Introduction

A year and a half ago, I had not heard of VeChain. Neither had I heard of Ethereum nor blockchain in general. The word ‘Cryptocurrency’ and ‘Bitcoin’ had been banging around somewhere in my subconscious for several years, but had failed to capture the attention of my frontal lobe. Then one cold December day back in 2017, Bitcoin plowed into my imagination with all the subtlety of the snowplow driving past my house at that moment. “This is HUGE”, I thought.

I immediately decided to buy “Mastering Bitcoin” by Andreas Antonopoulos, and consumed it with all the tenacity I could muster. A couple of days later the coffee-splattered, yellow-highlighted tome lay before me and one word burned singularly in my mind: ETHEREUM. I decided to follow the same path as in the past and ordered “Mastering Ethereum” by Andreas Antonopoulos and Dr. Gavin Wood, although I would not receive it for at least another year — as it was still being written. I discovered that the book was in the process of being created publicly on GitHub and that I could watch and even participate in writing (yes, you may see a couple of my pull requests at that particular GitHub repository ).

During this time, I was still working at Adobe Systems. You know, the famous software company that has enabled tons of freelancers to pursue their own careers. After immersing myself in this new and exciting blockchain space, I decided to quit my job at Adobe (where I had spent the last 8 years helping build software solutions for the Managed Services team). It was all or nothing, and I dedicated myself full time to learning about and working with Ethereum. It was a steep learning curve, with a whole new set of technologies to learn, grasp and understand. Nonetheless, I was hooked and was determined to do whatever it took to build my first blockchain app.

18 months later, after many false starts, pivots, moments of despair and euphoria (like many others when they begin to learn about decentralization), Realitems.org is a reality and we have our first customers. At this point I would like to give a huge shout-out to my partners, the visionaries who managed the big picture and gave me the ability to focus on the essential tech behind the company. None of this would have been possible without them, and for that reason, I’m forever grateful

Unlike many of my fellow travelers, I am not very interested in cryptocurrencies. Sure, I own Bitcoin and love the idea of currency being out of the control of banks and governments, but it is the other aspects of decentralization that truly fascinate me. For instance, the theory of immutable and irrefutable records, and how they can be used, has been the central idea that has guided my work, time-commitment and passion for this intriguing space.

This series of articles documents Real Items’ technical journey as we ported our dApp from Ethereum to VeChain. It is not meant to be scholarly — just informative for those who are interested. One developer to another. Thanks for reading!

To follow along, the next article in this series: https://medium.com/realitems/my-journey-to-vechain-part-2-the-lay-of-the-land-268e78d03fb9

Introduction

Written by ken woodruff