For tomorrow’s leading dapps to utilize blockchain within their development stack, developers need the tools and information-access that they are used to having when developing for the web. dfuse is speaking with experienced blockchain developers to help share their journey, the tools they use, and the sources of knowledge they turn to. This week we spoke with Phil Li from EOS Studio.

Note - be sure to read about the partnership between EOS Studio and dfuse to learn how we’re working together to provide powerful and easy-to-use on-boarding tools to any developer looking to get into the blockchain space.

Could you introduce yourself?

My name is Phil. I am the CEO of Obsidian Labs and the initiator of EOS Studio. I’m a full-stack developer with over five years of experience in mobile & web applications and blockchain technology. Before starting Obsidian Labs, I worked as a CTO for a company in China that provides smart office SaaS services.

Could you present the vision of Obsidian Labs/EOS Studio?

The problem -

When developing EOSIO dApps, many developers face the problem that they need to learn different tools, manage them separately, and operate them on the command line. Our initial idea was to build an IDE and bring those EOS-related tools together in a graphical interface as a single application. We thought that would significantly help EOS developers when they are working with complex code and smart contracts.

Our Solution -

EOS Studio provides a powerful and easy-to-use environment for dApp development. We designed it to be a platform that covers the entire dApp development process. It is not only a code editor. Developers can build and deploy smart contract, manage local environment, debug and test their contracts, and manage private keys all within EOS Studio. Unlike other smart contract software developer tools, EOS Studio allow developers to build a project from end-to-end in a single application.

Near future Plan-

I would also like to mention that the web version of EOS Studio that we have recently released. The web version further lowers the barrier for dApp development and we hope to bring more developers into the EOSIO community. It is also a platform to share open-sourced smart contracts (like GitHub) so that developers can learn from each other. Besides, we received a lot of suggestive feedback from the community, so we will keep product iterations to provide more useful features for EOS developers.

Industries like banks and financial organizations are gradually shifting to blockchain infrastructure because of its benefits in cost savings, improved security, and so on. This brings a huge demand for blockchain technology to drive customers toward decentralized applications. We chose to build on EOSIO because it is the best public chain for commercial dApps. DPOS has proven itself to be the best solution to achieve scalability, comparable to centralized systems. In addition, there are a large number of active developers in the EOSIO community who are very energetic and eager to build applications.

What are the main challenges when developing on a blockchain?

When I first started developing on the blockchain, I found that the entire technical architecture was very different. I needed to study the complete development process once again in order to master the programming patterns and tools required for blockchain. In the very beginning, due to the lack of clear hands-on tutorials, I usually need to spend a lot of time to experiment and find the right way to use it. Another problem was that there were many operations in development that needed to be performed on the command line. It was like going back to the MS-DOS time. In fact, we feel that these problems hinder many others from understanding blockchain technology. That’s why we built EOS Studio. We hope to integrate the best practice of blockchain development into EOS Studio based on our past experience, which will help future developers to avoid a lot of detours.

What advantages would a dapp have by working with Obsidian Labs/EOS Studio?

As I mentioned, EOS Studio provides a powerful and easy-to-use environment for dApp development. We designed it to be a platform that covers the entire dApp development process. EOS Studio allows developers and dApp team builders to build a project from end to end in a single application. In the near future, we will also release team collaboration features that will further assist dApp developers working as a team.

We’ve written several online tutorials and Medium articles to help developers get started, which are listed on our website https://www.eosstudio.io. We also hosted monthly developer workshops in San Francisco/Silicon Valley and Asia to teach developers how to use EOS Studio and EOSIO face-to-face. There are also many great tutorials made by the community, such as EOSIO Developer Courses made by Everything EOS. It a very well made video tutorial for EOS Studio to teach dApp development.

What advice would you give to a developer who wants to build a project on blockchain?

I think the best way to understand dApp development is keep learning and try different tools. EOSIO has made a lot of progress in the past year and it keeps evolving itself, so it may be a little early to summarize a best practice. I will always pay attention to the latest progress in the EOSIO technology community.

As for the current development process, we already have integrated many helpful tools into EOS Studio. It can be used as a starting point to help developers get started. We also want to keep it open so that you can connect with other tools you think useful while using EOS Studio. For example, we use EOSIO Explorer for an extra layer to inspect transactions. dfuse is also necessary when we need to analyze the data in depth. For testing, we use JavaScript frameworks (mocha, jasmine) because it’s very easy to set up.

We are always looking to speak with EOSIO developers from around the ecosystem. If you are a developer and want to share your experience of building on the blockchain, please feel free to contact us. We would be happy to integrate your interview to our series "In the Eyes of a Blockchain Developer".