In particular, they emphasized the value of conducting experiments using a huge community of programmers to stop potential technical issues.
The security, privacy, and scalability issues faced by blockchain are unparalleled since decentralized applications and protocols have not been tested before.
As blockchain jobs such as Gnosis, Factom, and Stellar, along with engineering conglomerates and financial institutions, start to integrate the blockchain with existing infrastructures and technologies, they are encountering a growing number of challenges.
But with the support of comprehensive code audits and evaluations, executives in Gnosis, Factom, and also Stellar consider that blockchain technology may be flexible and applicable for the longterm; and will, hence, be much easier to implement in major industries such as insurance, finance, and health care.
By nature, public blockchain networks like Stellar, Gnosis, and Ethereum are decentralized and dispersed. As all smart policies and contracts are conducted in a peer-to-peer protocol, a sophisticated and intricate structure is essential to maximize privacy and security, while preserving an optimal level of flexibility.
To attain this, as clarified by Stellar co-founder Jed McCaleb, it is crucial that every blockchain community implements a security audit to test smart contracts in addition to the compliers.
"Security is a lot about ease, rather than only on the intelligent contract amount but additionally on the compiler level", he stated. "To give an example, our buddies at Augur they did a security audit of not only their contracts that were smart but also of the host compiler, and they found out that there were many security problems with the compiler."
As per Stefan George, the co-founder and CTO of Gnosis, the 78 million Ethereum blockchain based prediction stage, it's crucial to have a wide range of programmers run multiple audits. This is to ensure the code is operating effectively within a safe ecosystem, and for that reason, prevent acute security difficulties.
For the Gnosis platform, George noticed that several audits were conducted by many highly regarded blockchain developers in the open source cryptocurrency development community.
"If you want to appropriate audits, you need to think out of the box since most mistakes aren't obvious. Based on our experience, it is fantastic to perform a few audits. Different individuals must check the code, and they likely should not be operating on the smart contract that they audit -- it must be somebody else. They should really try to comprehend what the developer wanted to do. We did this for Gnosis -- we did a couple audits making certain that it is secure," explained George.
Jed McCaleb highlighted that it is impossible to produce or develop a flawless codebase that's immune to all sorts of attacks and vulnerabilities. McCaleb said that code has to be written in a manner that retrieval from possible safety difficulties and complications could be made smoothly. He clarified that germs exist in all sorts of software, therefore, for the security of users, it is important to make sure the recovery process causes minimal interference.
"You've got to realize that applications always has bugs and viruses, basically, code is the enemy. You have to get ready for all those eventualities when something goes wrong and make sure that the recovery from issues is equally as unpainful as you can; and also do a lot things to stop complete disaster, where it is stuff that maybe it is possible to roll back from or simply hurts a small subset of users since things are going to go wrong, you'll find bugs in most applications," said McCaleb.
In reaction to McCaleb's, Gnosis co-founder George noted that it's essential that blockchain networks and platforms operate a codebase which prioritizes ease. The ease of smart contracts and compilers is critical for programmers in discovering bugs and vulnerabilities, as well as in creating solutions to eliminate them promptly.
Security and scalability related issues have long been considered the significant challenges for blockchain growth, particularly to permissioned or centralized ledgers which are more vulnerable to external threats, hacking attacks, and security breaches.
Since Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin previously clarified, the achievement of sufficient scalability to empower decentralized applications with millions of active users will take anywhere from 2 to five years. But, after these problems are resolved, blockchain platforms like Ethereum, Gnosis, Stellar, and Factom is going to be able to achieve commercial success.
Nevertheless, Paul Snow, both the co-founder and principal architect at Factom blockchain network, has voiced his optimism toward the applicability of both blockchains, especially in regions outside of finance.
Snow revealed that Factom, that is worth $130 million blockchain network and shares investor Tim Draper as a supporter, has procured a contract with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Their function is to handle, protect, store and track medical records for individuals in developing nations.
