Ethereum

Architecting the Blockchain for Failure

So what's the big goal for the talk?

It's to get people interested in this technology. It's not a blank slate, but blockchain is a young technology. There's constant innovation in the space - with numerous groundbreaking technical papers being published and applications being developed. It’s so new that the he good books haven't been published. We’re in a fascinating, disruptive period in blockchain technology, which means there’s plenty of opportunity for technologists.

What is the state of the frameworks? Are they at a high enough level of abstraction where developers don't have to understand the computer science underneath?

It’s getting there. This was why my library, web3j, was written. When I first started digging around with the technology, I thought, OK, as a Java developer how do I work with this? And there was a big disconnect, there was no straightforward means for Java developer to integrate with the main blockchain technology - Ethereum. This surprised me, as Java is so widely used in financial firms, and given all the hype around blockchain applications in finance, it seemed like a no-brainer to try and connect the two together. That resulted in the creation of my library web3j, the Java library for integrating with Ethereum.