to a beckoning promise — the promise of autonomy. The vision put forth by Dan Larimer and block.one is an ambitious one; a world with no central authorities or gatekeepers. The EOSIO software, based on graphene (invented by Dan Larimer), allows for lightning fast confirmation time speeds, mixing the best of decentralization with centralized storage providers. This new world will need key participants to make it work; it will need reliable block producers, an engaged community, and, perhaps most importantly, DAPP developers.
Without DAPP developers EOS will most likely never reach its more ambitious goals; but the question remains, why would a developer want to build on EOS vs the cloud or some other centralized alternative? Below we have listed some reasons we think developers will find compelling, as well as a seasoned dApp developers tips for building a smart contract. By the end of this article, we hope all would be Dapp developers will consider building on EOS. (BTW, if you have an existing project that you are considering moving from ETH, etc let us know and we will help you with the technical components of moving on over. It would be a win- win).
Why would you build on EOS vs cloud? 5 Reasons.
REASON 1
Trustless Trading.
One reason EOS, and blockchain in general, is so revolutionary is that it has solved the double spend problem. This means that developers can deploy their apps on a smart contract blockchain and rely on nodes in the system to send and verify financial transactions. Since it takes consensus from multiple, independent nodes to verify a transaction, if the transaction is accepted it is immutable and cannot be reversed. THIS IS HUGE. If you were to build your app on the cloud you would probably have to hire a third party company to process your transactions. This third party would be a centralized entity that could reverse, freeze, or modify your transactions. The cloud service could stop hosting your app due to regulation concerns or other. On a blockchain like EOS, your transactions would go through unless collusion among 15/21 main producers occurred; an event that would be very unlikely.
REASON 2
Your app needs speed of transactions.
On POW blockchains transactions can take a long time to process. If you have a high volume, fast paced game (like Pixel Master) you need confirmation of transactions to happen quickly. While such games could work well on a centralized server, it would be much more difficult if not impossible to publish such games on a POW chain (Cryptokitties, anyone?). DPOS allows for speed and ability to scale a game seamlessly. EOS is a strong contender for speed of transactions.
REASON 3
No fees.
This is another big one. As a developer on EOS your customers can use your dapp without having to pay fees. POW chains and even other DPOS chains charge fees to make a transaction. On EOS there are no fees, you just need to have a certain amount of your coins staked to make transactions. On Chintai users can rent their tokens to developers to MAKE money. REX will soon arrive and offer similar options to token holders. No fees, plus possible passive income? That’s a great reason to build on EOS.
REASON 4
Free tech support.
The EOS community is dynamic and awesome! As we have seen first hand, they are always willing to help. Brave dapp developers such as Eosbet and Pixelmaster have discovered first hand that when problems arise, the community will be there to help you. Block producers have a wealth of knowledge on how to code for the blockchain and are helping dapp developers trouble shoot for free. On top of that any dapp that is open source will be vetted for free by the community, helping dapp developers ensure that their dapps are safe and fit for use.
REASON 5
Micro transactions.
Last but not least we have micro transactions. Dapps that rely on micro transactions will thrive on EOS where there are no TX fees. Since all transactions are essentially free, it does not matter to the user or the developer how many transactions are processed by the blockchain, big or small. Even banks have regulations on micro transactions because processing so many little transactions would be a headache for them and too costly to make worth while. Gone are the days of a “minimum” spend, now all transactions, big or small can be processed on the EOS blockchain.
These are just five of the many reasons developers should consider building on EOS vs a centralized app development option. Do you have other reasons? If so, let us know in the comments!
Now that you know all of the reasons to build on the EOS blockchain, take a moment to read a few frequently asked questions from would be dApp developers as answered by EOS Asia’s smart contract developer.
1. Do you have to know C++ to code for the blockchain?
You use C++ to create the smart contracts. But you also need another programmer familiar JavaScript and HTML5 to build the UI for the DApp.
A team of 2 should suffice to build a basic DApp.
Some auxiliary services may need to be built to handle API requirements not provided by the EOS API.
2. What are the biggest differences between coding for the cloud vs the blockchain?
The biggest difference is probably psychological. A typical cloud application would not be handling financial matters, whereas programming the blockchain often involves real financial stakes.
The possibility of losing money by making an innocent mistake is very real.
It’s is difficult to balance the two conflicting goals of “thinking slow and safely”, and “moving fast, and break things”.
In terms of day-to-day work, coding for the blockchain is still in its infancy stage. There are a paucity of tools, best practices, and workflow. Even something as basic as unit testing is something you may have to build for own project.
Despite these problems, we enjoyed developing for EOS. It’s blockchain that’s posed to solve many practical problems, yet is familiar enough that a typical programmer can quickly learn to develop for it.
3. Do you have to learn how to make a smart contract? Where’s the best place to learn?
There is very few systematic tutorials, and they quickly get out of date because the fast pace of change.
The best way to quickly get up to speed, in our opinion, is to examine the source code of open source EOS projects. There are also many examples of C++ contracts in the official EOS repos.
However, there may be undiscovered bugs and vulnerabilities in open sourced contracts. Be very careful.
If you are interested in coding for the EOS blockchain join us on Telegram to speak to real life smart contract developers and learn what the next steps are! Happy coding :)
