Saturday 12:30–13:15 in Kursraum 1

Python Unittesting for Ethereum Smart Contracts or how not to create your own Cryptocurrency

Robert Meyer

Audience level:
Intermediate

Description

Ethereum is a Turing complete Blockchain. Instead of just processing transactions like Bitcoin, the Ethereum Virtual Machine can run programs. There is one catch regarding any code that is deployed: Fixing errors is almost impossible. Hence, testing becomes incredibly important. The beauty of Unittesting in Ethereum? You can do it in Python and I will show you how.

Abstract

Recently I got infected by the Cryptocurrency fever. I am especially excited about Ethereum, a Turing complete Blockchain. This means in contrast to Bitcoin whose Blockchain only stores currency transactions, the Ethereum Virtual Machine can run entire programs.

There is one particular hook or catch when it comes to any program or code that is deployed to the Ethereum Blockchain: Updating a contract or fixing errors is close to impossible. Hence, testing becomes even more important than in the good old off chain IT. The beauty of Unittesting in Ethereum? You can do it in Python.

In this talk I will give a brief introduction to the Ethereum Blockchain, how to write so called Smart Contracts in the programming language Solidity, and how to perform Unittesting using the great populus Python library.

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