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A Business Guide to Ethereum Smart Contract Development

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The blockchain is one of the revolutionary tech pools that is significantly ruling a number of industries. This giant tech pool has a number of platforms that streamline supply chains, simplify trade & enhance financial transactions. Ethereum is one of those platforms coming with top-notch opportunities for blockchain development. Though this decentralized blockchain platform was launched in 2015, its success is genuinely attributed to smart contract implementation.

 An Ethereum smart contract is a program that mainly runs on the blockchain. This is a set of code & data reading at a particular address. Smart contracts execute transactions automatically if the specific conditions are achieved, without any requirement for an intermediary. This blog will explain the process of developing smart contracts and its importance.

How to create a smart contract on ethereum?

As an automatic self-executing agreement, it defines rules & enforces them automatically through the codes. Moreover, interactions with smart contracts are irreversible and they can’t be erased by default. Developing smart contracts on Ethereum is an excellent step for those who just start blockchain businesses. Here are the 6 main steps to create Ethereum smart contracts.

Step 1: Create a MetaMask wallet

MetaMask works like a wallet as well as an Ethereum browser. It usually allows you to connect with dApps and smart contracts without downloading any software or blockchain. You need to add the MetaMask extension in your Chrome & enable it. Once it’s properly installed, create a MetaMask wallet & agree to the terms & conditions for further proceeding. After that, you have to make a strong password & then you will get a secret backup phrase to back up & restore your account. You have to store the phrase safely & move ahead to the next step.

Step 2: Select the test network

In this step, you may find the following test networks in your wallet. They include:

  • Ropsten test network
  • Kovan test network
  • Rinkeby test network
  • Goerli test network

Note that the above-mentioned networks are only for testing purposes; note that on these networks, Ether doesn’t have real value.

Step 3: Add dummy Ethers

In case you would like to test a smart contract, you have to add some dummy ethers in the MetaMask wallet. For instance, if you need to test a smart contract with the help of a test network, choose it & you may get 0 ETH in your Ethereum account as an initial balance.

To add dummies, select “Deposit” & click the “Get Ether” button to proceed further. Once you click the “request one ether from the faucet” button, 1 ETH will be added to the MetaMask wallet.

Step 4: Use editor remix for writing the smart contract

Once the Ethers are successfully added to your wallet, you can write smart contracts in Solidity. Generally, Remix Browser IDE is used to write solidity code. The Remix is a great choice to write smart contracts as it has a number of user-friendly features & offers a development experience. The Remix is used to write smaller-sized contracts and its common features are:

  • Warnings such as unsafe code, gas cost, overlapping variable name checking, etc.
  • Error highlighting & syntax
  • Functions with Web3 objects
  • Static analysis & integrated debugger
  • Integrated testing 
  • Deployment environment
  • Deploy to MetaMask directly 

Step 5: Create a .sol extension file & ERC20 tokens respectively

ERC20.sol is a basic template for ERC20. Now, open Remix & select the plus icon to make a .sol extension file. & then choose a compiler version from the Remix browser for compiling the solidity smart contract code. 

pragma solidity ^0.4.0;

import “./ERC20.sol”;

contract myToken is ERC20{

mapping(address =>uint256) public amount;

uint256 totalAmount;

string tokenName;

string tokenSymbol;

uint256 decimal;

constructor() public{

totalAmount = 10000 * 10**18;

amount[msg.sender]=totalAmount;

tokenName=”Mytoken”;

tokenSymbol=”Mytoken”;

decimal=18;

}

function totalSupply() public view returns(uint256){

return totalAmount;

}

function balanceOf(address to_who) public view

returns(uint256){

return amount[to_who];

}

function transfer(address to_a,uint256 _value) public

returns(bool){

require(_value<=amount[msg.sender]);

amount[msg.sender]=amount[msg.sender]-_value;

amount[to_a]=amount[to_a]+_value;

return true;

}

}

Step 6: Deploy the contract

At the right-hand portion of the Remix window, you have to click the deploy button to deploy the contract successfully. You need to wait to complete the transaction. After that, the smart contract address would be popping up on the remix window. Once done, all ERC20 tokens will be submitted to the user's wallet. If you want to check these tokens in the wallet, open the MetaMask window & enter the contract address by clicking add tokens.

Smart contract business ideas that will shape the future

Technically, Ethereum smart contracts examples vary from one sector to another. They usually depend on how the companies are utilizing them. The technology behind the smart contract has been on the radar of any investor. Here are some smart contract ideas that help in several fields.

  1. Supply chain management

Many big organizations worldwide deploy Ethereum contracts to boost the entire system of their supply chain management. It always allows the companies to monitor every step in the production procedure, from raw material collection to final delivery. This effectively enhances efficiency & minimizes unwanted expenses due to delays in delivery or product defects. 

  1. Healthcare data management

Healthcare is another popular industry, where Ethereum smart contracts play a huge role. With these contracts, many well-known healthcare firms implement national databases to securely tokenize all medical records & make them widely available for their patients. Moreover, smart contracts also help to handle all patient information very securely across several insurance companies and health care providers.

  1. Smart contracts insurance

Smart contracts on the Ethereum platform are mainly used in insurance policies for minimizing fraud cases & managing automatic claims administration. With blockchain, it’s possible to make a consistent record of every transaction that is related to insurance policies including premiums and claims payments. This makes transparency for both insurers and policyholders. It also reduces the risk of fraud & keeps the process simple to manage finance.

What is the Ethereum blockchain platform?

A blockchain platform allows developers to make & execute smart contracts. Ethereum is a very popular blockchain platform that executes arbitrary code so that you may perform any kind of program on Ethereum. This blockchain platform has a distributed infrastructure that effectively facilitates you to finish projects with the help of smart contracts.

  1. Make your cryptocurrencies: You can make a tradable token to use as a new currency. Tokens that are developed with Ethereum use a standard API that is compatible with all kinds of Ethereum blockchain wallets.
  2. Build virtual organizations: You may write a smart contract to develop a blockchain-based virtual organization. You may add more people to the virtual organization & enable voting rules. Your organization’s members can vote & the required vote numbers are achieved, and the smart contract automatically executes.
  3. Make a dApp: Ethereum helps to create fault-tolerant and secure decentralized applications that reduce intermediaries & provide transparency.
  4. Raise funds: Ethereum smart contracts can also be used for fundraising. With this blockchain, you have to write a smart contract. In case you can’t accomplish the goal, automatically all donations must be reimbursed to donors without commissions or disputes.

How Ethereum helps to execute Smart Contracts?

Before discussing how to create a smart contract on the Ethereum platform, you need to understand the Ethereum blockchain and how it runs smart contracts. Let’s take a look at the execution environment.

Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM:

The objective of EVM is to work as a runtime environment for smart contracts developed on the Ethereum platform. You can consider it as a supercomputer executing all smart contracts.

As the name suggests, EVM isn’t a physical machine. It’s a virtual machine and its functionality is restricted to virtual machines. For instance, it can’t develop delayed calls on the internet and produce random numbers. Therefore, it’s considered a basic state machine. Writing a program in assembly language never made any sense, so Ethereum needed a programming language for the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

GAS

In the EVM, GAS is a measurement unit that is used to assign fees to every transaction with smart contracts. Every computation in the Ethereum Virtual Machine needs some GAS. 

Transaction fee = Total gas used x gas price

Solidity

Solidity is a programming language (smart contract) on the Ethereum blockchain. This is very similar to an object-oriented language that uses methods and class. You can use Solidity to perform arbitrary computations. It’s used to receive and send tokens & store states. Solidity is highly influenced by Javascript, C++, and Python so that developers can quickly understand its syntax.

Final words

Smart contracts are crucial for the economy as they deliver essential automation for the decentralized blockchain platforms. Integrating the Ethereum smart contract with a business operation can save expenses & effort potentially while making trustworthy transactions. Understanding the above-mentioned steps involved in how to code Ethereum contracts will make it simple for your organization to design a way to implement new business ideas & objectives to take benefits of blockchain. For more info, talk to our experts at Sphinx Solutions today.

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