Back at Devcon V, we were delighted to announce that Web3 Labs was awarded a grant for Web3j by the Ethereum Foundation.



Web3j is the leading Ethereum integration library on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). It was first released at Devcon 2 in September 2016, and has been downloaded over 2 million times since inception! It’s also widely used by the Android community, with it being incorporated in Samsung’s Blockchain SDK and the Opera Browser.

What We've Achieved

The support from the Ethereum Foundation came at a great time for Web3j. It enabled us to expand the Web3j team, allowing us to further improve upon the developer experience for Web3j. Since receiving the grant in October, we’ve managed to hit quite a few milestones that you can #buidl with:

Use the Epirus CLI to generate a new ready to go blockchain application project in a single command - consisting of application code, a wallet, unit tests via an integrated EVM, all autogenerated from a source Solidity contract

Use Web3j Unit to test your smart contracts via an in-memory EVM, or Dockerised Geth/Besu/Parity nodes

Use the Web3j EVM to debug and test your smart contracts from within the JVM

Use Web3j Audit to audit your smart contracts

Future Work

Additional areas we’re looking at with the grant funds include:

API generation for smart contracts

Vyper support

Ways to enhance the Eth2 developer experience

Creation of more developer focussed content to help drive adoption among the wider JVM community (i.e. those new to blockchain/DLT).

Along with our recently announced Web3j SDK and the great content on working with the JVM at ethereum.org, we feel there is a fantastic opportunity to broaden the reach of Ethereum technology to even more developers.

Finally, we’d also like to give our thanks to the ECF who provided a Web3j grant 12 months ago, and Gitcoin who continue to fund issues related to the project.

If you want to see what all of the fuss is about, head here to get started #building on Web3!