5 Top Techniques for Testing Blockchain Applications

Posted By : Nidhi Ojha | 14-Jan-2019

Brief about Blockchain :

The world now a day is about virtual, digital and cryptocurrencies in different shapes and sizes (read as rates and valuation respectively) that heavily rely on technology. The frequency heard buzz is “Bitcoin” whose size and shape has been going through the roof.

Fundamentally, Blockchain is easy to understand but points start to look different once you start digging deep. An apparent easy way to understand Blockchain is – “Block” – a real-time ledger record with encryption and timestamp; and “chain” – increasing list of records with a link to the previous block. A blockchain is thus a decentralized database of blocks within a vast network of the distributed ledger, which keeps a track of size and shape of the underlying currency along with real-time access for sharing, mining and flow of payments across a supply chain.

 

Why testing plays an important role in blockchain?

As of today, BFSI and Automotive sectors are making the max of blockchain because of the secure and encrypted structure that the technology offers; especially with the associated currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, etc.

Considering the stats mentioned above along with the basic nature of blockchain applications, it is evident that blockchain testing and testers are going to play a critical role in the overall growth and sustenance of blockchain.

 

From a technology standpoint, the complete process of blockchain needs to be thoroughly tested as any discrepancies found in one block or in the supply chain can potentially disrupt the entire blockchain. When a block is added to a blockchain, it remnant there forever. Any changes to a block in the chain will make the associated blocks in the chain impermissible or invalid. On the same lines, any updates by the owner of the block to one or more blocks in the chain will have a significant effect on the associated blocks in the chain, which needs a concurrent update or fix. Any such change can’t be placed or done later which makes it even more difficult/complex in terms of testing.

 

Testing the applications built on blockchain can be complex as not all blockchain technology are open-source. Some banking sector companies use private blockchain which offers more privacy controls at the loss of security and a hybrid of cloud computing and blockchain rolled into one.

 

5 Top Techniques for Testing in Blockchain apps:

With speedy changes to the technology suite, the idea of “specialized testing” is gaining more popularity. This type of testing requires specific skills and a blend of technical and domain understanding. Having said that, the traditional or the max used common testing techniques still hold true to blockchain testing.

 

Let’s look at the top 5 testing techniques.

Functional Testing: Functional testing plays a critical role in blockchain testing as it helps to assess the business circumstances, processes, and effectiveness of use-case scenarios. Some of the main components that tested as a part of functional testing are:

 

a) Block Size: As said earlier, a block contains real-time ledger record with encryption and timestamp. These are sets of transactions which are confirmed and are then shared on bitcoin’s public ledger (which is the blockchain). Most miners would love to have bigger block sizes (for obvious reasons) while the users and developers, on the contrary, are looking for better compression algorithms to fit the contents in the defined block size. Conventionally, blocks could carry up to 36MB (each) of transaction data but this soon introduced threats of spam and other service denial issues on the internet. The block size was hence reduced and fixed (apparently unanimously) to 1 MB apiece. With changing complexities, underlying technologies and the capability to have multiple transactions inside a single block are pushing this limit to the maximum. The testers are now focusing on multiple questions such as – what if the transaction size goes over 1MB, what tests should be examined if there are multiple transactions in a block, what are the encryption rules associated and many more of such complex scenarios. Chain size – The chain size essentially can be many blocks as the chain lengthens. Testers assure that chains are not broken at the time of testing and complete record of every value transfer that has happened is tested under possible scenarios.

 

b) Data transmission: Testing around data loss throughout transmission is carried out in this phase as the peer-to-peer architecture of blockchain deals with data encryption at source and decryption at the receiving end. Testing for transmission assures minimum data loss, improved process workflows between peers and provides scope for identifying integration possibilities.

 

c) Adding a block: Testers validate all the blocks that get added to the chain post authentication of each and every transaction. Since the chain cannot be altered and the block which gets added can never be changed, testing at this juncture is very critical.

 

Integration Testing: Is important from the perspective of various systems being cohesive. The deployment could be across certain environments/systems running in parallel and ensuring that several component interfaces talk to each other seamlessly becomes important. A particularized view of all the touchpoints and the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are tested by the testing team to ensure that appropriate interfaces can be exercised during the validation phases.

 

Non-functional Testing (Performance): Performance testing in blockchain is significant from the point of view of a number of transactions and transaction size being tested for the performance of a block or an app being made ready to be deployed to production. Testing team also focuses on other significant and dependent parameters such as network latency, performance bottlenecks, the sequence of transactions at every node, dependency on the production environment, transaction processing speed, client/user and system interface across with the responses required from the smart contracts. 

 

Non-functional Testing (Security): The initial focus here is to ensure that blockchain applications are tested thoroughly to check if they are vulnerable to attacks (malicious, virus, etc.), if the authorization systems are robust and if the authentications (including the accesses) are genuine. Security testing also deals the other important aspects such as confidentiality, integrity, non-denial of services, Consistency/Availability and collisions. Security testing becomes important in the event of hacking of identity layer which may conduct to transitions being exposed. The transaction which is in progress can’t be stopped instantly hence security testing needs to be effective to uncover all such potential identity layer hacks. Some of the other challenges related to security testing include – wallet signature methods, private keys, secure hash, consensus algorithm, application platform dependencies, etc. A defined verification and validation way helps to deal with most of such inconsistencies.

 

Application Programming Interface (API) Testing: This type of testing reports about the communication and interactions of applications that occur to and fro within the system. Testers here validate the external responses that the application receives, assures that the formats for the API request are correct and valid. Within blockchain, there is also an equivalent type of technology to APIs that allows a similar approach for testing APIs; called as smart contracts. There are some popular API testing tools are – Postman and SoapUI.

 


Conclusion: In one of the discussion between Bill Gates (Co-founder of Microsoft), Charlie Munger (Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway) and Warren Buffett (American business magnate, investor and Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway), spectators got the mix of ambiguity, popularity and potential about bitcoin and blockchain in one sentences each by the three veterans. Here’s how it went.

 

                                    Bill Gates: “Bitcoin is  techno tour de force.”

 

                                   Charlie Munger: “I think it’s a rat poison.”

 

                                   “I believe either Bill or Charlie is Correct” stated by Warren Buffett.

 

Understanding this application and implementation of Blockchain is vital, because it can facilitate confirm the expansion path and probable challenges with the technology.

About Author

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Nidhi Ojha

Nidhi is certified in Manual Testing and SQL. She has done B.tech in Electronics and Communication branch, apart from this she loves to travel to different places.

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