Blockchain Development Life Cycle – Step by Step Guide

December 12, 2022 leave a comment

Well, a lot of industries have been embracing Blockchain technology to make their business more smooth and efficient. Thus, for starters, a basic understanding of the blockchain development life cycle is very important.

This blog intends to list out the various steps involved in the life cycle of Blockchain Development

Read on to find more.

Blockchain Development Life Cycle

1. Select an apt Use-Case That Matches Your Business Style

This part plays a significant role in your Blockchain Development Life Cycle. The use case you select should match your business needs. Blockchain provides the advantages given below. They are:

Data Authentication and Verification

Blockchain allows you to store data in any format. This data can be shared only through Crypto based authentication procedures. It’s safe and secure when compared to other conventional methods.

Smart Asset Management

Blockchain allows you to manage smart assets. It includes issuance, payment, exchange, escrow, and retirement.

Smart Contracts

Smart contracts are what run the transactions more smoothly, without any involvement of third parties.

2. Choose a Perfect Consensus Algorithm

Select a suitable consensus algorithm that suits your business style. The commonly used consensus methods are Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS)

PoW (Proof of Work)

PoW is the consensus algorithm that uses a tremendous processing power to validate every action on the blockchain. It utilizes miners that solve challenging mathematical puzzles to validate transactions and avert fraud activities.

PoS (Proof of Stake)

PoS, on the other hand, is the consensus mechanism that depends on validators rather than miners, and requires less computing power. On PoS blockchains, the owners of cryptocurrency verify the transactions themselves.

Proof of Stake is preferred over Proof of Work as it isn’t as costly as Proof of Work while most of the developers prefer Proof of Work.

Other mechanisms used are Proof of Burn, Practical Byzantine fault-tolerant Mechanism, Proof of Identity, Proof of Elapsed Time, and Proof of Importance. Everyone has their advantages and disadvantages.

3. Choosing that Perfect Platform for developing your Blockchain

Multiple platforms are available, which were developed by leaders like Oracle, IBM, etc., and the final choice largely depends on the distinctiveness of your project. Some examples of the most commonly used Blockchain platforms are:

Ethereum
Hyperledger Fabric
IBM Blockchain
Multichain
Hydrachain
Ripple
R3 Corda
BigChainDB
Open-chain
IOTA

4. Designing the architecture

After choosing a blockchain development platform, it is necessary to decide on the internal nodes’ architecture. Nodes in a network can be operated in various ways as given below:

Permission – Procedures run by Government like a land registry, Voting systems, etc
Permissionless – In permissionless networks anyone can mine the Cryptocurrencies. There is no need for any special kind of permission
Private Blockchain – Contract management systems in hospitals and pharmaceutical companies
Public Blockchain – Asset-backed Cryptocurrencies
Hybrid – A group of financial institutions which run on a shared KYC platform

Other factors to look at are hardware configurations like memory, processors, disk size, etc. In addition, the operating system that you choose is also essential. Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Red Hat, and Windows are the most commonly used operating systems

5.Configuring the Application

Here is where you execute permissions, block signatures and address formats. You should ensure how effective everything is because this information can’t be changed once it gets to the blockchain.

Some important elements that you need to take care of while configuring the application are permissions, asset issuance, asset re-issuance, atomic exchanges, key management, multi signatures, parameters, native assets, address formats, key formats, block signatures, etc.

6. Building the APIs (Application Programming Interfaces)

APIs act as a middleman between two different applications. In the blockchain, APIs ensure that the application will operate correctly on the blockchain network.

Certain Blockchain platforms come up with in-build APIs and some don’t. The things that demand an API include:

Generating key pairs and addresses
Performing audit-related functions
Data authentication through digital signatures and hashes
Data storage and retrieval
Smart-asset lifecycle management –issuance, payment, exchange, escrow, and retirement
Smart contracts

7. Design the Admin and User Interface

In this stage of the Blockchain development life cycle, we deal with designing the user and admin interfaces and the selection of the front end or the one that the users have to interact with

Select a suitable programming language like HTML5, CSS, PHP, C#, Java, Javascript, Python, Ruby, Golang, Solidity, AngularJS, Nodejs, etc., depending on the project’s peculiarity. Further, choose an apt Database like MySQL or MongoDB as well as the servers like Web servers, etc

8. Make it Future-ready

One can make your Blockchain platform future-ready by integrating the platform with Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Big Data, etc.

9. Build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

The last and final milestone blockchain development life cycle is building MVP. Being the fundamental version of a blockchain system, it enables the developers and creators to see whether the project is viable or not. MVP is generally used to identify the issues and to test the functionalities

Conclusion

Having a basic understanding of the various steps involved in the Blockchain development life cycle is very much vital if you are planning to implement this technology with your business.

This article will provide you with various steps involved in the blockchain development life cycle.

FAQs

What is the first key step towards developing a blockchain solution?

Step one in blockchain development is to identify a use-case that makes business sense. The use case you select should match your business needs.

What are the factors that hinder the development of blockchain?

Various factors impede the adoption of blockchain technologies, including technological barriers, constraints rooted in organizations and the environment, and system-related governmental barriers.

Meet The Author

Shamseena Shamsudheen

Crypto Strategist

Shamseena is a crypto strategist with an extensive knowledge on crypto aspects who is able to fragment complex content into simple and understandable words for those who want to explore crypto.With a keen interest in researching, she concentrates on writing about trending topics that provide readers with updated information. She is also well-versed in blockchain technology.