An Insider’s Guide To Building Decentralized Blockchain Apps

Developing blockchain applications starts with deciding the objectives and goals they want to achieve.
The later process includes developing a user interface, developing nodes, and then upgrading the application according to needs.

Go through this guide to build decentralized blockchain applications from scratch. This blog covers all the necessary steps required to build a blockchain application, from planning to researching, organizing, and developing the application.

Let’s get started!

Decide The Goal

Developing blockchain software should start with a clear end goal in mind. When considering the benefits of blockchain, developers get lost in the many underlying benefits of blockchain. Before planning blockchain software, ask questions like, “ What’s the purpose of the blockchain software?“

Are we developing an application to store data?
Does data need to be frequently shared and updated?
Is the application going to be used for transactions?

Before building, have a clear problem statement.

Enlist Business Requirements

Laying the right foundation is as crucial as choosing the right infrastructure and identifying the most relevant methodology. To achieve this objective, the team needs a clear business objective and a list of features that align with the objective.

The process includes research, planning, organizing, and deciding the deadline for the project. The list must answer these questions:

Features of the blockchain application
Technologies required in application ( for example, the app needs on-chain, off-chain, or both )
Start to finish roadmap of application

Decide Consensus Mechanism

In a blockchain network, consensus determines the efficiency, security, and data integrity of the decentralized application. Simply put, the consensus protocol is the backbone of the blockchain network. This layer validates the blocks in the blockchain. Additionally, this also impacts the speed of transactions.

There are several types of consensus mechanisms, such as:

Proof-of-Work ( PoW)
Proof-of-Stake ( PoS)
Deposit-based consensus
Proof of elapsed time

Consensus entirely depends on the specific business goals and objectives.

Choose The Blockchain Development Platforms

Choosing a platform with an active developer community is essential. Some modern platforms come with pre-built frameworks, tools, and blockchain ecosystems. This eases the development process.

Moreover, blockchain development platforms also impact the workforce required to build the application. This event influences the skill sets that the development team must have. Just like the consensus mechanism, there are several platforms as well:

Ethereum Platform
IBM Platform
Hyperledger Fabric

Design Blockchain Nodes

Nodes are the functional units of the blockchain system. The development process starts with a step. Before developing a node, the developing team must have a clear idea of the network:

Types of the blockchain network, permission or permissionless
A programming language and the development style
Blockchain nodes will run on the cloud on-premise or both
Operating system on which application will run (CentOS, Debian, Red Hat, etc.)

Plan Blockchain Configuration And Build APIs

Decide configuration parameters like permissions, asset issuance, native assets, address formats, atomic exchanges, multi-signature features, etc.; although these parameters are editable in later phases of development,

The next important step is to build application programming interfaces (APIs). However, APIs depend on the development platform; some have already built APIs, while others don’t. Depending on needs, the development team has to build APIs this may include:

Data Storage and retrieval
Smart asset lifecycle management
performance-related, audit-related functions
And design user Interface

Once the application is developed, then comes the deployment stage. Later on, updates can be added to enhance efficiency, validation, governance, and data storage.

Radhe