Application and Development of Blockchain

Currently, there are two indisputable statements in business: the first is that the use of blockchain technology can take business to a new stage of development, and the second is that the labor market needs IT specialists more than ever. As for the first statement, its truth will only be assessed after the passage of time. But the demand for software developers is really high, especially those who are competent in blockchain development. If you start monitoring the software development markets in almost any country, it becomes obvious that the priority is not only for individual blockchain developer specialists for permanent work in companies, but also for any professional blockchain app development company, whose team will be able to implement one or another Web3 project.

Blockchain on the black background
Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash

Blockchain and Smart Contracts

Knowing that blockchain technology is nothing more than a technology for securely storing data, the question arises: are there any differences between this technology and any other approach to storing data? Let us immediately note that the use of blockchain technology, unlike other technologies that manage data, lies in its reliability and, of course, it can be used wherever confirmation of the authenticity of data is required. Let us list some areas of application of blockchain, but not limited to this list:

Together with the word "blockchain" the word "smart contract", or in other words, a digital protocol, is often found. This protocol uses mathematical algorithms to manage various types of transactions: carry them out and control their execution. The conditions for managing any transaction are initially provided by a certain procedure. The parties enter into a smart contract between themselves, which specifies the terms of the transaction and the sanctions that will follow if these terms are not met, and then confirm their agreement to these conditions with digital signatures. All further actions are already automatically controlled by a smart contract, which independently determines whether the terms of the transaction have been met. Without any intervention from the participants in the transaction, it is the smart contract that makes one of several decisions, for example, to complete the transaction, impose a fine on the participants, or even block access to the archives. From this we can conclude that smart contracts are used in blockchain to conclude an agreement on any terms and with any reward.

Very often, a programming language such as Solidity is used to work with blockchain technology and write smart contracts. This language is not general purpose and is designed specifically for writing smart contracts. The features of Solidity are due to the peculiarities of the blockchain and the Ethereum ecosystem itself. All documentation for this programming language can be found on the official Solidity website. Solidity's syntax is similar to Java script, Python and C++ and is based on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchain. If any IT specialist or ordinary user decides to start developing smart contracts, then for this he must not only understand the general principles of programming, but also know the Solidity programming language and, as an addition, the C++ language.

Sometimes you can hear the question from users: how fundamentally does blockchain development differ from regular web development? After all, a smart contract is essentially a program code that should fall under the application of almost all engineering practices. Indeed, it is obvious that both web development and smart contract development have a lot in common. For example, the web development life cycle includes the stages of project analysis, development itself, code review, testing, etc. When writing a smart contract, similar stages are also included in the development life cycle process. So, first, the tasks of the smart contract are determined, then the code is written, followed by an audit of the smart contract for security, gas savings, etc., then tests are carried out and deployed to the blockchain.

Afterword

In conclusion, we can conclude that there is a lot of talk about blockchain, but in most cases these conversations create the opinion that blockchain is a tool that is tied exclusively to cryptocurrency. However, there is a real picture of what is happening today with the development of blockchain technology in other areas of business. Statistics show that the blockchain market has grown by 9% and is valued at $100 billion. And in this case we are not talking about cryptocurrency, but about tools, services and developments based on blockchains. At the same time, thanks to blockchain technology, several tens of millions of jobs have been created. And this number includes not only developers, but also marketers, project managers, graphic designers, business owners and many other participants in the blockchain field.