Building With Ethereum: Products, Protocols, and Platforms 9781484290446, 9781484290453, 1484290445

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
About the Author
About the Technical Reviewer
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction
Products, Protocols, and Platforms
Protocol Engineering
Product Engineering
Platform Engineering
Crypto Businesses
Crypto Engineering Is Trust Engineering
Products and Users
The Psychology of the User
Trust Engineering
Professional Arbitrage
What’s Next
Summary
Chapter 2: Requests, Networks, and Accounts
The Lifecycle of an Ethereum Request
The Basic Story
Where Requests Originate
How Requests Are Confirmed
Once a Block Is Finalized
Accounts and Wallets
Accounts Don’t Hold Things
Accounts Aren’t Limited
Accounts Aren’t Physical Items
Accounts Are Identity
Network and Account Switching
Layers 1 and 2
Switching Between Networks
Provide a Mechanism to Switch Networks Inside Your UI
Handle the Case Where Your User’s Wallet Software and Your UI Are Set to Different Networks
Handle the Case Where Either Your App or the User’s Wallet Doesn’t Support the Other Network
State Management
Switching Between Accounts
Summary
Chapter 3: Transactions
What Does a Transaction Look Like?
Transaction Signing
Gas Fees
Nonces and Replay Attacks
Transaction Receipts
Transaction UX
Clarification
The User’s Model
Dynamic Systems
Transaction Intent
Control
Progressive Expansion
Transaction Sequencing
Reversibility and Validation
Confirmation
Transaction Status
Updating State
Some Final Thoughts on UX
Summary
Chapter 4: Contracts
Smart Contracts
What Does a Smart Contract Look Like?
Contracts Are APIs
Application Binary Interfaces
Function and Argument Selectors
Sleuthing with Calldata
ABI Schemas
The Origins of ABIs
Contract State
Several Types of State
Accessing State
State and Product
Ethereum’s Event Model
Contract Logs
Events
Log Filters
Events and Product
ABIs Contain Events, Too
Listening to Events
Indexing
A Simple DIY Index
Decentralized Indexing: The Graph
Centralized Indexing Services
Final Considerations
Summary
Chapter 5: Infrastructure
Testing
Unit and Integration Testing
End-to-End Testing
Test Networks
Account Impersonation
Setting State Directly
Test Scenarios
Hosting
Decentralized Hosting on IPFS
The Malkovich Deployment
Competitive Frontends
Centralized Hosting
Final Considerations
Fragility and Antifragility
Sources of Disorder and Fragility
Robust Systems
Antifragile Systems
Summary
Chapter 6: Decentralization
Decentralization Is a Fetish
Decentralization Is Multidimensional
Dimensions of Decentralization
Decentralization As a Backstop
Standards
What Are Standards?
Some Etymology
Who Sets the Standards?
Standard Capture and Path Dependence
The Case for Greater Standardization
Error Messages
Security and Verification
Authorization
Some Lessons
Summary
Chapter 7: Conclusion
Crypto Futurism (Without the Hyperbole)
Value Creation
Value Accrual
Final Thoughts
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