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.
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.
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:
At QASource, our expert testers have extensive knowledge of tools for blockchain software testing, and can provide the following services:
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
It’s important to understand the different kinds of terminologies used in Blockchain. Listed below are the ones that are used most commonly:
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 is a business logic running on the ledger.
It is the transactional information flow within the nodes. Every node of the peer network stores synchronized information at all points of time.
It consists of authorization, authentication and helps identity permission services for blockchain networks.
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 allows every node to store their cryptocurrency. Public and private key pairs together to maintain privacy of a wallet.
Node is any computer, or server within the peer network, which maintains a full copy of all the transactions.
Nonce stands for a number only used once, which is added to a hashed or encrypted block in the blockchain.
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 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 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.
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