The first session of Bitcoin Association’s first Bitcoin SV Hackathon webinar went down on July 7. Hosted by Joshua Henslee, the webinar explored five tools that software engineers, especially Bitcoin SV hackathon participants, may find useful when it comes to building apps and services.
Henslee gave the audience invaluable information in regards to when they might want to use each tool, how each tool plays a role in the cost savings or monetization of a platform or service, and why these tools are so valuable to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
The five tools covered
Henslee took an in-depth look at five developer tools that will help software engineers build on Bitcoin:
I'll be presenting on:
Bitbus
Bitsocket
TXQ
TwetchPay
BitcoinFilesJoin us! https://t.co/28iYXMNaMS
— Joshua Henslee (@cryptoAcorns) July 6, 2020
_unwriter’s Bitbus
Bitbus is beneficial if you are looking for your platform/service to notify you once your transaction has been broadcast, or if you would like a push-notification when your platform or service comes across data that is relevant to it.
_unwriter’s Bitsocket
Bitsocket is good if you are looking for your platform/service to have server-sent events. For instance, if your platform or service is listening to other apps and looking out for information that pertains to it.
TwetchPay
You will find TwetchPay useful if you are looking for your application to support multiple wallets. The TwetchPay API extracts the Money Button and RelayX wallet APIs and condenses them into one simple API. This eliminates the need for you to implement multiple wallet API’s into your application or service.
Matterpool’s TXQ
Matterpools TXQ is good if you are looking to broadcast your transaction to its recipient before broadcasting the transaction to transaction processors. In addition, TXQ allows its users to keep a filtered, indexed set of their own transactions.
BitcoinFiles-SDK & APIs
BitcoinFiles is an API that allows you to post files up to 10mb on-chain. According to Henslee, BitcoinFiles has the opportunity to become the most valuable file respiratory and every single app should support BitcoinFiles because it’s what people are using to put things on-chain.
Leverage existing infrastructure
Regardless of whether the audience is going to use the five tools discussed in the webinar or not, the bottom line of Henslee’s webinar is that developers should use existing infrastructure.
“Hackathon participants should look at all tools others already built when creating their application,” Henslee said. “Existing tools enable apps to fly out of the gate because so much work is already done for them.”
There is an abundance of tools that will allow you to build the app or service that you want to build, without wasting your time building low-level infrastructure first. When you use the developer tools that already exist, you can spend your time building what you are good at building, which will save you time, energy, and inevitably, money.
Another important point that Henslee made throughout his presentation is that you do not need to run a full node. Beyond the fact that Dr. Craig S. Wright has continually pushed this message, Henslee made it clear that Bitcoin apps and services are moving toward being what he called “lean-machines.” A lean-machine is a piece of software—or hardware—that is not as resource intensive as other pieces of software or hardware that effectively accomplish the same goal.
One more point that Henslee made, which I think should not fly under the radar, was to keep your lines of communication open as a developer. You will find it beneficial to communicate with other software developers and individuals who support the Bitcoin ecosystem. Doing this will give you an understanding of what is good, what is not good, what is valuable, and what you should not spend your time on.
Register here to join the Bitcoin Association 2020 Bitcoin SV Virtual Hackathon.
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