Forem: wslyvh

Clean Contracts - a guide on smart contract patterns & practices

wslyvh — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 12:49:55 +0000

Blockchain and smart contract development are still relatively new and highly experimental. They require a different engineering mindset than traditional web, or app development where ‘move fast and break things’ has become the norm.

Blockchain development is much more like hardware, or financial service development. Smart contracts are complex instruments that offer the possibility to have self-enforcing contracts including transparent, tamper-proof, and immutable information. They have the authority to allocate high-value resources between complex systems. Often working autonomously. With huge financial loss at risk. This makes smart contracts critical components in these systems. Development of such components requires more investment, design, and effort upfront. Solid engineering practices, rigorous testing, and a strong security mindset.

In a series of blog posts, I’m planning to go through several patterns, practices, and principles that can be applied to blockchain and smart contract development to reduce the risks associated with it.

In this first article, I’ll cover more general engineering practices based on the concepts of Clean Code.

Naming
Structure & Ordering
Documentation & Natspec
Formatting
Contracts & Data structures
Systems
Standards & Libraries
Error handling
Testing
Security & code analysis
Continuous Integration

Full blog post at wslyvh.com

The hitchhiker’s guide to Ethereum

wslyvh — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 13:52:59 +0000

Blockchain has emerged from the once shadowy world of cryptocurrency to become the most in-demand skill in 2020, according to LinkedIn. The promise of blockchain is huge. And large companies are continuing to hire and expand their blockchain teams, incl. Facebook, Amazon, Microsft, EY, Deloitte, IBM, and Oracle, to name a few. So, it should be well worth the effort to become familiar with how blockchain works, what its perceived benefits are, and as a developer starting building on top of them.

Over the past few years, I've been helping and on-boarding new team members and developers into the blockchain space. This helped me to collect blogs, links, materials, and resources and see which worked well for everyone's learning journey. It's time to share that with a broader audience. This guide provides a starting point for developers who're keen to learn more about blockchain and development on top of Ethereum. It will be opinionated and not contain a full list of everything available. But rather, a concise list of highly recommended options, from my own experiences.

The guide covers:

Blockchain foundations
Ethereum 101
Ethereum Development, Smart contracts & DApps
Advanced Topics, privacy, performance & permissioning
Next steps

You can find it at wslyvh.com.

Hack a better future

wslyvh — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 10:01:08 +0000

Hackathons are becoming increasingly important and valuable to companies, corporations, and communities. Hackathons teach new skills, strengthen developer communities, and push the limits of new technologies to create new value. They can be fun, energetic and highly productive since everyone is collaborating on a common goal and purpose.

With the current COVID-crisis, this common goal is more clear than ever. So if you ever wondered how you can help fight the current crisis, now is your chance.

Hackathons

Check out some of the current and upcoming hackathons in April:

the Twilio Hackathon here on DEV
Hack the crisis, with several initiatives in other countries, e.g. Hack the Crisis NL
The Global Hack, with support from the EU Commission - April 9-12
MetaCartel's Dragon Quest - April 1st to 30th
Mozilla's Fix-The-Internet MVP Lab - starts April 6th
ETHTurin, A Virtual Hackathon on Ethereum - April 24-26

Or check out Devpost for more..

Prepare for a hackathon

I recently published a blog post on how to prepare for a hackathon. While this was aimed at blockchain hackathons, the tips are common to any hackathon.

Set your own goals for the hackathon
Connect with the community
Don't be afraid to ask for help
Pick something that interests you
And ultimately... Make sure to have fun!

Full blog at https://www.wslyvh.com/how-to-prepare-for-a-blockchain-hackathon/

Working from home

wslyvh — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 16:20:19 +0000

Remote work can have a serious impact on your life and (mental) health. Especially when you can’t leave the house for extended periods of time. A lot of people are going to experience this for the first time now. So sharing some tips and learnings from the years I've worked remotely.

In short:

Stick to your regular routines
Get outside
Actively communicate with others
Proactively manage isolation
Set up your boundaries
Stay healthy & fit

The full blog post can be found at:
https://www.wslyvh.com/working-from-home/

What are you doing to stay healthy?