Platforms and protocols

Index:

Bitcoin
Bitcoin Lightning Network
Bitmessage
BitShares
Corda
Counterparty
Ethereum
Eris Industries
Factom
IOTA
IPFS
Lisk
MaidSafe
Namecoin
NXT
Omni
Ripple
Sia
Storj

Bitcoin

How to get started:

Bitcoin Developer Examples - Find examples of how to build programs using Bitcoin.

Where to ask questions:

Bitcoin StackExchange
BitcoinTalk Development & Technical Discussion Forum
IRC Channel #bitcoin-dev

Quick reference:

JSON RPC API Calls
Script Opcodes
Bitcoin Developer Reference

Resources:

Bitcoin Developer Documentation
Bitcoin Wiki
Bitcoin SubReddit
Hashmal - Open source IDE for Bitcoin transaction scripts (experimental software).

Bitcoin Lightning Network

A trustless second-layer scalability solution for Bitcoin payments. It works by routing them though a network of micropayment channels, which makes Bitcoin transactions instant, irreversible and more private, with near zero fees.

Lightning network is not an application or a library, it's a protocol specification, like HTTP. The most popular implementation of the protocol is the lightning network daemon (LND) written in Go, but there are other implementations as well. It is being integrated into various Bitcoin wallets.

How to get started:

If you want to set up your own lightning node, here is a step by step tutorial on how to do it on the Bitcoin testnet with btcd, lnd, and the testnet faucet. Here are some other tutorials, including the use of lnd's RPC API in your applications.

Where to ask questions:

Lightning community slack channel

Quick reference:

CLI command / RPC API reference

Resources:

Awesome Lightning Network - links to applications, libraries, specifications, tutorials and other resources
LND Github repository
Hompeage - contains video presentations, the whitepaper and other documents
Lightning Labs Twitter channel
Lightning Community blog
Lightning Labs blog

Online tools:

Bitcoin testnet faucet lightning network
Testnet lightning network channel explorer

Bitmessage

A decentralized, encrypted, peer-to-peer, trustless communications protocol.

How to get started:

Clone the PyBitmessage repository, the Compiling instructions will tell you how to compile it on your operating system. To use Bitmessage as a platform for your project, you also need to enable the API by adding a these lines to your keys.dat file.

BitShares

A peer to peer polymorphic digital asset exchange.

How to get started:

Getting started with BitShares

Where to ask questions:

BitShares forum
Chat - IRC channels

Quick reference:

BitShares API

Resources:

BitShares Wiki
BitShares repository on GitHub
Whitepaper
BitShares SubReddit
Facebook page
Twitter channel
BitShares Newsletter
BitShares TV - BitShares news and information video channel
AboutBTS - latest news on BitShares

Corda

An open-source blockchain project, designed for business, that allows you to build interoperable blockchain networks that transact in strict privacy.

How to get started:

Either download the DemoBench or follow the Quickstart Guide to quickly spin up a network of nodes.

Then familiarise yourself with the Key Concepts and write your own CorDapp by following our Hello, World! tutorial.

Where to ask questions:

cordaledger Slack team
Stack Overflow

Quick reference:

Corda Key Concepts
Corda API

Resources:

Official documentation
Sample applications
GitHub organisation
Project homepage

Counterparty

A platform for free and open financial tools on the Bitcoin network.

How to get started:

First, set up a local counterparty node. Luckily, there is an automated installer that simplifies the process. Follow this guide to set up a federated node. For experimenting and development, choose Testnet, not Mainnet during the installation. Testnet has two advantages for this purpose. 1 - you don't have to download and parse the huge Bitcoin blockchain. 2 - you can get testnet bitcoins for free, and then convert them to XCP, so you can try all kinds of functions without paying with real money.

Once your federated node has downloaded and parsed the blockchain, you can use counterparty, but you need some of the XCP currency to actually do something. Also, transactions cost a small amount of BTC for miner fees. To get testnet BTC for free, visit one of the Testnet faucets, like this one. Enter a testnet address form your counterparty wallet, and it will send you some Testnet BTC. Next, go to your wallet, and use the "Burn for XCP" function on part of your BTC. They will be converted to the XCP currency.

Where to ask questions:

Official Counterparty Forums

Quick reference:

Counterparty API
Counterblock API

Resources:

Official documentation
Counterparty Support Central
GitHub repositories
Counterparty homepage
Counterparty SubReddit
Transifex translation project

Ethereum

A decentralized Web 3.0 publishing platform featuring stateful user-created digital contracts and a Turing-complete contract programming language.

How to get started:

There is now a user friendly tutorial on the official Ethereum website. It will guide you through the basics, from installing the software to run a node, to building smart contracts in Solidity and deploying them to the blockchain.

For more information, see the Ethereum Homestead Documentation

Where to ask questions:

Official Forum
StackExchange
Q&A on StackOverflow
IRC and Skype channels
Gitter chat rooms

Quick reference:

JavaScript API
JSON RPC

Resources:

Main site
Official Blog
Homestead Documentation - up to date documentation
Solidity Language Documentation - docs for solidity, the most popular Ethereum programming language
Frontier Guide - docs from the previous ethereum phase
Ethereum Wiki
Developer-focused site
State of the DApps - a list of known Ethereum DApps under development

Social media:

Ethereum SubReddit
YouTube channel
Facebook page
Google Plus
Meetups

Frameworks and libraries:

Truffle - A development framework for Ethereum (source code)
Embark - another framework (source code)
Dapple - solidity development tool set
Spore - A package manager for DApps based on IPFS

Smart contract development tools:

Remix - web-based solidity IDE, with integrated JS VM for easy debugging
TestRPC - a mock RPC that simulates the blockchain for local development and testing
MetaMask - Chrome extension that lets you connect Remix to real ethereum testnet, or a local TestRPC instance. It can also be used for debugging DAPP UIs built with Web3.
Blockchain explorer for the Ropsten testnet on Etherscan
Ropsten testnet faucet by MetaMask

Other online tools:

Network Status - a rich, real-time visualization of Ethereum network statistics
EtherScan - blockchain explorer
EtherChain - another blockchain expolerer
Browser-solidity - Solidity realtime compiler and runtime (source code)
EtherParty - an online platform simplifying DApp development for non-technical people with no programming skills. It will contain an easy to use drag-and-drop visual editor and a set of pre-built contracts to pick and modify (coming soon, currently in Beta).

Eris Industries

A company that released a set of ethereum-compatible open source tools that allow people to launch custom blockchains with more direct control over mining and privileges.

How to get started:

See Eris quick-start guide for a quick introduction. The Eris tools can be easily installed through Docker using docker pull eris/erisdb and docker pull eris/decerver.

You can then launch your own blockchain. The eris:db tutorial page and this blog post called How to Roll Your Own (Thelonious) Chain explain how this is done. There is also this decerver tutorial that shows how to run DApps on the new blockchain.

The virtual machine is fully compatible with Ethereum, so you can write smart contracts in Solidity or one of the other supported programming languages. See the Ethereum section for smart contract programming tutorials.

Where to ask questions:

Official support on Freshdesk
Official support email address
IRC Channel #erisindustries on Freenode

Quick reference:

Atë API Reference - Atë is the scripting component of decerver.

Resources:

Homepage
ErisIndustries SubReddit
GitHub repositories
YouTube channel
Facebook page
Twitter channel
Meetups

Factom

A General Purpose Data Layer for the Blockchain.

How to get started:

The Binaries Install Guide shows how to easily install Factom on Windows, Mac and Linux. Alternatively, you can install it using go get. There are also other guides, covering topics like using Factoids and Entry credits, the GUI wallet, and examples of commands you can execute with factom-cli.

Entry credits are sold at the store. It costs only 2 USD to get 400 entry credits. For 10 credits, you can create your own chain. Another way is to buy Factoids on an exchange, and convert them to entry credits.

Where to ask questions:

There is no official forum yet (at the time I am writing this). Factom SubReddit is where people ask their questions (and they are getting answered). Check the Frequently Asked Questions section first. You can also use the contact form to contact the Factom team directly.

Quick reference:

Download Factom API reference (PDF)

Resources:

Homepage
Offical Blog
GitHub repositories
Download the whitepaper (PDF)
Blockchain Explorer
Factom status - network status and announcements. Check this page if you get errors.

Social media:

Factom SubReddit
Twitter channel
Facebook page
Google Plus
YouTube channel
Vimeo

IOTA

A distributed ledger designed for the Internet of Things, using Tangle instead of Blockchain. There are no blocks, new transactions reference and validate the previous ones. This offers scalable microtransactions with zero fees and no need for miners.

How to get started:

There is an easy to use GUI wallet with precompiled binaries for Windows, MAC OS X and Linux. It will guide you through the process of creating a seed/password, etc.

If you want to use IOTA for an actual IoT device, you should get the IOTA Reference Implementation (IRI) instead of the GUI wallet. Either use a precompiled IRI release, or compile the source code yourself. Next step is to get a "neighbor", another node that will pair with you. The easiest way is to go to the #nodesharing channel IOTA's Slack and ask there. You should also read the documentation to see how IOTA works and what you can do with it.

You can get tokens form /r/IOTAFaucet, a faucet implemented as a Reddit bot.

Learn.IOTA has a section for tutorials for various programming languages and use cases, but it is very new and as of September 2017, there is not much content there, the categories are mostly empty, but since anyone form the community can submit new tutorials, it may change soon.

Where to ask questions:

Official Forum
Slack

Quick reference:

API Reference

Resources:

Reddit - active discussion, lots of links
YouTube - almost empty
Documentation
Whitepaper
GitHub
Blog

Online tools:

IOTA Converters - converts normal units to trits/trytes, and dollars to iota according to the exchange rate.
IOTA Tools - includes address checksum calculator and transaction decoder.
iota.tips - tangle explorer
iotasear.ch - tangle explorer
thetangle.org - tangle explorer

IPFS

A P2P distributed file system.

How to get started:

Installation guide
Getting started

Where to ask questions:

Google Groups
IRC Channel #ipfs

Quick reference:

Command reference
API reference

Resources:

Homepage
Main GitHub repository - links to other repositories
Awesome IPFS - useful resources for using IPFS and building things on top of it
Official blog
Whitepaper download
YouTube channel
Twitter channel

Lisk

How to get started:

There is a wallet called Lisk Nano, available precompiled for Windows, MAC OS X and Linux. This is useful if you only intend to use Lisk as a currency.

If you want to build smart contacts on top of it, you need Lisk Core. It can be compiled from source, there is a precompiled binary for Linux. A docker image is available but will only run on distributions that support Docker Community Edition (CE). Installation instructions for mainnet and testnet using all 3 methods are here.

When you have Lisk Core installed, learn how to use its API. API calls can be issued using the command line interface tool Lisky.

To write Lisk applications using JavaScript, get Lisk-JS, a JavaScript library that can run on the back end using Node.js, or in the browser as a Browserify module, or a standalone script (the link also offers a CDN hosted version).

Where to ask questions:

Forum
Community chat
Developer chat

Quick reference:

API Reference - command line
API Reference - JavaScript

Resources:

Website
Blog
GitHub
Twitter
Facebook

Online tools:

Block explorer
Lisk-JS experiment - on line demonstration of using Lisk testnet from JavaScript.

MaidSafe

A platform for building decentralized applications.

How to get started:

Follow the build instructions for your opearting system - Linux, OS X or Windows. Then take a look at the Introduction for app builders to familiarize yourself with the compenents of the MaidSafe Library stack.

Where to ask questions:

SAFE Network forum

Quick reference:

Resources:

Developer Wiki
Project Homepage
Official Blog
Google Groups
MaidSafe SubReddit

Namecoin

Blockchain-based decentralized DNS and personal identity registration.

How to get started:

Install and configure Namecoin

Where to ask questions:

Official Namecoin Forum

Quick reference:

ID namespace specification - personal identity registration
Domain name system specification - the .bit domain

Resources:

Namecoin Wiki
Frequently asked questions
Namecoin Design
Old wiki
Namecoin SubReddit

NXT

An open source cryptocurrency and payment network.

How to get started:

Follow this guide to set up everything you'll need. Then look at the developer information which shows how to build your own applications on the NXT platform.

Where to ask questions:

NXT Forum
IRC Channel

Quick reference:

High-level API reference

Resources:

Official website
NXT SubReddit

Omni/Mastercoin

A protocol for Decentralized Trading on Bitcoin.

How to get started:

Where to ask questions:

Quick reference:

Omniwallet API
Master Core API documentation

Resources:

Project homepage
Official Blog
GitHub
Omni SubReddit
Facebook page
Twitter channel

Ripple

A payment system, currency exchange and remittance network by Ripple Labs.

How to get started:

Where to ask questions:

Ripple Forum

Quick reference:

API reference

Resources:

Official website
Knowledge center
GitHub
Ripple SubReddit

Sia

Decentralized cloud storage.

How to get started:

Install the Sia Daemon, which is available precompiled for Windows, MAC OS X and Linux. You can also compile if from source. Follow the API quickstart guide to learn how to access the API. A complete specification of API calls is in the API documentation.

To get some tokens to play with - there is currently no free faucet (as of September 2017), but you can exchange as small amount of any other cryptocurrency for SIA using Shapeshift.io. Other option are listed here.