Achievements

We have implemented all must have, should have and could have requirements. Consult the tables below for details.

Complete requirements

Work packages

Challenges

We’ve run into a fair share of bugs (mostly related to Embark), documentation is often outdated or outright missing, and the ecosystem is far from mature. Additionally, blockchains and decentralized technology in general have a steep learning curve – it took us a while to overcome it. Nonetheless, we succeeded in implementing our roughly usable DApp without any major hiccups.

Incomplete features

We have implemented all of our requirements, but not all features are exposed in the user interface. For example, functionality for encryption, floating records and membership contracts is implemented and works, but can only be using using the Javascript API.

Critical evaluation

Overall, our system is functional and has a novel design. The architecture is clear and extensible. All required features have been implemented, although not always in the most efficient possible way. The code is modular and there is a reasonable separation of concerns. In terms of testing, we could have done more. We have implemented unit tests for the smart contracts, but our API is not automatically tested – as this is a proof of concept, rather than a product meant to be used, we thought this is an acceptable compromise. Project management was overall good.

We wrote a blog post about our experience and shared it on HackerNews and Reddit's /r/Ethereum section. You can find it here: https://medium.com/@dranov/lessons-learned-building-a-decentralized-app-d723ab59bfab

Client feedback

The first feedback is about myself. I haven’t been as involved in the project as I would have liked and I apologise for that.

Overall, I have a quite positive impression about BitKariero. I think that technically they have done a good job. The demo that they have created works well and illustrates well the use of blockchain as a certification technology, in this case the certification of references for personal CV’s. Blockchain is not a “visual” technology but their software seemed to work well. From a business angle, its not inconceivable that the concept could work, although they have as yet not looked at business models (I know that was not within scope here).

After seeing the demo, my main recommendations were not about technology, but rather about how to improve the presentation. They need to make sure that they have a clear workflow defined before the presentation to make sure all runs smoothly (for example, to have foreseen normal latencies in the system).