DEV Community: Cooper Kunz

Announcing Hedera21 - Hello Tokenization - Virtual Hackathon

Cooper Kunz — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 19:35:31 +0000

In June of 2020, Hedera hosted Hedera20 — its first-ever global virtually distributed hackathon event. Over 800 developers from 72 countries joined us in building decentralized applications that utilize the Hedera Consensus Service for various use cases.

After weeks of hacking, we had six unique sponsor challenges completed, 45 full-fledged Hedera-powered projects built and judged, and over $35,000 USD in Hedera's native cryptocurrency, hbar, was rewarded.

With 2020 behind us, it’s time to look forward to Hedera21: A hackathon fully dedicated to tokenization applications that take full advantage of the newly released Hedera Token Service (HTS).

HTS lets you easily configure and issue native tokens (i.e. cryptocurrency) on the globally distributed Hedera public network, without having to configure a smart contract.

To get started and put your skills to the test, grab friends or colleagues to form a new team or join an existing one and register at Hedera21.com — we can’t wait to see the tokenized future you’ll build.

Here are the event details:

Registration: Jan. 5th, 2020 - Feb. 11th, 2020
Hacking starts: Jan. 19th at 9am PT
Hacking ends: Feb. 12th at 11:45pm PT (4 weeks)
Team size: Up to 5 team members
Prizes: $45,000+ USD in hbar

👉 Sign up for free

Challenges

Judges are looking for applications or developer tools that utilize the Hedera Token Service (HTS) and promote active Hedera account creation and tokenization of digital or physical assets.

HTS is well suited to take advantage of the unique qualities of Hedera, including fast token transfers, low & predictable fees, real-time settlement, and aBFT security — all Hedera’s stable network, owned and governed by the world’s leading organizations.

Sponsors & Partners

As other sponsors of Hedera21 formalize their unique challenges and prizes, all registrants of the hackathon will receive notice. Be sure to check out Hedera21.com regularly for challenge and prize updates.

Judges

Dr. Leemon Baird - Chief Scientist and Co-Founder of Hedera Hashgraph
Spencer Dinwiddie - Founder of Calaxy and Professional Athlete on the Brooklyn Nets
Joshua Sattern - Director: Practice Lead & Evangelist, Blockchain at Wipro
Helen Disney - CEO of Unblocked
Rob Allen - Entrepreneur in Residence at eftpos Payments Australia
Poonacha Machaiah - CEO of The Chopra Foundation
Gabriella Wright - Co-founder of The Never Alone Initiative - The Chopra Foundation

🥳 Sign up for the hackathon

Upcoming Livestream - Using Blockchain to Track (Real) Bugs 🐛

Cooper Kunz — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 19:00:29 +0000

Developers often mistakenly only consider blockchain as an inefficient, append-only data structure or log. In this worldview, they are left to wonder when and why they would leverage blockchain technology - especially when they're already using familiar technologies like Apache Kafka and standard REST APIs.

One of my favorite use cases for blockchains is related to the public access to datasets, particularly when many clients or users want to "speak up" about the dataset's contents.

By logging data in realtime in a low-trust environment like a blockchain, all kinds of users (in this case, researchers, farmers, and consumers) can access a raw data stream with a pseudonymous record of who added that information at what time. This enables compounding network effects - for example, reputation systems (how trustworthy is the data being added) or analytics systems (what is this data telling us), in a permissionless environment where they don't have to ask or authenticate for access to the data.

These are just a few of the reasons why I'm so excited about the Public Pest Network (PPN) - a team of University students and researchers leveraging the Hedera Consensus Service to provide easy ways for entomologists to track and make decisions about pest data. If farmers, researchers, and consumers, can all have better insights into where bugs are migrating to, it can drastically improve outcomes for our food supply and other essential processes like disease outbreaks.

I'll be hosting a livestream with the PPN team next Tuesday, October 27th, where they will dive into what they're building. Join us if you're curious about how blockchain is going to be utilized in the real world!

Sign up for the virtual meetup!

I've also recorded a podcast episode with the PPN team, if you'd like a preview of what we'll cover on the live stream. Give it a listen!

The Blockchain Developer's Toolkit

Cooper Kunz — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 22:50:01 +0000

This is a post inspired by “The Full Stack Developers Roadmap” but focused on topics that are relevant to helping existing full-stack developers get into the blockchain industry.

General Cryptography -

📕 Crypto101
📝 Secure hashing algorithms
🔑 Public key infrastructure (PKI)
🗝 Decentralized public key infrastructure (DPKI)

Smart Contracts -

💸 Solidity Programming Language

Decentralized file storage -

🪐 Interplanetary File System (IPFS)
🔫 Gun.js
🗃 Filecoin

Wallets/authentication -

🎭 Metamask
🔑 Authereum
✨ Fortmatic

Decentralized Identity -

👥 Decentralized Identifiers (DID)
✅ Verifiable Credentials
🕸 The Web of Trust

Testing/tools -

🍬 Truffle
🍫 Ganache
💻 Remix

Conclusion

These are just a few resources for taking full-stack developers into the exciting world of blockchains and distributed ledgers - mostly focusing on the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem - so it's worth emphasizing up front that you don't need to know or learn all of these things in order to be successful.

In fact, newer networks like where I work at Hedera Hashgraph make it extremely easy for Java and JavaScript developers to start using these technologies. Take this example of sending cryptocurrency from one person to another in Node.js.

// Create a connection to Hedera with my account
const myHederaClient = Client.forTestnet(); 
myHederaClient.setOperator(myAccount, myPrivateKey);

// Define how much cryptocurrency to send
const hbarToTransfer = new Hbar(100);

// Create and execute a cryptocurrency transfer
new CryptoTransferTransaction()
        .addSender(myAccount, hbarToTransfer)
        .addRecipient(yourAccount, hbarToTransfer)
        .execute(myHederaClient);

Are there any categories or specific technologies that I’m missing? Let me know in the comments!

ProvenDB - the best of MongoDB & Blockchain

Cooper Kunz — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 21:22:16 +0000

A lot of developers are interested in the value proposition of blockchain technology. Whether it's the fact that it's tamper-resistant, perpetually immutable, or not controlled by a single party, numerous exciting features differentiate these append-only data structures from traditional databases. However, developers often misunderstood how they would use them within existing applications or businesses in place of, or in addition to, something like a database.

One of the most potentially useful ways that developers can use blockchain is as a single point of truth for data provenance - meaning, understanding the origin and content of data. Specifically, through the use of standard cryptographic techniques, like secure hashing algorithms, e.g. SHA-256, and concepts such as Merkle Trees, developers can use blockchain to prove the historical contents of their database, without actually exposing any of that data to the public.

By utilizing these standard cryptography techniques, developers (and even potentially end users) can independently verify what data was in a database at any given point in time. Perhaps an excellent concrete example would be to prove to users that information had been deleted to abide by privacy regulations like GDPR, or for accounting purposes, showcasing who owns what resources in cyberspace - like a bank account balance or game ranking.

These are just a few of the reasons that I'm excited about a new type of database service called ProvenDB. At the core, it's an easy to use version of MongoDB (or available to leverage via APIs) that anchors cryptographic proofs onto public blockchain networks, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or where I work, at Hedera.

With ProvenDB, it's incredibly easy to get started with and see the value proposition blockchain provides. You can use it as you would MongoDB or any other document-based storage, or any other API service, but with all the goodness you would want from a blockchain. It's seriously cool!

Check out this demo from ProvenDB's CTO, Guy Harrison.

If you're curious to try out ProvenDB and get started adding blockchain technology into whatever you're building, you can quickly sign up here.

You can also learn more about ProvenDB and why it leverages the Hedera Hashgraph public network in this podcast episode that I recently recorded with Guy. Let us know if you have any questions!

Fungible vs. non-fungible blockchain tokens

Cooper Kunz — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 23:30:46 +0000

Most of the cryptocurrencies that exist are so-called “ERC-20” tokens - which means that they’re a token, created by a script (called a smart contract), that adheres to a specific standard.

In fact, over $1,000,000,000 USD has been locked into smart contracts on blockchains like Ethereum, while the standards are also supported by other networks like Hedera Hashgraph.

The ERC-20 standard basically defines how many tokens exist, how to exchange tokens from one address to another, and other basic things one may need when trying to create their own tokens.

ERC-20 tokens are what we call fungible. This means that one token is indistinguishable from another. It doesn’t matter if you own the 33rd token that was minted or the 10,000th, they will always be treated the same, and there is no way to differentiate between 1 versus another. This is similar to dollars in your (already digital) bank account.

You can imagine a lot of use cases for fungible tokens, perhaps as a good method of exchange, or rewards points, and blockchains let you securely create them in just a few lines of code.

But what's probably more interesting, is another category of tokens that we call non-fungible. This token is typically associated with the “ERC-721” standard, which powers applications like CryptoKitties.

This means that every token is distinguishable from another, with a provable owner. Where ERC-20 tokens can really only be considered to support a “transfer” function, after which tokens cannot be differentiated between, ERC-721 tokens have an “ownerOf” field, which proves who owns which token.

So, with non-fungible tokens, anyone using the network would know if you’re trading a token that represents one style of cryptokitty, versus a token that represents a more adorable kitty 😻, and which address or public key on the public network owns this asset.

This idea of non-fungibility can be extrapolated to any type of item that displays scarcity, whether they’re baseball cards or a work of art. With these types of digital assets, developers can now build applications and systems that cryptographically prove their uniqueness and digital ownership.

The Major League Baseball Association (MLB) has even started using this to trade digital bobbleheads and collectibles!

MLB Champions™

@mlbchampions

#BabeRuth sold for 4.42 $ETH this morning! 🎉
Legends Never Die. ⚾️
@MLB @MLB_PLAYERS
#MLB #LucidSight #dapp #ETHEREUM #blockchain #eth #baseball
Check out more figures like this 👇
mlbcryptobaseball.com

18:59 PM - 19 Nov 2018

7 9

Vue.js demo app for trading emojis

Cooper Kunz — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 22:51:50 +0000

In an effort to address our global community, and give our users a platform to show off all of the cool things that they're building - I've been hosting a monthly Hedera Virtual Meetup.

On the last livestream, I had the pleasure of being joined by the LaunchBadge team, who specialize in building applications on blockchains and distributed ledgers like Hedera.

We had a lot of fun showcasing Trading Post, and demonstrating how you can easily send “tokenized” emojis back and forth over the Hedera Consensus Service (HCS), without using a smart contract.

Check it out when you get a chance 👇

I'm excited that the LaunchBadge team has recently open-sourced all of the code for Trading Post 🥳 I would encourage you to check it out, try running it locally, and use it as inspiration for one of the many exciting things that can be built on HCS!

launchbadge / trading-post

Demonstration of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and Fungible Tokens using Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) and Kabuto.

Trading Post

Demonstration of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and Fungible Tokens using Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) and Kabuto.

Install dependencies
```
$ yarn
```
Run Envoy

This is needed to proxy the gRPC API of a mirror node for use in a browser. To deploy this in production, one would want to run this on a server somewhere.

Note that you may want to tweak which mirror node. The envoy configuration is setup to use Kabuto currently. See envoy.yaml.
```
$ yarn envoy:up
```
Configure

Copy .env.sample to .env and replace the values with your operator account and key and the topic you wish to use. If you leave topic unset and fill in the operator you can use yarn topic to create a new topic to use.
Run
```
$ yarn serve
```

View on GitHub

If you have any questions, please feel free to file an issue within the GitHub repository, or reach out to the Hedera & LaunchBadge teams via the official Hedera Developer Discord.

Easily send cryptocurrency with JavaScript!

Cooper Kunz — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 17:37:33 +0000

Background

Hedera is a public network built on the lightning-fast hasghraph consensus algorithm. You can build apps and services on Hedera like you would a blockchain; send cryptocurrency, run smart contracts, even store files! Uniquely, Hedera is run by a few of the leading companies in the world, including Google and IBM.

Hedera's use of hashgraph allows it to be a high throughput alternative to blockchain, currently throttled to allow over 10,000 cryptocurrency transfers per second, compared to 10-20 for other networks like Ethereum. In this post, I'll show you just how easy it is to get started building on the Hedera network with Node.js and the Hedera JavaScript SDK!

Step 1: Create an Account

In order to use the Hedera Public Testnet, you'll need an Account. You can easily sign up on portal.hedera.com.

Step 2: Set up node.js environment

In this simple example, we'll create the bare minimum node.js environment we're going to need.

2.1. Create a new directory for our example & move into it.

mkdir hello-hedera-js-sdk && cd hello-hedera-js-sdk

2.2. Initialize a node.js project in this new directory.

npm init

Note: you can just say "yes" to all of the defaults and/or plugin what makes sense. It's an example!

Here's mine for reference.

{
  "name": "hello-hedera-js-sdk",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "A hello world project for the Hedera JavaScript SDK",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "Cooper Kunz",
  "license": "Apache-2.0"
}

2.3. Switch environments, and open your directory.

You can do this in just about any text editor. I personally really like VS Code if you haven't checked it out recently!But you could also do this in vim, or anywhere you prefer.

2.4. Create an index.js file in the 'root' of your directory.

You can just add this one line to the file, so we can make sure you have node configured properly. console.log("hello node.js!");

2.5. Test out your node.js installation.

Switch environments back over to your terminal. You should be able to run node -v to get your current version. Presuming you're all setup with node, running node index.js should output hello node.js!. If you don't get an appropriate response, you may need to install node.

Step 3: Install the Hedera Hashgraph JS SDK

Now that you have your node environment setup, we can get started with the official Hedera JavaScript SDK!

Install it with your favorite package manager.

// install Hedera's JS SDK with NPM
npm install --save @hashgraph/sdk

// Install with Yarn
yarn add @hashgraph/sdk

Step 4: Finally, the fun part

Update your index.js with the following example for sending Hedera's native cryptocurrency, hbar. If you don't yet have a Hedera Testnet Account, w/ Account ID + private key, sign up.

// Allow access to our .env
require("dotenv").config();

// Import the modules we need from the Hedera Hashgraph JS SDK
const { Client, CryptoTransferTransaction } = require("@hashgraph/sdk");

// Create our connection to the Hedera public test network
// The Hedera JS SDK makes this reallyyy easy!
const client = Client.forTestnet()
client.setOperator("YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID", "YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY");

(async function() {

    const transactionId = await new CryptoTransferTransaction()
    .addSender("YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID", 1) // sends 1 "tinybar"
    .addRecipient("0.0.3", 1) // to another testnet account!
    .execute(client); // signed and paid for by our operator

    const receipt = await transactionId.getReceipt(client);
    console.log("Transaction receipt:", receipt);

}());

Save and run your updated index.js file by running node index.js - if successful, you should see your transaction receipt!

Congratulations on finishing the tutorial! You have now:

Created a Hedera Testnet Account
Setup the Hedera JS SDK in a node environment
Sent your first cryptocurrency transfer with hbar!

Have issues or questions? Let me know in the comments 👇

Educational resources for "Web 3.0"

Cooper Kunz — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 16:32:34 +0000

Why collect educational resources?

Blockchains, hashgraph, and the interplanetary file system (IPFS) are all very new technologies emerging into what's being called "Web 3.0".

I find many trying to learn these new systems have a hard time deciding where to start, or finding good resources. Not to mention the difficulties associated with seeing where they fit into the larger ongoing trends in the technology industry. So, I thought it'd be helpful to provide a list of educational resources I've found useful.

What is Web 3.0?

"Web 3.0 is a broad movement and group of associated technologies aiming to make the web and internet more decentralized, verifiable, and secure.

The goals of Web 3.0 include (a) trustless infrastructure; (b) removing intermediaries; and (c) giving users power and ownership over their data, identity, security, and transactions.

The technologies add capabilities and functionality for securely linking data and programs, cryptographic verifiability, transaction processing, P2P connectivity, and trustless interoperability. They also provide decentralized computation and storage, enabling fully autonomous applications (dapps). The movement includes many blockchain and dweb projects, as well as some linked data efforts." - Juan Bennet, Creator of IPFS (2018)

Videos

Decentralize Everything - Vitalik Buterin
Tim Berners-Lee: The next Web of open, linked data - Tim Berners-Lee
What Exactly is Web3? - Juan Benet
What is Hedera Hashgraph? - Dr. Leemon Baird
Why Ethereum is Going to Change the World - Joseph Lubin

Papers / Blog posts

One Small Step for the Web... - Tim Berners Lee
Understanding the IPFS White Paper - Mark Pors
What are zk-SNARKs? - Zcash

Whitepapers

Have any other suggestions? Let me know in the comments 👇

Top 10 suggestions for working remotely

Cooper Kunz — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 16:07:00 +0000

As a programmer, I really enjoy working remotely. In fact, over the past 2 years that I’ve been working at Hedera Hashgraph almost all of my time has been spent on the road or not in an office.

But like most new things, it often doesn’t come naturally and is a true skill that must be learned. Here are my top 10 suggestions for you to get the most of your remote work -

Set clear expectations - This is mostly advice for managers, particularly with those overseeing newly remote employees. But it's also relevant to individual contributors who still need to manage themselves. It’s drastically harder to keep up and understand what your ideal work pace should be when everyone is in different places and timezones. It’s quite demoralizing if you see folks working really hard on one team, then others on another not taking remote work seriously. Find a corporate balance & make expectations clear across the board. Remember, it takes a complete team effort.
Get used to wearing sweatpants - In the office, you need to keep up appearances. At home, it’s much easier to do so, and typically only the shoulders up on video cameras. You deserve to be comfy & should get used to working in your favorite clothes!
Plan meals in advance - It’s far too easy to miss a meal or avoid healthy habits. Planning meals, snacks, breaks, etc., in advance, will surely help establish healthier and more consistent routines.
Always use video on calls - There are a variety of reasons that folks prefer face to face conversations, particularly because conversations are largely non-verbal. By having visual cues, you can see how others are responding, those that might have questions, and other insights you wouldn’t have had.
Overuse emojis, gifs, or other “remote” gap tools - In the office, employees know you. They know your sense of humor, when you’re joking, or when you’re being serious. In-text, this is much more difficult, and a good reason why things like emojis exist. If you don’t use them, consider how to start easing into them. It will surely make your team feel more at ease 😅👍
Have a personal “comms” strategy - There are far too many tools for one person to pay attention to - Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, Twitter, Telegram, Discord, and the list continues. Prioritize 1-2 of these, and communicate your plan for checking this application with the rest of your team. Personally, I try and respond to Slack as quickly as I can, Discord a few times a day, and email within 24 hours.
Use personal task management tools - Just because your manager or team uses a tool, perhaps Jira, to track their work, doesn’t mean that it is a full scope of your individual role. Keep track of emails, small tasks, and the nudges that you may need to make to get your job done. In the office, you might get reminded more frequently, but while remote, you’re on your own. I personally like using Notion, but there are a lot of new tools addressing this space.
Plan team “social gatherings” - I’ve been working at Hedera for almost 2 years, and haven’t met or even spoken directly with some of my teammates. That is an issue that HR & team leads should take initiative on. By coordinating “water cooler” gatherings or “happy hours” your team can better connect. It’s easy to forget all the natural interactions that occur in an office and beneficial to try to enable those digitally, too.
Leverage asynchronous communication - Before you hit send on that Slack message ask yourself, ‘does this need to be communicated right now?’. With a remote team, it’s increasingly more important to consider “How can I most effectively share this information with my team, who might be on the other side of the world?”. The answers are likely a lot different than what you would do in a centralized office. Try out video recordings, and sharing them over email to catch up with your teammates. Or a handoff document for those managing "shifts" across different time zones, rather than late-night calls!
Set a schedule & stick to it - Having a predefined time that is “work” and “home” is key to maintaining a semblance of a work-life balance. Otherwise, you’ll always feel guilty and like there’s more that you can do! Imagine what you’d do if you slept at the office? Remember to take 10-15 minute breaks every hour or so. Maybe every time your laptop dies, that’s a good sign it’s time for a break!

This list was inspired by Tim Berglund’s wonderful working from home FAQ. Give it a watch!

Do you have any suggestions? Please send me your tips 👋