Posts

Interesting Blockchain Sectors

  Interesting Blockchain Sectors and Projects by Marshall Swatt ( @marshallswatt ) For anyone that wants to know what Bitcoin or blockchain tech is used for, these sectors have real products, offer real services, that people use and pay for, and that presumably add real value.  Sectors DeFi Decentralized Finance Lending / Yield Farming Decentralized Exchanges / Liquidity Mining Exchange Aggregators / Order Routing Automated Market Makers / Arbitrage Fiat Payment Rails Stablecoins - tokens that are pegged to a single currency, currency basket or other asset that generally maintains a stable value. These offer significant advantages, such as in facilitating payment transfers between parties with low risk of price volatility. Oracles (Reliable Sources of Data) - blockchain smart contracts execute in a highly restricted environment, for security. Inevitably these smart contracts require some outside data (like market price feeds) to enable certain capabilities. DApps (Decentralized Applica
Read more

Blockchain & Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Terms for Beginners

Use this guide to educate yourself or help others better understand Blockchain and Decentralized Finance By Marshall Swatt ( @marshallswatt ) The original whitepaper for Bitcoin, by Satoshi Nakamoto:  https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf "Layer 1": Networks  - these are the underlying blockchain networks, like Bitcoin, that facilitate transactions, maintain one or more tokens, and facilitate additional functionality such as data storage, computation or customizable behavior. There are literally hundreds - if not thousands - of layer 1 blockchain networks, offering a wide array of different benefits and capabilities, with the aim of targeting a specific market opportunity, to provide competition and spur innovation, for pure experimentation and research, to improve on existing networks, and other strategic business or novel technical differentiation theses. Who knows how this ultimately shakes out, but my bet is that Ethereum is guaranteed to have long-term healthy competition, and
Read more

Example of Best in Class RESTful API Design: Stripe

  Example of Best in Class RESTful API Design Stripe was among the first companies to publish a high-quality RESTful API with excellent supporting documentation. If you are building an API, this is an excellent example to follow: https://stripe.com/docs/api
Read more

Software Architecture: Micro-Services and Zero-Trust Systems

Software Architecture: Micro-Services and Zero-Trust Systems When it comes to software development, even with all the tools and methods at our disposal, it is still far too common for teams to jump into development without taking a little time to draft a software architecture plan. Laziness, pressure and inexperience are the most common excuses for this behavior. Any business that takes itself seriously should eliminate that risk of such behavior and incentivize its teams to think before they build. When attempting to architect a software system, you need a methodology to guide you in the process. Otherwise you risk building an ad-hoc solution that later requires a costly refactoring effort. It is all too easy to overlook performance, scalability, security, internationalization. The concept of micro-services can offer a helpful methodology to compartmentalizing software and think in terms of components. Whether you actually build micro-services or not, this way of looking at a software
Read more

Comprehensive Software Design Thinking

  Comprehensive Software Design Thinking Measure twice and cut once is a well-known aphorism in the construction industry. It cautions that one should not rush to execution without being thorough in preparation and planning. In software, and in this era of all things Agile, that principle is still essential. Whether you are working on a prototype, an MVP, a seemingly small feature, or a major release, it is important to take the time to plan before rushing to execution. The benefits of doing so outweigh the costs. In some cases, you’ll avoid running into major issues, and in other cases, by having a complete picture, you’ll simply be better positioned to fine tune the scope of work, choose what is essential and place non-essential tasks on the product backlog. -Ensure you fully comprehend what is to be built so that you can reliably scope the work -Ensure that you haven’t overlooked a key element, such as an adverse cyber-security impact or a required database modification -Ensure that
Read more