Building Applications on the Ethereum Blockchain

This talk explains leads the enterprise financial domain developer through their first practical steps in building applications using public blockchain technology – specifically the Ethereum blockchain. Blockchain is rapidly becoming the technological darling in the worlds of Fintech and established finance alike. It is difficult to find a bank who will admit to not having an exciting proof-of-concept project underway and a huge number of Fintech startups use blockchain in their products.

The fundamental ideas of blockchain technology are not very hard to grasp and once its key characteristics are understood, good candidate applications often do emerge. However, the leap from understanding how things might work to actually making something work can be quite daunting. Often, this isn’t helped by unfamiliar languages, frameworks, and technologies that most experienced finance developers don’t know much about.

In this talk we review blockchain fundamentals and then go through the process of creating an application that uses Java enterprise technology with Ethereum’s blockchain step by step to solve a simple application problem requiring distributed trust. Along the way, we’ll see how the two worlds interact, as well as the architecture, development frameworks, and environments needed to develop effectively in the Ethereum environment.

Transcript

1. 1 Building Applications on the Ethereum Blockchain Eoin Woods Endava @eoinwoodz licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
2. Agenda • Blockchain Recap • Ethereum • Application Design • Development • (Solidity – Ethereum’s Language) • Summary 3
3. Blockchain Recap 4
4. What is Blockchain? •Enabling technology of Bitcoin, Ethereum, … •Distributed database without a controlling authority •Auditable database with provable lineage •A way to collaborate with parties without direct trust •Architectural component for highly distributed Internet-scale systems 5
5. Architectural Characteristics of a Blockchain • P2P distributed • Append only “ledger” • Cryptographic security (integrity & non-repudiation) • Eventual consistency • Smart contracts • Fault tolerant reliability • (Very) eventual consistency • Computationally expensive • Limited query model (key only) • Lack of privacy (often) • low throughput scalability (generally – 10s txn/sec) 6
6. What Makes a Good Blockchain Application? • Multi-organisational • No trusted intermediary • Need shared source of state (e.g. transactions, identity) • Need for immutability (e.g. proof of existence) • Transaction interactions • Fairly small data size • No complex query requirement • Multiple untrusted writers • Latency insensitive • Relatively low throughput • Need for resiliency 7 “If your requirements are fulfilled by today’s relational databases, you’d be insane to use a blockchain” – Gideon Greenspan
7. What is Blockchain being Used For? digital ledger that tracks and protects valuable assets verifiable supply chains post-trade processing Keybase Identity management verified data Georgia government records supply chain efficiency 8 derivatives post- trade processing
8. Public and Permissioned Blockchains 9 Public Permissioned Throughput Low Medium Latency High Medium # Readers High High # Writers High Low Centrally Managed No Yes Transaction Cost High “Free” Based on: Do you need a Blockchain? Karl Wüst, Arthur Gervaisy IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive, 2017, p.375.
9. Example Blockchains 10
10. Ethereum 11
11. Ethereum • Open source blockchain • Founded 2014 after Bitcoin experience – Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, Joseph Lubin • Swiss governing foundation • “Blockchain App Platform” • Vibrant ecosystem
12. Ethereum Key Concepts • Blocks • Consensus • Smart Contracts • Events and Logs • Transactions & Calls • Ether, Gas, Gas Cost, Fees
13. Ethereum Overview 14 Ethereum Client Application Ethereum RPC Client Ethereum Mining Node Ethereum Mining Node Ethereum Mining Node Ethereum Light Node Ethereum Full Node Smart Contracts RPC Interface Ethereum Full Node
14. Ethereum Blockchain – Txns, State, Receipts 15 https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/11/15/merkling-in-ethereum
15. Ethereum Consensus • Process by which distributed system decides on state • Currently uses a ”Proof of Work” system • Each (mining) node gathers transactions into candidate block • “Ethash” algorithm used to generate a hash at a target difficulty • If “first”, broadcast the resulting block • Forks can occur due asynchrony – longer fork used • Proof of Stake approach planned and in trial (Casper) 16
16. Smart Contracts • Stored procedures for Ethereum • Execute EVM bytecode • Four languages: • Solidity, LLL, Serpent, Vyper • EVM code deploys via a txn • Invoked from other contracts or off chain using address 17
17. Events and Logs • EVM code is quite isolated from the outside world • no System.out.println() … no java.io.File ! • Events can link EVM code to the outside world • Events are types in Solidity • Fired from the code and written to EVM ”logs” • Clients can observe events by reading the logs • Useful for logging and for off-chain communication 18
18. Events and Logs 19 Web3J makes retrieving events straightforward Log from Solidity
19. Transactions and Calls Transaction • Mutates state • Broadcast and mined • Costs ether (”gas” – see later) • Asynchronous (returns txn hash) Call • Read only operation • Runs “locally”, no broadcast • No cost • Synchronous (returns result) 20 Difference actually in invocation – ethCall vs ethSendTransaction API calls – rather than the contract
20. Ether, Gas, Gas Cost, Fees • Ether – the cryptocurrency underpinning Ethereum • Gas – the unit used to measure execution of your transaction • Gas Cost – the price of one “gas unit” that you are prepared to pay • Set higher gas cost to get faster confirmation • Fee – the (gas * gasCost) cost you pay to run your transaction You provide Ether with your transaction invocation. Gas Cost amount is deducted and sent to the miners, balance is refunded to you. 2018/03/25 – est. gas cost is 2 Gwei (0.000000002 Ether ~= 0.0001c) 21 https://ethgasstation.info
21. Practical Costs on MainNet in March 2018 • Gas is charged for instructions executed and storage used • Executing a contract costs 21,000 gas + cost of op codes used • Example: creating Greeter and Mortal costs 279,165 gas to create • Gas price of 2 Gwei => cost of 0.0006 ETH (~= $0.30 USD) • Storage costs 20,000 gas per 256bit word (625,000,000 per MB) • Gas price of 2 Gwei => $1.25 per MB (AWS costs $0.10/GB/month) • Block gas limit of ~8,000,000 => 400 words/block (~12KB) • Ethereum is orders of magnitude more expensive than cloud • Test or private networks can obviously sidestep this problem 22 https://hackernoon.com/ether-purchase-power-df40a38c5a2f Rimba et. al. “Comparing Blockchain and Cloud Services for Business Process Execution” – ICSA 2017
22. Ethereum Specification – The Yellow Paper 23 https://github.com/ethereum/yellowpaper
23. Application Design 24
24. Ethereum Application 25 DApp Client Code
25. Java & Ethereum Application 26 API / User Interface / … POJO Transaction Processing Database Driver DApp Web3J
26. Some Key Decisions • Type of blockchain deployment (public, private, public permissioned) • Smart contract development environment • Where is each type of data? • On the blockchain? On distributed storage? In a database? • Who trusts which piece? • What do the smart contracts do? What does Java do? • How do smart contracts interact with the outside world? • Identity and key management 27
27. Communicating with the World - Oracles 28 Smart Contract Event E1 Oracle Processor write getE1Events(…) sendTransaction(…) Data Sources
28. Identity • Need to manage identity of requests to the blockchain • Ethereum identity is EC public/private keypairs • Similar problem to authenticating via middleware in enterprise apps • Does the application “impersonate” the end-user? • Does the end user give up their credentials to the application? • Does the application use an identity server? • Application can rely on Ethereum node to perform txn signing • Application can sign locally (requiring private keys in a wallet) • Needs careful consideration quite early 29
29. Development 30
30. Solidity Development 31 Populus Ganache Geth Infura.io Metamask EthGasStation Etherchain Embark Web3J IDEs Cloud Environments Ethereum Nodes Dev Environment Tools
31. Java and Solidity Development Example 32 JAR files .bin & .abi files Java source and tests Solidity source & Javascript tests Blockchain Linux deployment Java stubs (.bin files)
32. Types of Blockchain for Development 33 Emulators Ganache, Embark Lightweight Nodes Ethereumjs-vm, Pyethereum Local Regular Blockchains Geth, Parity Hosted Nodes or Chains Infura, Azure Public Testing Blockchains Rinkeby, Ropsten Public Blockchain Mainnet
33. Example Dev Environment 34 Solidity source Ganache (local net) Geth (testnet) Geth (mainnet or prod) Contract Unit Tests Java source & tests Build Tool (e.g. Gradle) Unit Test Int. Test Production
34. Demonstration 35
35. Solidity – Ethereum’s Language 37
36. Hello World in Solidity 38
37. Simple Token Contract – Types 39
38. Simple Token Contract – Allocate Tokens 40
39. Simple Token Contract – Move Tokens 41
40. Simple Token Contract – Getters & Fallback 42
41. Aside: EVM Memory (Storage, Memory, Stack) Storage • Permanent contract state storage • Storage on the blockchain • Expensive (20k gas/word to set, 5k gas/word to update, 200 gas/word to read) Memory • Temporary storage during contract execution • Not store on blockchain • Cheap (3 gas to read/write per word) • Used for ”structs”, arrays and mappings Stack • Used for value types • Similar cost to ”memory” 43 http://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/frequently-asked-questions.html#what-is-the-memory-keyword-what-does-it-do
42. Summary 44
43. Building Applications on Ethereum • Blockchain can provide highly distributed, p2p, resilient data store and code execution environment – with significant tradeoffs • Ethereum is a maturing public and private blockchain platform • Ethereum “dapps” can be integrated into “real” Java applications • Solidity development is still maturing but tools exist • Truffle, Embark, Web3J, Metamask, … • Decide answers to key design questions early • Environment, data storage, Solidity development pipeline, Java vs Solidity, external interaction, identity and key management • Possible to build applications we have never built before 45
44. Further Information (1) • Fundamentals • http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and-paper.html • https://ethereum.github.io/yellowpaper/paper.pdf • Network Tools • https://ethstats.net • https://ethgasstation.info • https://etherconverter.online • https://etherscan.io 46
45. Further Information (2) • Developing Solidity Contracts • https://github.com/ConsenSys/smart-contract-best-practices • http://solidity.readthedocs.io • Dev Tools • Solidity Editors list - https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop • Metamask - https://metamask.io • Truffle Framework - http://truffleframework.com • Embark Framework - https://github.com/embark-framework/embark • Web3J - https://web3j.io • Web3.js - https://github.com/ethereum/web3.js 47
46. Further Information (3) • Security Tools • Patterns - https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/zeppelin-solidity • Lint style tool - https://github.com/duaraghav8/Solium • External Oracles • http://www.oraclize.it/ • Data Storage • https://ipfs.io/ • https://swarm-guide.readthedocs.io 48
47. Further Information (4) • Other Interesting Links • Ethereum reading list - https://github.com/Scanate/EthList • Solidity reading - https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity • LLL introduction - https://media.consensys.net/an-introduction-to-lll-for- ethereum-smart-contract-development-e26e38ea6c23 • Vyper site - https://github.com/ethereum/vyper • Blockchain comparison - https://www.nctatechnicalpapers.com/Paper/2017/2017-comparing- blockchain-implementations 49
48. Acknowledgements • Cloud Computing icon by Evgeniy Kozachenko from the Noun Project https://thenounproject.com/term/cloud-computing/204953 • Blockchain icon on slides 24, 25, 32 from https://www.smartcontractthailand.com • Blockchain icon on slide 31 from https://www.draglet.com/blockchain-applications/private-or-public- blockchain • Other icons licensed from Icon Finder under free to use and commercial licenses • Logo icons extracted from public websites of the logo owners 50
49. Eoin Woods Endava eoin.woods@endava.com @eoinwoodz Thank You 52