Phil Li, CEO of Obsidian Labs, tells us about EOS Studio, a Cross-Platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE). EOS Studio is their end-to-end solution that aims to be the standard tool for app development on EOSIO.

Could you introduce EOS Studio to us?

Phil Li: EOS Studio is a cross-platform IDE for blockchain application development on EOSIO.

By integrating numerous tools required in EOSIO into a graphical interface, EOS Studio can help developers improve their efficiency substantially throughout the entire app development process. It can also help people who are new to EOSIO get started with app development easily.

In just three months after our release, we attracted thousands of developers and received very positive feedback. Many blockchain application development teams in the community have already used EOS Studio as their standard tool for developing apps. We hope EOS Studio can help to incubate more quality blockchain applications on EOSIO in the future.

Why did you decide to create a Cross-Platform IDE?

Phil Li: When developing EOSIO apps, many developers face the problem of having to learn different tools, manage them separately, and operate them on the command line. Our initial idea was to build an IDE to bring those EOSIO-related tools together in a graphical interface as a single application. We think this would significantly help EOSIO developers when they are working with complex codes or smart contracts. We spent a few weeks to implement this idea as a proof of concept, tested it in a small EOSIO developer group, and received very positive comments and support. This encouraged us to keep improving EOS Studio.

How does EOS Studio help developers?

Phil Li: EOS Studio provides a powerful and easy-to-use environment for app development. We designed it to be a platform that covers the entire app development process. It is not only a code editor. Developers can build and deploy smart contracts, manage the local environment, debug and test their contracts, and manage private keys, all in EOS Studio. Unlike other smart contract software developer tools, EOS Studio allows developers to build a project from end to end in a single application. And of course, building it on EOSIO means that we are using the best public chain for commercial apps.

The EOS Studio team left to right: Xin Sun, Zehao (Phil) Li, Rose Ren

Who is working on the EOS Studio project?

Phil Li: EOS Studio is a product of Obsidian Labs, a Silicon Valley-based startup focused on blockchain technology. Our founders were Y Combinator alumni and have been working together on blockchain for more than two years. We won the 3rd place of the EOS Global Hackathon in San Francisco.

I’m a full stack developer with experience in mobile and web applications, blockchain and smart contracts. The other two founders Rose Ren and Sam Sun are veterans at managing blockchain communities, organizing developer meetups and conferences, and in business development with other communities and the top block producers of EOSIO. They are responsible for community and marketing in the US and Asia, respectively.

What has the response of users/the community been?

Phil Li: The EOSIO community is very excited about EOS Studio. In the past three months, our product has attracted thousands of developers worldwide and they use EOS Studio for everything from learning the technology of EOSIO to building complete apps on the EOS public network. Some supporters also produced introductory YouTube videos or wrote Medium articles about EOS Studio. Our Telegram group is very active and we received a lot of encouraging messages. Many developers are looking forward to our new features.

What are the future plans for EOS Studio? Are you working on any particular new features?

Phil Li: We have just released the web version of EOS Studio, which will allow anyone to start a blockchain project within seconds. The entire IDE will be in-browser, with cloud-based EOSIO smart contract compilation and blockchain network connections — this will significantly lower the barrier of entry for EOSIO development and attract more developers into the ecosystem. It is also a platform to share open sourced smart contracts (like GitHub) so that developers can learn from each other. We have received a lot of ideas from the community so we will continue to iterate the product to provide more useful features for EOSIO developers in the future.

The web version of EOS Studio is live now: https://www.eosstudio.io/web

More information on EOS Studio available at https://www.eosstudio.io/

Stay Connected

As the global EOSIO developer ecosystem grows, there has been a corresponding increase in the number of projects focused on development tools and infrastructure. These programs, libraries and utilities can help developers save time, effort and resources which results in more and better applications being built for EOSIO users. The Developer Relations team is committed to making EOSIO the blockchain platform with the best and most accessible developer experience, and highlighting #EOSIOTools which are useful to developers is part of our strategy to nurture and cultivate the developer ecosystem.

Stay tuned to our #EOSIOTools series where we’ll highlight some of the most useful software and tooling being built by the community for developers building on EOSIO.

If you have a tool you’d like to share with us, please email spotlight@block.one.

-Developer Relations team