Building Full Stack DApps On Ethereum For An Improved Approach

Despite the frequent challenges that come with technologies in their early stages, DApps- also known as Decentralized Applications are rapidly gaining popularity. Well, do DApps really scale? What is the current state of developing DApps? Are they beneficial to build? What are the common considerations for its development? Let us get the measure of the current maturity of the rapidly evolving ecosystem.

Blockchain and the distributed ledger technology have undertaken several significant improvements which include:

• Managing governance of data and transparency
• Bulletproof security with the help of trustless systems
• Visibly reduced transaction costs

Although, in reality, a significant amount of traditional “web2” technology is still required for the purpose of building DApps due to the ecosystem’s brief deficit of decentralized scalability.

Well, if we talk about Ethereum, it offers a completely decentralized computational service using a proof of work consensus protocol and smart contracts. It provides better security, more transparency, and lower transaction costs when compared to the existing web2 technology. The only hurdle is- it does not scale yet. The developers and researchers across the globe are, however, prototyping off-chain solutions such as Raiden Network, new protocols such as Plasma, and other sharing solutions. Being a part of Blockchain innovation also signifies gaining trust that the community will indubitably scale their networks in the coming years.

Bridging Web2 and Web3

In the requisite of building Full Stack Dapps for an improved approach, there is absolutely no way to prevent bridging web2 technology with your DApp. Here are a few crucial features to consider when building hybrid web2/web3 DApps:

• Traditional database
• Trusted gateways
• Blockchain Event Subscriber
• Queryable index

Database

A traditional database enables complex and performant data reads. Creating an atomic read call to an Ethereum smart contract can be remarkably swift, still, devising complex queries that combine domain models on-chain can turn out to be painfully slow, or even face frequent timeouts and fails. Moreover, saving domain model data in a traditional database allows colossal performance gains when lending data to your DApp.

Also Read Create Ethereum application with web3j

Ethereum/IPFS Gateways

Although IPFS and Ethereum target to offer a completely trustless and decentralized system, the existing users usually don’t host their own IPFS or Ethereum nodes. This breaks the essence of a trustless system and brings up a considerable security issue. Few services, however, provide a semi-centralized option for a short term. Until there exist a decentralized and stabilized methods of implementing this handshake, it is not a bad thought to host your own IPFS and Ethereum nodes. This will also ensure security and reliability to a maximum extent.

Blockchain Event Subscriber

An event subscriber monitors the events and new transactions on the blockchain and saves relevant information in your database or search indices. These are comparatively easy to build, especially with the amalgamation of socket pub/sub support in web3.js respective Ethereum node clients. Rather than using contract storage variables, a common pattern here is to store data with the help of Solidity events, just because it costs less “gas”.

Queryable Index

Developing an index service facilitates the performant end-user search. Moreover, searching on-chains directly needs a fully synced Ethereum node and is a lot slower. The most performant DApps today are saving events, Ethereum transaction data, and off-chain data references in the search indices of traditional web2 such as Solr and Elasticsearch.

A Final Note

The aforementioned challenges are temporary and their respective solutions are evolving rapidly. In the wake of the current scenario, there are countless opportunities to apply Full Stack to the existing enterprise scale and build superlative DApps. Do you agree with the approach? If you are a business and looking for Decentralized Application Development Services, let us know. We can help you in profound ways!