White Matrix CEO Wu Xiao: How does ChainIDE gather 500,000 smart contracts in 4 months?

IDE refers to the “Integrated Development Environment”, which is an indispensable tool in software development. In the blockchain industry, building a blockchain environment usually needs for 1–2 hours or even more. White Matrix launched ChainIDE in late June this year and it can help developers complete design/compile/test/deploy/call in less than 1 minute.

As of now, ChainIDE has helped developers in more than 100 countries complete more than 500,000 smart contract cloud services. This time, the chain teahouse invited the White Matrix CEO Wu Xiao, a blockchain entrepreneur , who will tell how ChainIDE gathered 500,000 smart contracts in just 4 months.

The first cloud IDE with integrated Libra Move language saves marginal cost for developers .

Wu Xiao said that ChainIDE is the first cloud IDE to integrate the Libra Move language. Since the Libra ecosystem was released on Facebook, the team has been paying attention. During the actual development process, the team found that Libra’s environment development was very time-consuming, and the team felt that other development teams would encounter the same problems as they did.

Therefore, the White Matrix decided to develop ChainIDE to help everyone save this time through cloud computing. At present, ChainIDE has access to seven public links such as Libra, Fisco, Cocos, Eth, and IOST. Developers can switch the development environment of different blockchains with one button, greatly reducing development costs. For White Matrix, the biggest significance of developing ChainIDE is to help all blockchain developers save marginal costs and accelerate the application of blockchain. In short, it is the mission of ChainIDE to bring more creative applications to users and help developers to land blockchain products faster.

The first version of ChainIDE took about 2 weeks to develop, with 3 R&D engineers. With more and more public links to access, ChainIDE needs revised BUG, ​​docking systems, and more and more developers’ ecological tools. Therefore, next, White Matrix will increase the manpower and time investment. Currently ChainIDE Still in the process of continuous improvement and iteration.

The big difficulty that the team has overcome in the development and operation of ChainIDE is the different blockchain system, which needs to solve the docking of multiple programming languages. For example, Libra uses Move, Fisco uses Solidity, Cocos uses Lua, IOST uses Js, Ultrain uses Ts, etc. Smart chain languages ​​used by different public chains are different, and the environment and writing are also different. It took a lot of time for the team to get to know each other’s public chain environment and structure.

Realize cross-chain interaction with sidechain convergence. In future， advanced value-added services will be online.

Based on the one-stop cloud solution to solve different public chain development environments, all the basic functions of ChainIDE are free and open, so in just 4 months, it has attracted more than 100 countries of developers and 500,000 pieces of Smart Contrat flow. How does ChainIDE, which integrates so many public-chain development ecosystems, realize cross-chain interaction?

Wu Xiao said that the team is currently thinking of a set of sidechain integration solutions in cross-chain information interaction. The team’s vision is that the environment of each public chain is different and ChainIDE is specially oriented to the development stage. Therefore, some side chains can be combined with the characteristics of different blockchain systems, which can better help developers.

White Matrix is ​​currently very good at the experimental stage, and the team has developed the only public test network in the world that can run the Libra Move contract. To put it simply, Libra’s public test network is now unable to fully run the Libra Move contract because there are some imperfections, While White Matrix test network can do it. Developers can go to http://chainide.com to experience.

After realizing the compatibility of multiple public-chain development languages, ChainIDE will strive to provide more advanced services in the future. Wu Xiao said that ChainIDE will first standardize some practical modules in the future, helping developers to quickly implement different functions based on modules, and then there will be more full-chain related development., similar to the DApp one-click conversion between different public chains. Although it is difficult to implement, it is technically possible, which is also the team’s research and development direction. Of course, these advanced value-added services may be used as payment functions of ChainIDE in the future due to the need to invest more development costs and labor costs.

Although Libra’s development is temporarily blocked, it is still unique, and ChainIDE will gradually expand business cooperation.

Wu Xiao believes that Libra’s development progress is blocked, but the team will still provide services for developers on Libra. The team finds that Libra’s technology is unique in many areas. Research on Libra can help the team apply the latest technology to the domestic alliance chain research and development, and better service blockchain application.

Although ChainIDE is the first cloud IDE to integrate the Libra Move language, it does not only support this ecosystem. ChainIDE will have deeper business cooperation with more public chains, including alliance chains. For example, the team recently completed the development of the IDE on FiscoBcos.

FiscoBcos is the underlying framework of the alliance chain developed by Weizhong Bank, Tencent and Huawei. The team believes that there will be great opportunities in the future for the alliance chain application development, smart contract IDE, and alliance chain framework design. In short, it is our mission to bring more creative applications to users and help developers to land their products faster. White Matrix hopes to continue to deepen cooperation with existing partners and strive to help developers on the blockchain to land their creative applications faster.

The gamification tutorial jointly developed by the Beijing Normal University for the Move language will be extended to other public chains.

Developers who are currently developing Libra Move language on ChainIDE can develop and learn with a gamification teaching application, MoveCastle, which is co-developed by White Matrix and Beijing Normal University blockchain laboratory. White Matrix wants to provide the best quality learning resources for all developers through gaming.

Relatively speaking, developers writing documents directly in the Move language are boring, and many developers hope to have knowledge points to refine, rather than the entire design manual. Since MoveCastle and ChainIDE are strongly related to each other and diverted to each other, you can choose to use the MoveCastle tutorial in the development interface of ChainIDE, thus forming a natural business closed loop. The traffic of the original version of ChainIDE will be lost because many people can not write Libra Move’s smart contract. However, after the team provided a gamification-based tutorial with zero thresholds, it was found that many developers can learn first and then continue to use ChainIDE for development.

The MoveCastle task-driven approach is to split the knowledge points and design a gamification task for each knowledge point. While teaching, provide relatively clear goals to help developers get started quickly. The team currently only develops the Libra Move language tutorial, but the cooperation with the other two public chains has gradually started, and the team is also doing related tutorials on the more popular blockchain knowledge, hoping to help ordinary users quickly understand the blockchain. Currently, MoveCastle has completed 5 lessons and 25 chapters of development. After more than a dozen hours of tutorials, you can gain a deeper understanding of Libra and develop relevant smart contracts.

At the end of the interview, Wu Xiao said that White Matrix has always been the parallel direction of scientific research and application, and the combination of exploration and landing. “Part of us is to explore the creative application of blockchain, and the other part is to help developers accelerate the application of blockchain. In the earliest period, apart from the design of the blockchain game, we also explored the open-source framework such as “Project Genesis”. So far, we have been steadily advancing in these two areas, exploring the application of the landing, while helping more developers to save marginal costs and accelerate development,” he said.

In November, White Matrix will soon have a new blockchain game “Rhythm Dungeon”, which is the world’s first blockchain music RPG with Rougelike elements. Players need to explore in the dungeon, collect props to become stronger. Players will become NPCs in other players’ games after the game is defeated, and defeating other players will get an extra income.