Ethereum for Humans: Steve Randy Waldman on sbt-ethereum

We're very happy to have Steve Randy Waldman [1] talk to us on his Ethereum development tools for making transactions, registering ENS domains, and more. Steve is an economics blogger [2] and is an active member of the meetup. His abstract follows:

Currently, the Ethereum community is divided into two castes. There are developers, who understand how to interact with the blockchain via complex tools and libraries, and then there are the humans, who must wait for “dApps” with mobile or web interfaces to be written and deployed for them.

It shouldn’t be like that.

sbt-ethereum [3] is a text-based tool that makes it easy for technically adept nonprogrammers to interact very directly with the Ethereum blockchain. As long as you do not run screaming if you see a command line, you'll quickly learn to manage keys and wallets, interact directly with with smart contracts, transfer ether and ERC-20 tokens, and manage ENS names. You can use sbt-ethereum to deploy your own copies of smart contracts that people have already written (e.g. multisig wallets). And if you are a developer, or if you wish to learn how to program in Solidity, you can compile, deploy, and manage your own smart contracts.

We’ll review basic Ethereum concepts like smart contracts, ABIs, transactions, and gas, and then walk through the process of getting started with sbt-ethereum. If you bring your own laptop, we’ll get you up and running with your own active sbt-ethereum environment.

Ethereum should be for everyone. It should certainly be for you.

To prepare, you might try to make sure that git [4] and a Java virtual machine [5] are installed on your laptop, so you’ll be ready to hit the ground running. Optionally, for a slightly more streamlined experience, consider getting an Etherscan API key as well. (You’ll need to sign up for a (free) account. [6]) WiFi will be useful for the event; use the "HD-Events" network with password "4tnip8".

Come at 5:30 for food and to socialize. The Decentralization Foundation [7] sponsors the venue and the pizza.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Randy_Waldman
[2] https://www.interfluidity.com/
[3] https://www.sbt-ethereum.io/
[4] https://git-scm.com/downloads
[5] https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133151.html
[6] https://etherscan.io/login
[7] https://d24n.org/