Partnership with EtherScan

EtherScan will work with Digix to facilitate the recording of asset transaction history for DigixGlobals’s digital assets, specifically, DGX / POA Asset Cards / DGDs.

This step forward symbolizes 2 very important things for the Ethereum community:

DApps can purely focus on their core business and synergise with other Dapps on the Ethereum Super-Computer

As we progressed with software development, we were looking for an accurate and efficient solution to publish transaction histories of Digix assets in real (block) time. This was where the issue of chain reorganization came about as a potential blocker / delay to our developmental progress.

Chain reorganization is a phenomenon that happens frequently (every few minutes), where the UI state of transactions for the latest blocks may not be accurate and updates to the UI data is needed (if we were to serve them on our client in real time) at the resolution of the fork. This could affect the overall user experience if an update and republishing of block data is required continually in the front end to accurately reflect asset transaction history. Transaction states can be classified as Unconfirmed, X confirms / Fully confirmed / failed etc. In short, it takes up computer resources (gas and response time) to collate and fully reflect the correct history on the blockchain in Digix’s hosted wallet.

An in house implementation for transaction states to be served to the UI would be doable, but this is where Etherscan has provided their expertise in this area. Etherscan provides one of the best block explorers for the Ethereum blockchain. They have made front end publishing of accurate, transaction history and states for the Ethereum blockchain one of the core strengths of their business, efficiently dealing with the chain reorganization issue.

So why is this significant?

Instead of us spending extra resources to replicate what EtherScan does perfectly well, we are able to integrate with them (simply because we are all developing on the Ethereum supercomputer) that has made our software development easier.

2. Transparency of Dapp’s transaction history

Etherscan also plays the role of an independent third party that collates all transaction history that occurs with DGX and DGDs on the Ethereum Blockchain, and then publishing the results of all its history on their website. Having Etherscan feed this information to our users, instead of Digix doing so is also another added assurance that none of the transaction history / state has been manipulated or tampered with prior to publishing it to the front end UI.