Ethereum smart contracts and Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) have played a vital role in promoting blockchain adoption in different domains and industries. While Bitcoin was built solely for the purpose of decentralized cryptocurrency trading, Ethereum supported not only crypto trading but also facilitated the building of decentralized applications. It was the first blockchain built to support the development of dApps rather than for peer-to-peer payment services. Since its launch, many projects and dApps have been successfully built on Ethereum, catering to various use cases.
Ethereum dApp development
The unique architecture of the Ethereum blockchain assists developers in building several services and solutions on it. Ethereum smart contracts play a key role in Ethereum dApps development. The smart contracts that existed in the Bitcoin blockchain had only basic functionalities. How-ever, Ethereum introduced smart contracts to perform complex tasks without intermediary intervention. These smart contracts work in the backend on the decentralized network. Anyone can develop their own smart contracts, defining the rules. This allows developers to set the rules of their dApps, which cannot be changed.
The other prominent aspect of Ethereum is Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) that executes smart contracts on Ethereum. Ethereum smart contracts in Solidity are sent to the EVM for interpretation and execution.
Step-by-step guide on Ethereum dApp development
Ethereum dApps can be built for various solutions and use cases. But, whatever the functionality is, Ethereum dApp development undergoes a process to build a sophisticated and efficient dApp, serving your purpose.
- Before anything, learning and understanding Ethereum in-depth is a must. It helps you know the intrinsic details of Ethereum, its attributes and characteristics like EVM specifications, token standards and more that you can add or omit from your dApp.
- Install dependencies. First, choose an Ethereum client such as Ganache, depending on your project and install it. To communicate with the Ethereum network, your dApp needs Javascript Ethereum API, ‘web3.js’. Install web3.js too.
- Smart contracts are essential in an Ethereum dApp that works in the application’s backend. Code the necessary smart contracts in Solidity. The smart contract should be simple without complexity to avoid errors.
- Once you code the smart contracts, deploy it to a tool suite like Truffle.
- Call the smart contract using a hexadecimal string.
- The developer needs Ether to execute the smart contracts, for which an Ethereum account is needed.
- After purchasing the Ether and storing it, a developer should transact using the Ether. A developer can transfer to another address as a value or invoke a contract function that updates the state of the network and spend ETH to pay fees to the miner or include a contract that updates the network’s state and receives ETH as payment.
Conclusion
Since the introduction of Ethereum as a decentralized applications-building platform, it has gained huge traction over time. Thousands of Ethereum dApps have been built on the Ethereum blockchain so far, and the number is still increasing. Its user convenience and advanced features make it a reliable and robust blockchain for developers to build applications and solutions.
