Integrated Development Environments and Web3 – Andrej Bencic, Tenderly

This is Textron TV. Hey guys. Thanks the throw we're here with Andre bentich.

And he's the CEO for tenderly and we're talking about web 3 the applications how they get built. And what are the challenges that go with that Andre welcome the show. Thank you.

Nice. Thank you for having me. What ultimately makes building web 3 applications different than how we went about building the previous generation of applications?

What do people need to know going in? Yeah, so I mean it's as far as people build applications. It's going to follow some basic basic patterns.

So as far as that concerned that is concerned. It's more of the same. What is interesting about web 3 is sort of what are the underlying technological Primitives that you have at your disposal to build more powerful and more well connected applications in this new environment.

So Obviously when it comes to any new technology what's challenging and what's difficult is actually having enough support and having enough tooling to work with it as efficiently as possible. As you know, I'm sure everyone can agree working in the early days of the web was a lot harder than it is. Let's say in today's day and age.

So I feel the similar pattern follows the web free space. We just sort of unlocked a new type of technological capability. Now, it's on us to sort of build the tools and the support for actually allowing developers to properly harness and utilize this type of Technology.

So besides the IDE that I might know so well, what are those tools? What are they look like are they essentially IDs of a different type or they a whole different class of development tools? Yeah, so I feel that's that's an interesting.

That's an interesting starting point to sort of look at the needs of the space. So there is definitely sort of the standard the standard type of tooling that you would be familiar with today's such as the IDE and debugger these types of these types of general purpose development tools. So that's definitely one part that needs to be sort of ported over and supported in this new type of execution environment.

But what it's what's special and what's unique about about the space and the blockchain as looking at it through the perspective of this world computer is that we can actually build some new types of development tools and new types of supporting services that wouldn't necessarily make sense to have even existed in the in the traditional sort of cloud computing. World, so to give you to give you a simple example of that if you know blockchain as sort of this permanent Ledger and a permanent lack record of all activity, all of the transactions that happen on top of it what we can build now knowing that fact is we can essentially build a completely a complete and exhaustive monitoring environment for any any smart contract whether we created it today or let's say three years three years ago and Hank have all of that data instantly visible to you without actually having to go through the motions of setting up a tool and then observing the data. So that's that's a thing the core the core interesting Insight that we can see when it comes to when it comes to building tooling from the blockchain space you you can take what is known and what is well understood and you can apply it in a different and more unique form factor so that it serves a much more powerful and much more immediate purpose.

How much as a developer will I need to know about how blockchain works or will that all be abstracted away from me? Because one of the challenges that I always see with any type of Distributing application is it's hard to build. So, how are we going to make that simple?

Yeah, so I would say we definitely do want to make it not as necessary to understand the inner workings of of blockchain for you to get started with it. And that's a big part of what we do at tenderly. So we try to we try to take away all of the complexities that come with understanding what is a fundamentally and eventually consistent distributed system that is blockchain and really give you just the basics and just the essentials so that you can sort of learn one Topic at a time and really get started with just solidity as sort of the programming language of the ethereum blockchain without having to know how internally, you know, individual nodes work how the consensus works all of those topics that while valuable to know shouldn't be a requirement for really, you know, dipping your dipping your toes into the web 3 world.

Is it your sense that we're building new classes of applications or will these replace some of our existing applications? Because they're we force fitted at something into more of a centralized approach and it's not working as well as it might. mean I would and be a hypothesizing at this point obviously sort of the the success case for blockchain for me would be to be somewhere in the middle.

So not obviously some new application new types of applications and new better. Alternatives will be more or less all on on the blockchain. But the way that we see it and the way that the angle of blockchain it feels most interesting to us is that if you treated just as another fundamental component of the online software stack, that's where you can see the the biggest impact.

So the way I see it, I will see it as a hybrid a hybrid in terms of how we wanted to succeed in that if blockchain allows you to have ownership of your data more closely to you sort of alleviating some of those centralized components if we can have blockchain as that communication level layer between software. Those are all very great across the board benefits that the entire ecosystem internet ecosystem can can benefit that doesn't fundamentally needs to be concerned with the question of you know, whether we will replace a certain vertical acts completely with web3 or not. So the way I see it, I would look at it more of as a building block and then seeing how best we can apply that building block in the world that we know today.

What's the level of interoperability because one of the things about the web today is that we build apps and they can well nearly run everywhere at least with some tweaking here. And there is that going to be the same thing. We see in blockchain or do I pick up platform and kind of optimize for that?

I think it's not going to be homogeneous if that's sort of how I understand your question. One of the one of the cool things that we have been seeing in the past a couple of years I guess is the Discovery or the the creation of different of different blockchains with different types of properties all suited for a specific. It's a category of use cases much like we have SQL as like a very well understood term with a lot of different flavors behind the scenes that each yeah, right support a category of of solutions.

That's how I would look at the blockchain landscape in terms of different networks that currently exist and that are yet to be created. So I think the the cool thing there is we will see a different. Yeah good number a good number of differently.

Behaving blockchains that will all be connected in some way just to facilitate that information flow between them because at the end of the day if if blockchain is all about connecting these, you know, these individuals smart contracts whatever as soon as we as or at least if we have that connection communication property and that's security of your own assets and all your own identity. Those are the two important parts. Everything else can be a lot more heterogeneous and can change depending on the use case that that you want to use blockchain with All right, and one of the settler points is there are public blockchains and private blockchains and those things will wind up getting Federated over time depending on how people decide to build an app for who in but it seems like we're building rather this rather extended network of relationships.

So can we hide all that in the tools or Yep, for sure. I believe it's the responsibility of the let's say that Creator software creators to really think about how we abstracted the waveform the end user and we have seen quite a bit of good advancements when it comes to making it easier for end users to not really care about blockchain to start with and one of the one of the things that we recently released within our web free Gateway product offering is actually that variability to reduce the knowledge or the experience somebody needs when interacting with with the depth or web 3 application and really enter this simulation mode off just playing around with it without having any knowledge of the of the or concepts of wallet or a private key or I guess all of the fun little terms that people run into when they first get into web 3, so I feel that's the Definitely something that we can do better and that's something that we as a company want to work with, you know builders in the space on how do we best bridge that gap between what is standards Pleasant fast user experience? And what is currently the limitations of the web3 ecosystem?

So yeah, I would say I would say that's that's a core part of making blockchain actually successful. You know, nobody nobody is going to to use or not entire world is going to use the product where you need to, you know, finish a course to be to be literate in a specific topic. Do you think we're going to need some sort of equivalent of best devops practices for building these applications?

We have them for everything else that we do but it seems like there is perhaps a way to create some sort of framework that guys people down the right path. Yeah, of course. And I mean I feel I I would definitely lean more towards the devops analogy then and sort of a framework because yeah exactly as we as as we have spent more and more time in the space.

We have definitely noticed these subtle differences and uniqueness unique. solutions that need to be applied within this web 3 web 3 ecosystem much like devops arose as sort of an answer to massive explosion in sort of infrastructure that you that you are managing and operating and working with so we have finally enough, you know internally as we build the toolings and the services around web3 and around blockchain. We have started calling this category of of tools and ways, we make the development process easier sort of chain Ops, which is not exactly the best of the best of or the most complete analogy but it does get the point of cross that yeah.

It's it's a piece of technology as is anything else and you do need to adjust your way of working with it in a specific type of I don't know philosophies or framers who have however you want to call it, but fundamentally it sort of not it's not a cataclysmic event that you know, you need to wipe away everything, you know, you just need to sort of apply it in a unique way, which I feel devops has been a big part of has been following that philosophy, you know in a big part. Yeah, chain arms may need some work because before long people will say that they're working on the Chain Gang and that's probably not going to be the right. deal developers new going in that many of them learn, you know the hard way per se if there was one thing you could say to somebody before they started out and say hey be sure you think about this before you start writing these apps what might that be.

Up. Hey, I would say it's it doesn't have to be as hard as you make it up to be to start because and you know looking at it from the perspective of an engineering myself, you know, when you first get into blockchain you and and if the technology is that what pulls you in your immediate, your immediate impulse is to try and ingest everything all at once and really understand the underlying workings of the blockchain with the performance issues that potentials that blockchain brings with itself with the programming language of solidity. You know, you you really try to immerse yourself into the entire experience.

What I would say is better more saying approach is to really pick up, you know Topic at a time and focus on it and really lean on the Tooling in the supporting infrastructure that you know, today's a lot better than it was, you know, four or five years ago. And really, you know embrace the concept at a time that I would say is the the sort of Remedy until we until we get the entire story of people onboarding onto web3 a lot more into it even a lot simpler. So what ultimately will decide whether people go with one blockchain platform versus another what what are the decision factors there?

The complicated topic, I would say not to trivialize it by any means but I would say it's, you know, depending on the the type of project that you have depending on the type of sort of execution requirements that you might have of the project that is going to heavily influence you in which direction you go when it comes to when it comes to picking out the blockchain. So, you know, if security is a concern you're you're gonna be biased towards one set of one set of blockchains if a speed is another then, you know, there's waste for you to still be connected to let's say determ ecosystem, but you know jump off to to the next layer or the layer to of blockchains and really have that type of characteristic there. So there's no easy answer to say, you know, if you want access to X, it's unfortunately we're not at the the escrow level of you know routing people to correct correct dish type solution.

So it's to start I think the Bet is, you know, try and work within the ethereum ecosystem that's going to give you enough flexibility for you to get different types of properties from these different blockchains. Well at the same time working with the same type of language and the same technology on that developer level. So that might be the only rule of thumb that currently looks appealing to us.

Other than that it's you know, it's you'll learn as you go and I mean, hopefully you don't build Production Solutions as your first touch point with the technology. So those things become a lot more evident as you get more and more experience within the space. All right.

Well folks it turns out that there is such a thing as a permanent record and I'm sure there's all kinds of grade school teachers that are having a good laugh at us right now about all of that but Andre thanks for being on the show. Thank you. That's a pleasure and thanks to you guys back to you in the studio.