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What Are Blockchain Applications?

Blockchain applications are made up of smart contracts, or sets of rules, that are carried out through programming when certain conditions are met. When Blockchain applications were originally released they were primarily supporting the financial tech and cryptocurrency markets, but their ability to store and manage data in a secure environment has quickly expanded their uses to other industries like healthcare, government and retail.

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Why Is Blockchain Testing Important?

Unlike most data structures, once a smart contract is deployed to the blockchain, changes can not be made, so ensuring the efficacy of a contract is very important. It’s up to QA engineers to perform comprehensive and custom sets of tests to make sure that mistakes, which cannot be fixed, are identified and mitigated.

When a defect is discovered in production the smart contract can’t be updated or rolled back, and a new version of the smart contract must be created and deployed. These new versions have to be manually created by applying the previous data into the new contract - an endeavor costly in time and resources for business leaders.

Blockchain Testing Challenges

QA engineers face a unique set of challenges when testing blockchain applications and smart contacts due to them being relatively new and evolving at a rapid pace. A few of the most common challenges that teams encounter are:

Mobile Testing Challenges

Blockchain transactions are Irreversible

Implementing blockchain without the utmost care is risky to organizations and their users because of the transactions being irreversible. Not having controls in place to avoid redundancy and provide additional safety measures is one of the most common challenges teams encounter.

In-depth knowledge of technology

Blockchain is a new technology and needs to be tested by well-trained experts with domain knowledge.

Continuous Addition of Blocks

Blockchain technology is meant to be used to store and process large amounts of data, but in order to accomplish this, new blocks are added at a quick and consistent pace. These continuous additions can create a strain on QA engineers and can easily become a QA testing bottleneck.

Integration Testing

Integration testing must be carried out frequently to avoid any failures, since there are multiple components involved in designing a Blockchain application.

Handling crypto-graphical data

The primary goal of blockchain is the transmission of encrypted data. There is a high risk of failure if the transmission of the data is not tested properly during the development and QA processes.

Performance Testing

Failing to do performance tests on blockchain applications can leave testing teams unaware of possible adverse effects caused by load levels or bandwidth constraints.

Blockchain Testing Tools

There are very limited tools that can be used for blockchain testing. Moreover, these tools can be best leveraged by testers who have specific experience and knowledge of using them.

Blockchain Testing Services

At QASource, our expert testers have extensive knowledge of tools for blockchain software testing, and can provide the following services:

Functional Testing

This type of testing is done to ensure that functional parts of the blockchain application are working as expected. Functional testing in blockchain focuses on smart contracts, balances, correct previous and current transaction details. QA testers can ensure that once the block is added, there is no data loss during the transmission of data from one block to another.

Peer/Node Testing

Since blockchain functions in a peer-to-peer distributed network through network nodes using authentication protocols, it’s important to run node tests to ensure that the majority of nodes approves the block for its validity to make transactions. Therefore, it is important to check all heterogeneous nodes independently.

Integration Testing

Blockchain in itself is an ecosystem which consists of the various connected interfaces and components. It’s important to ensure that all these different interfaces integrate consistently with one another, and there are no disconnects. Integration testing will help to ensure that all interfaces are syncing well with each other, and having the correct response time.

API Testing

API testing for a blockchain helps to ensure that there is effective communication between the client/business party network and blockchain node. It makes sure that the API response is error-free and securely transfers the transaction data.

Security Testing

Shared ledger and node are the most important aspects for the security of a blockchain application. For example, if a network node is attacked by DDoS, then the application hosted on the blockchain will also be affected. Security testing of a blockchain application will test the access, authentication, security hash, wallet signature method and private keys. It will help to identify loopholes and misconfiguration which leads to security threat to the data.

Performance Testing

Performance testing in blockchain is done to identify performance issues before deployment of the application. During this, testers look at the number of transactions per block , speed of transaction and also test the response time from smart contracts. Various issues like network latency for specified block size and network size are identified during performance testing.

Our Blockchain Testing Tools Include

Ethereum Tester

This platform is designed to test web3 integrations, smart contracts, APIs, and other blockchain technologies.

Hyperledger Composer

Hyperledger Composer supports three types of testing in blockchain applications: interactive testing, automated unit testing and automated system testing.

Corda Testing Tools

Corda has a built-in testing feature to help with contract tests and flow tests, and running integration and load tests.

Exonum Testkit

This tool allows testers to test transactions executed and APIs in the coincident environment.

Truffle

Truffle is a combination of a development environment, testing frameworks, and asset pipelines. It leverages ethereum logic and is helpful when teams are releasing distributed applications.

Ganache

It is the most-used library for testing Ethereum contracts locally and helps to compile a contract, deploy it, determine its cost, and debug it locally.

Embark

The goal of Embark is to make testing smart contacts as easy as possible. This is done by allowing developers or testers to choose what features make most sense to you when building or testing decentralized apps.

Populus

This is a framework known for its relatively easy integration due to it being developed around the pytest framework.

Components of Blockchain Architecture

It’s important to understand the different kinds of terminologies used in Blockchain. Listed below are the ones that are used most commonly:

  • Ledger

    Ledger is a database of transactions, which is maintained by each node in the network. There are three types of ledgers, namely, public ledger, distributed ledger and decentralized ledger.

  • Smart Contract

    Smart Contract is a business logic running on the ledger.

  • Peer Network

    It is the transactional information flow within the nodes. Every node of the peer network stores synchronized information at all points of time.

  • Membership Services

    It consists of authorization, authentication and helps identity permission services for blockchain networks.

  • Events

    Events are significant operations in the blockchain and are an important part of the contract. Events are dispatched signals that the contracts can fire. Once an event is emitted, it stores the arguments passed in transaction logs. These logs are stored on blockchain and are accessible using the hash address of the contract for as long as it is present on the blockchain.

  • Wallet

    Wallet allows every node to store their cryptocurrency. Public and private key pairs together to maintain privacy of a wallet.

  • Node

    Node is any computer, or server within the peer network, which maintains a full copy of all the transactions.

  • Nonce

    Nonce stands for a number only used once, which is added to a hashed or encrypted block in the blockchain.

  • Consensus Mechanism

    Consensus mechanism is used in Blockchain systems to achieve compulsory acceptance on a single set of value or a single state of the network among distributed processes.

  • Transactions

    Transactions are the smallest building blocks of a blockchain. They consist of sender address, recipient address, and transaction data. They are bundled in the form of blocks and delivered to nodes.

  • Blocks

    Blocks are data structures within a blockchain database, where transaction data is recorded. A block records some or all of the most recent transactions not yet validated by the network. Once the data is validated, to block is closed. Blocks store a set of transactions and distribute them among each node of a blockchain network. Miners create these blocks.

Why Partner With QASource’s Blockchain Testing Team?

  • Nearshore, offshore or hybrid outsourcing options.
  • A dedicated team of QA experts familiar with blockchain applications and their testing needs.
  • Access to state of the art testing facilities, test labs and tools.
  • A team well versed in specific blockchain rules, regulations and laws.
  • Non-billable engineering leadership and US customer support.
  • Access to an advanced technology group constantly improving our Automation, Database, DevOps, Dev, and IT capabilities.
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Blockchain Testing Resources

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