Make sure your blockchain smart contracts are secure: OpenZeppelin 2.0 soars high

blockchain When it comes to smart contracts, can you ever be too secure? The smart contract library OpenZeppelin hit its 2.0 milestone. Its new stable release has some changes that will make smart contract development easier and more secure than ever.

Easier smart contracts

We won’t beat around the bush: writing a smart contract is tough. Writing a smart contract that doesn’t have gaping vulnerabilities is a challenge and requires learning Solidity. Solidity shares some conceptual similarities and semantics with C, and its creators had some inspiration from JavaScript.

Despite the similarities, beware the steep learning curve. Since programming in Solidity is still fairly new, even experts are still trying to hammer out some of the issues and discover where they left a backdoor open.

However, OpenZeppelin makes sure you are not alone on this endeavour and wind up dazed and confused. It is a library that runs on EVM and eWASM-compatible blockchains (these include Ethereum and RSK).

As its name suggests, it is an open source project under the MIT License and can be found on GitHub. According to the Zeppelin developer blog, “The project now has more than 150 code contributors, with many, many more helping with issues, support and reviews.”

If you’re looking for an open source project to climb aboard and help contribute a whole lotta love, perhaps this is the one for you? Have a look at the issue board!

2.0: more secure than ever

With the new stable release, OpenZeppelin 2.0 has some new features and a much higher level of security.

There is also a helpful getting started guide for those ready to embark on their smart contract journey.

Peak at some of the features of OpenZeppelin 2.0:

Automatic testing. Why wait? As you code, OpenZeppelin tests it in the newly improved test suite.
High-security. Interested in the details? The security audit is available for your perusal. Many thanks to the LevelK team who fixed the security issues! More about that on GitHub here.
New granular permissions with a granular role system.
Of course, all new updates come with assorted bug fixes and renames. As always, see the changelog for a full comprehensive list.
Removed contracts that did not match the new level of security.

More about the details of this new version, the complete changelog, and the source code are found in the release notes.

Discovering more

Is it a good time to learn more about blockchain? What about people who are just starting out? It can be daunting to navigate the hype-filled world of blockchain resources. (No, there is no silver bullet; no, blockchain is not magic. But yes, you should learn about the important impacts and strategies!)

The Blockchain Technology Conference comes to Berlin from November 19 to 21, 2018. Featuring sessions and workshops for both newcomers and seasoned veterans of the trade, it offers something valuable for everyone. Need to know about frameworks, Ethereum fundamentals, building a library, or wallets? The program has it all.

Even if you cannot make it to the conference, download the Blockchain Technology Whitepaper for some expert development advice.