Note
If you are new to the blockchain technology, taking our Introduction to Blockchain Technology self-paced course is highly recommended. Also, for a comprehensive coverage of blockchain development in Ethereum or mastering Solidity programming, taking our below self paced courses is highly recommended:
Recap
In our previous article (How mining works in Ethereum), we discussed mining in Ethereum.
In this article, we review tools and technologies that are used in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Working with tools and technologies in Ethereum ecosystem
By now, we have introduced blockchain technology, key concepts in Bitcoin, and Ethereum. We delved deeper into detail on how the blockchain is maintained and how a decentralized network of peers reaches the consensus. One key takeaway is that Ethereum is a decentralized computing platform that has the potential to become a disruptor for the years to come. Thanks to the vibrant community and ecosystem, developers around the world can take advantage of the rich set of development tools to jump-start the implementation of decentralized applications. In this article, we will provide some of the key tools, technologies, and utilities to get you started. Some more details regarding some of the tools can be found in our future article series.
Ethereum client
Ethereum clients run the EVM and are written in a programming language. The following are two of the most popular Ethereum clients:
- Geth: It is also called the go-ethereum client. It was implemented in Go and was one of the three original implementations (along with C++ and Python) of the Ethereum protocol. It provides the command-line interface for running a full Ethereum node and has a JSON-RPC server interface for DApps to interact with. It can be downloaded from https://ethereum.github.io/go-ethereum/.
- Parity: Parity Ethereum aims to become the fastest, lightest, and most secure Ethereum client. It is a full Ethereum node implementation developed using the Rust programming language. Parity Ethereum is licensed under the GPLv3 license and can be downloaded from the Ethcore website: https://ethcore.io/ parity/.
One-to-One Live Blockchain Classes
Coding Bootcamps school offers One-to-One Live Blockchain Classes for Beginners.
The Web3 Server API
All Ethereum clients provide a set of JSON-RPC methods for external DApps to interact with the Ethereum blockchain network. JSON is a lightweight data-interchange format. JSON-RPC is a stateless, lightweight Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol. The DApp UI layer implemented in the web and JavaScript has the option to use the web3.js JavaScript library to interface with Web3 JSON-RPC methods on the blockchain.
The following is a list of protocol supports among different Ethereum clients:
|
cpp-ethereum |
go-ethereum |
Trinity |
parity |
|
|
JSON-RPC 1.0 |
✓ |
|||
|
JSON-RPC 2.0 |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
|
Batch requests |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
|
HTTP |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
|
IPC |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
|
|
WS |
✓ |
✓ |
Most notable, JSON-RPC 2.0 is supported by all listed clients. Interested readers can check the Ethereum wiki site for details of interface and methods: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/JSON-RPC#json-rpc-methods.
DApp development tools
You can develop smart contracts in any editor and deploy them on the Ethereum blockchain using rudimental command-line utilities. There are quite a few essential tools, such as the ones mentioned here, which can leverage to speed up DApp development:
- Web UI development with web3.js
- Remix development IDE
- A command-line framework with Truffle and Embark
- Ethereum blockchain with Etherscan
Web UI Development with web3.js: The web3.js library is a collection of JavaScript modules that UI and JavaScript developers can leverage to integrate DApps with the Ethereum blockchain network. It provides the following sub-packages:
- web3-eth: A package for interacting with Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts
- web3-shh: A package to support the Whisper protocol for P2P messaging
- web3-bzz: A package to support the Swarm protocol and the decentralized file storage
- web3-utils: A package of utility functions for DApp developers
We will introduce whisper and Swarm in our future series.
Remix development IDE: Remix is an open source, browser-based IDE that enables Ethereum developers to develop, compile, test, debug, and deploy smart contracts in Solidity. Developers can use Remix in the browser as well as locally. It also comes with its own code analyzer to check and ensure code quality. Remix communicates with the Ethereum blockchain through Metamask. Metamask is a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera and allows developers to run DApps right within the browser.
A command-line framework with Truffle and Embark: Truffle is one of the most popular blockchain frameworks aiming to make developing smart contracts easier. The development environment gives developers a configurable build pipeline allowing for streamlining your DApp coding, testing, deploying process. Ganache CLI, part of the Truffle suite of the Ethereum development tools, is the command-line version of Ganache, your local blockchain for Ethereum development.
Another popular one is Embark. Similar to Truffle, Embark makes it easier for developers to code, test, and deploy smart contracts DApps and provide integration with Ethereum blockchain, decentralized storage platform (IPFS and Swarm) and decentralized messaging (Whisper). We will discuss more about IPFS, Swarm and Whisper in our future article series.
Ethereum blockchain with Etherscan: We have shown several screenshots of Etherscan in the previous sections and articles. Etherscan is one of the really handy tools a DApp developer could wish for. It allows you to search and view all transactions and smart contracts on the blockchains.
Next Article
Now that we have finished our second article series, we can move on to our next article series where we dive into more Ethereum topics. Specifically, we cover the following 12 articles:
- Review of challenges in distributed systems
- Review of Cap Theorem in Distributed Systems
- Horizontal Scaling versus Vertical Scaling in Distributed Systems
- How to Scale up Ethereum Blockchain Applications
- Review of scaling solutions for Ethereum
- How to Manage Ethereum State Channel with Raiden
- How Plasma Chains Work in Ethereum
- How Sharding and Gasper work in Ethereum
- How Proof-of-Stack Consensus Works in Ethereum
- A roadmap for Implementing Ethereum 2.0
- How to work with Decentralized Data and Content Storage in Ethereum
- How Decentralized Messaging with Whisper Works in Ethereum
This article is written in collaboration with Brian Wu who is a leading author of “Learn Ethereum: Build your own decentralized applications with Ethereum and smart contracts” book. He has written 7 books on blockchain development.
Resources
Free Webinars on Blockchain
Here is the list of our free webinars that are highly recommended:
- Hyperledger Fabric for system admin versus developers
- How to harness blockchain for environmental and corporate sustainability
- Review of Initial Coin Offering, Security Token Offering and asset tokenization use cases and best practices
- Hyperledger Fabric Deployment on Cloud
- Hyperledger Fabric for entrepreneurship- 21 blockchain business use cases
Free Courses
Here is the list of our 10 free self-paced courses that are highly recommended:
- IT Career Roadmap Explained
- Web Design with Bootstrap
- User Experience Best Practices
- Intro to Search Engine Optimization
- Web Design with WordPress
- Introduction to Drupal CMS
- Intro to Joomla CMS
- Intro to Cybersecurity
- Introduction to Cloud Technology
- Recorded Live Webinars and Classes
Self-Paced Blockchain Courses
If you like to learn more about Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth, Ethereum or Corda, taking the following self-paced classes is highly recommended:
- Intro to Blockchain Technology
- Blockchain Management in Hyperledger for System Admins
- Hyperledger Fabric for Developers
- Intro to Blockchain Cybersecurity
- Learn Solidity Programming by Examples
- Introduction to Ethereum Blockchain Development
- Learn Blockchain Dev with Corda R3
- Intro to Hyperledger Sawtooth for System Admins
Live Blockchain Courses
If you want to master Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum or Corda, taking the following live classes is highly recommended:
- Live and self-paced blockchain development with Ethereum
- Live and self-paced blockchain development with Hyperledger Fabric
- Live and self-paced blockchain development with Corda
- Immersive Blockchain Bootcamp with live and self-paced courses
- Live crash course for learning Ethereum with Solidity
- Live crash course for building DApps with Hyperledger Fabric
- Live crash course for building DApps with Corda
- Live full-stack blockchain development in Hyperledger and Ethereum
Articles and Tutorials on Blockchain Technology
If you like to learn more about blockchain technology and how it works, reading the following articles is highly recommended:
- History and Evolution of Blockchain Technology from Bitcoin
- Overview of Blockchain evolution and phases from Ethereum to Hyperledger
- Comprehensive overview and analysis of blockchain use cases in many industries
- Blockchain Crowdfunding Security Token or Initial Coin Offerings
- A beginner Guide to Blockchain Technology
- How Decentralized Peer-To-Peer Network Works
- How blocks are added to the blockchain
- How Public and Private Keys of Cryptography Work
- What Is A Cryptographic Hash Function
- How Digital Signature Works In Blockchain
- The role and types of consensus mechanism in blockchain
- How Proof-of-Work Consensus Works in Blockchain
- How Proof of Stake Consensus works in Blockchain
Articles and Tutorials on Ethereum and Solidity
If you like to learn more about blockchain development in Ethereum with Solidity, reading the following articles and tutorials is highly recommended:
- Review of Architecture and Components of Ethereum
- Comprehensive Blockchain Ethereum Developer Guide from Beginner to Advance Level
- How to Write Ethereum Smart Contracts with Solidity in 1 hour
- Review of Architecture and Components of Ethereum
- How Ethereum Manages Accounts
- How Ethereum Manages Transactions
- How Smart Contracts Work in Ethereum
- How Ether and Gas Work in Ethereum
- How Ethereum Virtual Machine works
- How address and wallet work in Ethereum
- How mining works in Ethereum
- List of Tools and Technologies in Ethereum Ecosystem
- Review of challenges in distributed systems
- Review of Cap Theorem in Distributed Systems
- Horizontal Scaling versus Vertical Scaling in Distributed Systems
- How to Scale up Ethereum Blockchain Applications
- Review of scaling solutions for Ethereum
- How to Manage Ethereum State Channel with Raiden
- How Plasma Chains Work in Ethereum
- How Sharding and Gasper work in Ethereum
- How Proof-of-Stack Consensus Works in Ethereum
- A roadmap for Implementing Ethereum 2.0
- How to work with Decentralized Data and Content Storage in Ethereum
- How Decentralized Messaging with Whisper Works in Ethereum
- Review of Infura for Ethereum Development
- Review of Infura Ethereum API
- How to Use Remix with Infura for Ethereum Development
- How Ethereum Client API Works
- How Ethereum IPFS Storage Works
- How to Install and Start Ethereum IPFS Storage
- How to Run Ethereum IPFS Storage
- How to Work with Ethereum Swarm Storage
- How to Install Ethereum Swarm Storage
- How to Handle Ethereum Messages with Whisper
- Review of Popular Ethereum Smart Contract Libraries
- Review of Private and Permissioned blockchain
- How to Set up a Local Private Ethereum Blockchain
- How to Run Geth on a Local Private Ethereum Blockchain
- How to Build a Local Private Ethereum Blockchain with Mining
- How to Run Geth on a Local Private Ethereum Blockchain with Mining
- How to Create an Account on a Local Private Ethereum Blockchain
- How to Use Ethereum Optional Flags with New Chains
- Review of Ethereum Options for Development and Testing
- Review of Ethereum Developer Chain Options
- Review of Ethereum API and Console Options
- Review of Ethereum Networking Options
- Review of Ethereum Transaction Pool Options
Articles and Tutorials on Hyperledger Family
If you like to learn more about blockchain development with Hyperledger, reading the following articles and tutorials is highly recommended:
- Introduction to Hyperledger Architecture, Projects, Tools and Libraries
- Complete Review of Hyperledger Fabric Architecture and Components
- Hyperledger Fabric for System Administers versus Developers
- How to use Prometheus and Grafana to monitor Hyperledger Fabric
- Blockchain Developer Guide- How to Install Hyperledger Fabric on AWS
- Blockchain Developer Guide- How to Install and work with Hyperledger Sawtooth
- Blockchain Developer Guide- How to Install Hyperledger Burrow on AWS
- Blockchain Developer Guide- How to Install Hyperledger Iroha on AWS
- Blockchain Developer Guide- How to Install Hyperledger Indy and Indy CLI on AWS
- Blockchain Developer Guide- How to Install Hyperledger Seth and Docker on AWS
- Blockchain Developer Guide- How to Configure Hyperledger Sawtooth Validator and REST API on AWS
- Blockchain Developer Guide- How to Build Transaction Processor as a Service and Python Egg for Hyperledger Sawtooth
- Blockchain Developer Guide- How to Deploy Ethereum Smart Contracts with Hyperledger Burrow
- Blockchain Developer Guide- How to Create Cryptocurrency Using Hyperledger Iroha CLI
- Blockchain Developer Guide- How to Explore Hyperledger Indy Command Line Interface
- Blockchain Developer Guide- Comprehensive Blockchain Hyperledger Developer Guide from Beginner to Advance Level
- Introduction to Hyperledger Sawtooth Blockchain Development
Articles and Tutorials on R3 Corda
If you like to learn more about blockchain development on Corda , reading the following articles and tutorials is highly recommended:
Articles and Tutorials on Other Blockchain Platforms
If you like to learn more about blockchain development in other platforms, reading the following articles and tutorials is highly recommended: