Are you ready to be a Blockchain Developer ?
Blockchain’s market size keeps growing: Gartner predicts that blockchain will reach $3.1 trillion in new business value by 2030. Furthermore, Blockchain was the #1 in-demand forecasted skill in 2020, according to LinkedIn. So if you are looking to acquire a new skill or change your current job, blockchain development is an attractive option.
What is Blockchain? Blockchain is a shared, immutable database (ledger) that records transactions and track business assets. Smart contracts are a snippet of codes that encapsulate the business logic and are executed based on predefined conditions. Running a smart contract adds an asset or changes its status by adding a transaction to the blockchain. A consensus protocol validates the transaction, and then it becomes part of the blockchain that cannot be changed. Smart contracts are an integral part of the blockchain and provide several benefits like speed, accuracy, and trust. This blog offers a detailed explanation of blockchain and smart contracts.
The IBM Blockchain extension (IBM Blockchain Platform Developer Tools) for Visual Studio Code (vscode)simplifies blockchain development. A developer can easily create a local network and write smart code to develop the business logic. These tools also allow the user to test the smart contract locally and deploy it to a cloud network when ready. This is a typical workflow of smart contract development with IBM Blockchain Platform.
Before installing the vs code extension, make sure that all prerequisites are installed. If you don’t already have Visual Studio Code installed, you can download it from here. You can install IBM blockchain extension v1 directly from vscode extension or download extension v2 from the GitHub repo.
A complete tutorial is available on the extension home page.
Once the extension is installed, click on the “IBM Blockchain Platform” icon to show IBM Blockchain Platform sidebar. Select the “Fabric Environments” to add a new local environment.
Click on the environment name under “Simple Local Networks” to see the environment’s details.
In the sidebar, click on “Smart Contract” and select the “…” to add a new project. Follow the instructions to specify the smart contract’s properties, like location and language. This will create a smart contract with one asset. After that, you can package and deploy the smart contract to the local network.
Congratulations, you deployed your first Smart Contract. You can continue your learning journey with this tutorial series. Moreover, you can enroll in IBM Blockchain Foundation Developer free course and earn a badge to share in your network.
