Thread by @TradingProtocol

1/ THE STATE OF #PYTHON IN #BLOCKCHAIN ECOSYSTEM 2023 REPORT

Read the full report here or stay for the Twitter thread

tradingstrategy.ai/blog/the-state…

👇👇👇

2/ We have put together a report that gives an overview the usage and opportunities of one of the world most used and loved programming languages in the blockchain developer ecosystem.

- Projects
- Opportunities for devs
- New developments in 2023

3/ The 2022 cryptocurrency market was very turbulent, with the fiascos of FTX, Terra and 3AC. This somewhat reflects to the underlying technology development, but as we will find out not as bad one would expect.

4/ HOW ARE PYTHON AND BLOCKCHAIN DEVELOPMENT ALIGNED?

What are the common touch point and ideal use cases for Python tools and devs in a blockchain space.

👇👇👇

5/ #Python was the most in-demand programming language of 2022.

6/ Here are some use cases where Python is the number one programming language of choice:

- Data research

- Quantitative finance

- Trading automation

- Integration and testing

- Software automation and DevOps

7/ Because of the heavily financial nature of blockchains, and Python's unique status in finance and data research, there are multiple software development verticals where Python and blockchain development overlap.

8/ Not all blockchain core teams do not support Python based toolchains.

This is what a typical "off the shelf" chain ecosystem looks like:

9/ However even if the blockchain core team does not offer direct Python tooling, there are a lot of periphery projects where Python dominates

10/ Outside traditional software development verticals, we also have smart contracts, where we can find Python in part of tooling or smart contracts themselves.

11/ Furthermore, we can identify that Python plays a crucial role in security and smart contract auditing.

Currently, most well-known static linter and analysis tools are written in in Python.

12/ THE OVERALL STATE OF THE BLOCKCHAIN DEVELOPMENT ECOSYSTEM

They told is was ded... no?

👇👇👇

13/ A good overview of the state of the blockchain development ecosystem can be found in the excellent Developer Report 2022 by @ElectricCapital

github.com/electric-capit…

14/ Year over year developer count is up.

15/ Development is accelerating. Half of the new developers entered the industry in 2022.

16/ PYCHAIN 2022

👇👇👇

17/ In 2022, Trading Strategy organised the first Python-focused blockchain developer conference, PyChain. The virtual event had over 1,200 signups and 500 concurrent stream viewers.

18/ PyChain 2022 included talks from numerous blockchains and protocols such as Ethereum Foundation, NEAR, Cosmos, Curve, but also included talks from the traditional quantitative finance perspective, having covered topics such as risk analysis and strategy backtesting.

19/ You can find the 30+ talk recordings on YouTube channel here:

youtube.com/@tradingstrate…

In 2 months, videos have gained 5000+ views.

It is very good beginner friendly developer material.

20/ There is going to be PyChain 2023 - the next edition.

Follow @PyChainConf and @TradingProtocol for the upcoming event and we will keep you posted as soon as we have dates for Q4/2023.

21/ PYTHON VERTICALS IN BLOCKCHAIN DEVELOPMENT

Based on our research, and our conference presentations, we have segmented Python and blockchain development ecosystem to following areas.

👇👇👇

22/ - Core blockchain and node software

- Smart contract languages

- Integration libraries

- Smart contract development frameworks

- Trading

- Data research, including extract transform load (ETL) solutions

- Security and auditing

23/ Here we present some of the highlights of our report.

24/ CORE BLOCKCHAIN AND NODE SOFTWARE

Despite being somewhat of a controversial candidate for the task, Python language is used in core blockchain node development as well.

👇👇👇

25/ @chia_project blockchain core software is written in Python. Chia claims to be the most decentralised blockchain if counted by an individual node count.

26/ Chia offers unique proof of spacetime (PoSt) consensus model. Chia offers smart contracts via the ChiaLip programming language and has been used in World Bank pilots.

27/ View Chia introduction here:

28/ @LamdenTau is the performant Python-based blockchain platform that makes using and creating the next generation of dApps easy for everyone.

29/ View Lamden introduction here:

lamden.io

30/ SMART CONTRACT PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

Python and Python-inspired languages are being used as the smart contract programming language for several blockchains.

👇👇👇

31/ Smart contract development is dominated by Solidity and Rust. The more experimental Python-based approaches are interesting, as they offer easier code readability, and writability and can offer better security compile-time guarantees, thus creating a safer ecosystem.

32/ @vyperlang is the offspring of the first-ever smart contract programming language, Serpent, made in 2014 by Vitalik Buterin.

33/ Vyper is used in production for many DeFi applications and has proven its robustness in transacting billions of dollars of value.

Here is a good intro video:

34/ SmartPy, is both a smart contract programming language and development platform for @tezos

35/ It uses Python as domain-specific language (DSL). Tezos is a proof-0f-stake blockchain and one of the first blockchains offering on-chain governance.

View SmartPy documentation here smartpy.io

36/ @solana offers Seahorse, another Python domain-specific language for smart contract programming.

seahorse-lang.org

37/ @Algorand's PyTeal is yet another domain-specific language using Python. PyTeal allows you to write contracts for Algorand's Transaction Execution Approval Language (TEAL).

View PyTeal docs here github.com/algorand/pyteal

38/ INTEGRATION LIBRARIES

Integration libraries and software toolkit libraries are used to make blockchains communicate with other software. This includes web frontends and server-based applications like SaaS offerings.

👇👇👇

39/ Web3.py is the original #Web3 toolkit for #Python. https://t.co/g5y2btrLQW was created for the Ethereum mainnet and is maintained by @ethereum Foundation. However, it is used with other EVM-based L1 and L2 blockchains as well.

40/ View the presentation video to Web3.py here

41/ Pons is another #Python library for #Ethereum and EVM-based blockchains. Pons uses asynchronous programming model and is currently in an experimental stage.

View Pons presentation here:

42/ Sign in with Ethereum (SIWE) for Python offers a passwordless sign-in experience for your website using an Ethereum wallet. SIWE offers built-in security and integration with popular Python web frameworks like @djangoproject and Flask by @PalletsTeam

43/ CosmPy is a Python library for interacting with Cosmos SDK-based blockchain networks. CosmPy can be used for transferring tokens, staking, performing atomic swaps, deploying and interacting with a smart contract. CosmPy is maintained by @Fetch_ai

44/ View presentation to CosmPy here

45/ Paloma Software Development Kit (SDK) in Python is a simple library toolkit for building software that can interact with the Paloma blockchain.

View docs here github.com/palomachain/pa…

46/ xrpl-py is a #Python library for interacting with XRP Ledger (@XRPLF).

Watch introduction to XRPL programming here

47/ @iota Wallet Library is Rust-based with Python bindings. It can be used to interact with IOTA blockchains, including Shimmer.

48/ View a tutorial how to do @shimmernet development free. NFTs are gas free.

49/ NEAR-API-Py is a Python library for the development of applications that use the @NEARProtocol. NEAR is a sharded high-performance smart contract-enabled blockchain with over 10 million accounts.

50/ @vegaprotocol is an order book DEX-based blockchain that has been geared towards professional traders from the start. For this reason, it has Vega API Python client as the first class client for the protocol.

51/ View Vega Python examples here github.com/vegaprotocol/a…

52/ @Aptos_Network provides a lightly maintained official Python SDK. Currently, this is still in development and is unsuitable for directly interfacing with Aptos.

View README here pypi.org/project/aptos-…

53/ Python Substrate Interface specialises in interfacing with a @Polkadot Substrate nodes; querying storage, composing extrinsics, encoding/decoding and providing additional convenience methods to deal with the features and metadata of the Substrate runtime.

54/ View Substrate documentation here github.com/polkascan/py-s…

55/ SMART CONTRACT DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS

Smart contract development frameworks provide additional tooling for writing smart contracts. This includes: compilation of complex projects, writing unit tests, deployment scripting.

👇👇👇

56/ @ApeFramework is a smart contract development framework for Python developers, data scientists, and security professionals. ApeWorX supports Ethereum, EVM-based blockchains and StarkNet.

57/ View ApeWorX introduction video here

58/ @MultiversX SDK for Python (previously known as Elrond) offers compiling, testing and deployment of smart contracts for the MultiverseX blockchain.

View presentation here

59/ Anchor is a framework for @solana's Sealevel runtime providing several convenient developer tools for writing smart contracts.

View docs her anchor-lang.com

60/ SnekMate is a repository for state-of-the-art, highly opinionated, hyper-optimised, and secure Vyper smart contract building blocks. By @pcaversaccio

See contracts here github.com/pcaversaccio/s…

61/ TRADING

#Python is the number one programming language for trading, in both cryptocurrency and traditional finance. Here we explore Python based cryptocurrency trading solutions.

👇👇👇

62/ Trading Strategy is an algorithmic trading framework for decentralised finance (#DeFi) markets. It allows you to develop, backtest and execute trading strategies using high-level Python programming and quantitative finance tools instead of Solidity.

63/ View Trading Strategy presentation here

64/ @_hummingbot is a high-frequency trading framework for cryptocurrencies. Hummingbot specialises in market-making on centralised exchanges.

View Hummingbot presentation here

65/ @ccxt_official is an integration library for various centralised exchanges. CCXT stands for CryptoCurrency Exchange Trading Library. It offers a standard API to make orders for #Python and other languages.

Read CCXT docs here github.com/ccxt/ccxt

66/ ETL

ETL stands for Extract - transform - load (ETL). It refers to solutions to ingest data streams from one system and then transform this data to a different format, usually more suitable for queries and business analytics.

👇👇👇

67/ Blockchain-ETL facilitates data science on blockchain data. Blockchain ETL is available in Google BigQuery for some EVM chains.

github.com/blockchain-etl

68/ Web3-Ethereum-Defi is a low-level Python library for extracting DeFi trading data form various blockchains. The project also offers trade execution primitives besides high performance data ingests.

View repo github.com/tradingstrateg…

69/ SECURITY AND AUDITING

Because of its easiness to read and scriptability, Python is the foundation of many blockchain and smart contract security tools.

👇👇👇

70/ Mythril is a security analysis tool for EVM bytecode. Supports smart contracts built for Ethereum, Hedera, Quorum, Vechain, Roostock, Tron and other EVM-compatible blockchains. Mythril is maintained by @ConsenSys

View docs github.com/ConsenSys/myth…

71/ Slither is a Solidity static analysis framework written in Python 3. It runs a suite of vulnerability detectors, prints visual information about contract details, and provides an API to easily write custom analyses.

View docs github.com/crytic/slither

72/ Woke is a Python-based development and testing framework for Solidity. It offers vulnerability detectors, a Language Server Protocol (LSP) for Solidity and a fuzzer. Woke is maintained by @AckeeBlockchain

github.com/Ackee-Blockcha…

73/ Halmos is a symbolic bounded model checker for Ethereum smart contracts bytecode that can be used for bug detection as well as formal verification of the contract.

74/ Halmos executes the given contract bytecode with symbolic function arguments and symbolic storage states, enabling it to explore all possible behaviours. Halmos is maintained by @a16z

github.com/a16z/halmos

75/ Last but not the least we have @rotkiapp

rotki is an open-source portfolio tracker, accounting and analytics tool that protects your privacy. rotki's Python source code is available to inspect.

76/ It is a local-first application with a strong focus on user privacy. Your financial data is kept encrypted in your system and not shared with third parties, making it suitable for funds and corporations.

rotki.com

77/ WHAT TO EXPECT FOR 2023?

The winds of changes are blowing.

👇👇👇

78/ Blockchain technology has started to diversify from its Bitcoin and Ethereum architecture duopoly. While EVM is still the dominating solution, its architectural shortcomings are becoming more obvious as later-generation technology enters the market.

79/ Although any change towards more scalable, secure, and user-friendly technologies is slower than we wish, it is still happening.

80/ The technology areas that are changing are

- Specialisation: app chains are coming
- Scalability
- Industry maturity: bear market flushes out tourists

81/ We expect integration and the need to access data with variation and growth of the industry that will generate more demand for Python libraries and tooling. Software developers should find ample opportunities in this space as long as they know where to look.

82/ THANK YOU for reading all the way here.

Please follow us @TradingProtocol, subscribe to our newsletter here tradingstrategy.ai/newsletter

We are also in Discord and happy to answer any of your questions.

Ps. If you missed the link to the report and do not want to scroll up again, it is here:

tradingstrategy.ai/blog/the-state…