How To Create A Blockchain Application

Innovative technologies today have permeated every sphere of our life. A world has enfolded with a plethora of technologically advanced devices at the fingertips of billion people. Taking the advancement further is what blockchain-powered apps offer as a promise to build a digitalized and open world.

This article provides a short overview of how to develop a blockchain-based app, its key benefits, steps to its building. Simply put, the blockchain is uniquely positioned to become one of the most crucial technological assets. Businesses are in the process of examining and developing a wide range of applications, from digital identity to supply chain management.

Key benefits of blockchain-based applications

• Public verifiability allows anyone to verify correct system working. In a distributed ledger, each state transition is confirmed by verifiers (e.g. miners in Bitcoin) that can be a restricted set of participants.
• Transparency-based data and the process of updating the state is a requirement for public verifiability. The amount of information that is clear to an observer, however, can differ, and not every participant should have access to information.
• Privacy is a critical property of any system. There exists an inherent tension between privacy and transparency. Privacy is certainly easier to achieve in a centralized system because transparency and public verifiability are not required for the system functioning.
• Integrity of information ensures that it is protected from unauthorized modifications, i.e. retrieved data is correct.
• Redundancy is inherently provided through replication across the writers. In centralized systems, redundancy is generally achieved through replication on different physical servers and through backups.
• Trust anchor defines who represents the highest authority of a given system that is entitled to grant and revoke read and write system access.
• Valid network environments ensure that exchanged information, file storage and other transactions among devices are carried out in a reliable and transparent manner.

Steps to building a blockchain-powered application

1. Figure out the application strategy

This initial phase is to determine and refine what success for your app suits your business. Being thorough, accurate about the reasons for creating an app provides you with the best opportunity to succeed. The key is to understand very early the primary goals of the blockchain-powered app development in order to determine, streamline its best features and functions.

2. Define how you want to handle the blockchain database

You should decide whether blockchain database will be public, private, or hybrid:

• Public/decentralized platform is broadly available. Anyone can access transaction history, create new transactions, and validate them into new blocks.
• Private/permissioned infrastructure, handling and validating data transactions. These platforms are considered cost-effective because they don’t require crypto-currency mining based consensus mechanisms and provide overall management over transactions within the chain. In addition, these networks are very well suited to building complex smart contract business logic.
• Hybrid/consortium platform combines private and public blockchains. It is controlled by a preselected set of nodes. A hybrid platform can be used by a group of organizations that work jointly on developing different solutions. With a restricted-access blockchain, each organization is able to maintain its intellectual property rights within the consortium.

3. Analyze the available solutions

Having analyzed the available solutions you should decide among these options:

• Plug into a running, public blockchain: use an open blockchain like Bitcoin/Ethereum.
• Create a private blockchain network: install blockchain software, run it privately without third parties open access or create a private network with partners or trusted peers.
• Go with a cloud-based solution provider: IBM BlueMix, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure offer blockchain as a service (BaaS).
• Start a public blockchain network: run your own open-to-the-public blockchain instance that enables anyone to become a node.

Also, you can read: How to raise the first investments to your startup

4. Test your idea with a Proof-of-Concept approach

Before starting a Proof-of-Concept (POC) approach, confirm that success measurement criteria are clearly defined and agreed upon, assure that any customized components are complete. A POC is not expensive, but thorough preparation and follow-through are crucial to the data migration project success; it offers an easy way to test for the business outcome.

5. Start the Blockchain software development lifecycle

When starting the development stage, you need to make two critical decisions: develop to a specific platform or to a cross-platform framework; which tools to use when developing a blockchain-based solution. Each of these choices brings its development advantages and challenges. Deciding what environment for development to use has the greatest impact on the users.

6. Launch the application

The final step in the development cycle is to run your app in the production. When it passes the user acceptance testing, it’s ready to be sold on the App Store, Google Play, or other appropriate outlets. Blockchain is an exciting technological solution that has already gone a long way toward fulfilling its initial promise. We hope this brief article encourages you to move forward and provides a practical, workable roadmap to success.

Drawing a line

Over the course of the technological revolution, changes and innovation continue to come quickly, and blockchain technology is no exception. Although the blockchain itself still has quite a way to go before it is fully accepted by mainstream consumers and businesses, this novel concept has long attracted the innovators and digital pioneers attention.

It is not surprising that the blockchain solution has quickly found its way into the mobile app world and has been met with significant enthusiasm and warmth. DDI Development hopes that blockchain-based tools will become a core and foundational in the period ahead. If you have any idea, let us know and we can turn it into a great application.