How to Choose a Tech Stack for a Blockchain Startup: 3 Things to Consider First

Viacheslav Vokin
Lightcash
Published in
3 min readFeb 7, 2018

Image credit: Unsplash

A technology stack is the combination of programming languages, tools, and frameworks that developers use to create their projects. This is one of the most important elements when building a blockchain startup. Here are our practical tips on how to best choose a tech stack.

High speed

When it comes to blockchain and cryptocurrencies, the speed of work becomes a significant problem. According to some data, the Bitcoin network can currently handle only 7 transactions per second, and the system of the fastest cryptocoin, Ripple, is capable of processing 1,500 transactions per second. The Visa network can do up to 24,000 transactions per second.

It is crystal clear that if your project achieves a high speed of work, this will be a huge factor in its success. Therefore, when considering a technology stack, you should stick with options that may provide your users with the highest speed possible. Here at Lightcash, we have chosen the Graphene framework — it has an average confirmation time of just one second.

Security

Another critical problem for any blockchain startup is security. According to recent stats by Ernst & Young, more than 10% of money gathered via ICOs was stolen by hackers, while the monthly loss in the period from 2015 to 2017 is $1.5M. This single fact illustrates that security should never be neglected.

You should not only hire information security consultants but try to choose secure tools from the very beginning. The use of popular open source software with many contributors is a good idea too. If you create everything from scratch, it will be costly, time-consuming, and the probability of critical mistakes will go up.

Instead, if there is a popular tool or framework, with an active community, whose code is actively audited, it is much better to start building your stack on this. It will not only save time and money, but it will also make your end product more secure.

However, it is important to remember that technology isn’t everything when it comes to security — if you are using the best tools possible and working with experienced consultants and auditors but your employees click on malware links in phishing emails, then you’ll get hacked anyway.

Success stories

After you have considered the speed and security problems, don’t make a final decision right away. It is worthwhile performing some additional research before picking a weapon before the battle starts. How popular is the technology you were considering? Are there big companies using it in their large projects with heavy loads? What about support?

Our blockchain is built on Graphene 2 technology. This platform has been used by such big crypto projects as Bitshares, Steemit, and Peerplays. It has been tested in really large projects and under as heavy loads as it is possible to find in the crypto space. This is why we can be sure that our users will get the best experience by using the Lightcash system.

Learn more on our website.

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