A lot has happened in the last few weeks in the Ethereum ecosystem, so much that it can be difficult for a casual observer to understand where we are and what is available. So I’d like to use my first post here to give you an overview of the tools we’ve built and how you can use them to build cool stuff. right now.
But first a short introduction: I’m Alex Van de Sande and I’m the lead designer of the Ethereum foundation. At DevconOne I gave a talk titled “The blockchain versus the average user” where I went into more detail about the challenges in bringing the Ethereum ecosystem to the aforementioned “Average User”, one of which is the difficulty of defining what that term means. When personal computers were introduced, they were advertised as “to the rest of us”but the “rest of us” audience they were addressing was actually a very narrow audience interested in word processing, spreadsheets and desktop publishing. Today, those would be considered among the top-tier geeks, just below the type of people who still fight over the top. Merits of Vim vs. Emacs. I truly believe that one day your Candy Crush-playing grandma/grandpa will use the blockchain, just like today she inadvertently uses databases and https connections (perhaps when they turn blue diamonds won in one game into cows in another). game by some other publisher). But right now, what I’m working on is taking it to the next level of users, the ones who can download an office suite and figure out how to use a spreadsheet, but aren’t comfortable with command lines.
So, if you consider yourself in that group, welcome, we will guide you to some basic activities that you can do in a few minutes in ethereum: Build your own cryptocurrency, build your own democracy, and create a central bank on the blockchain. We skipped the “Hello World” tutorial this time, but you’ll be fine.
Download the Ethereum wallet
Download the latest version of Wallet
But enough talk, let’s get our hands dirty with Ethereum! I might be biased, but I would say the best place to start is Ethereum Wallet, a cross-platform application that will allow you to send ethereum and ethereum-based coins, create and execute contracts.
The first thing you have to do in it is to create an ethereum account. All you need is a strong password and you will get it. To do anything you’ll need to put in some ether: but don’t worry, you don’t need much. Most contracts here will cost less than a tenth of a US cent. If you are just testing it, we recommend switching to testnet: go to menu develop > network > testnet (morden) and then in develop > start mining. After a few minutes, you’ll probably have enough ether to test anything, so you can turn it off and save your computer resources.
The wallet only allows basic mining on the testnet, but if you want to try your luck on the realnet, then you need a more advanced tool. This used to be a cumbersome process, but now there are better, easier tools: and we have new tools that will make that process much easier.
The miner AlethOne it’s a simple tool with two buttons: press one to start mining on your GPU and press the other to deposit your rewards into a wallet. Download it from Turbo Suitea set of power tools created by the C++ team for developing ethereum applications.
If you want to create smart contracts on the live network and you can’t mine, you’ll need some ethers. You can have a friend send you, or you can exchange it for bitcoins on a cryptocurrency exchange. If you are a fan of bitcoin, we suggest you keep an eye on the btcrelay project, a fraud-proof sidechain which will be released soon and will allow fast exchanges between ether and bitcoin without a third party.
Create a tab
The first contract we are going to create is a symbolic. Tokens in the ethereum ecosystem can represent any fungible tradable asset: coins, loyalty points, gold certificates, IOUs, in-game items, etc. Since all tokens implement some basic features as standard, this also means that your token will be instantly compatible. with the ethereum wallet and any other client or contract that uses the same standards.
Go to the contracts page and then click “implement new contract”.
now get the code identifier from here and paste it into the “Solidity Source field”. If the code compiles without any errors, you should see a “choose a contract” dropdown on the left. Get it and select the “MyToken” contract. In the right column you will see all the parameters you need to customize your own token. You can modify them however you like, but for the purposes of this tutorial we recommend that you choose these parameters: 10000 as the font, any name you like, “%” for a symbol, and 2 decimal places. Your application should look like this:
Scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see a calculation cost estimate for that contract and you can select a fee on the amount of ether you are willing to pay for it. Any excess ether you don’t spend will be returned to you so you can leave the default settings if you want. Press “implement”, type your account password and wait a few seconds for your transaction to be collected.
You will be redirected to the main page where you can view your transaction awaiting confirmation. Click on the account called “Etherbase” (your main account) and after no more than a minute you should see your account show that you have 100% of the shares you just created. To send some to some friends: select “send” and then choose which coin you want to send (ether or its newly created part), paste your friend’s address in the “to” field and press “send”.
If you send it to a friend, you still won’t see anything in your wallet. This is because the wallet only tracks the tokens it knows about, and you have to add them manually. Now go to the “Contracts” tab and you should see a link for your newly created contract. Click on it to go to its page. Since this is a very simple contract page, there’s not much to do here, just click “copy address” and paste the contract address into a text editor, you’ll need it shortly.
To add a token to view, go to the contracts page and then click “View Token”. A pop-up window will appear and you just need to paste the contract address. The token name, symbol, and decimal number should be auto-filled, but if not, you can put whatever you want (it will only affect how it displays in your wallet). Once you do this, any balance you have of that token will automatically be shown to you and you can send it to anyone else.
And now you have your own crypto token! The tokens themselves can be useful as value exchange in local communitiesways to keep track of hours worked or other loyalty programs. But can we make a coin have intrinsic value by making it useful? Tomorrow we will show how tokens can be used as a voting system to make collective decisions about the use of funds by creating a Democratic Autonomous Organization.