An overview of what blockchain is, how the Ethereum blockchain works, and how you can deploy and interact with smart contracts on Ethereum, all from within the JVM, thanks to web3j.

1. Java and the
Blockchain
Introducing web3j
@conors10

2. Decentralised

3. Immutable data structure

4. Blockchain Technologies
2008
2013
2014
2015+

6. Ethereum
• The world computer
• Turing-complete virtual machine
• Public blockchain (mainnet & testnet)

7. Ether
• The fuel of the Ethereum blockchain
• Pay miners to process transactions
• Market capitalisation ~$1bn USD (Bitcoin ~$10bn)
• Associated with an address + wallet file
0x19e03255f667bdfd50a32722df860b1eeaf4d635

8. Obtaining Ether
• Buy it
• Find someone
• Kraken
• BTC Markets
• Mine it
• mainnet => requires dedicated GPUs
• testnet => quick using your CPU
• Refer to Geth/Parity mining docs

9. Smart Contracts
• Computerised contract
• Code + data that lives on the blockchain at an
address
• Transactions call functions => state transition

10. Transactions
• Transfer Ether
• Deploy a smart contract
• Call a smart contract

11. Transactions

12. Integration with Ethereum

13. web3j
• Complete Ethereum JSON-RPC implementation
• Ethereum wallet support
• Smart contract wrappers
• Command line tools
• Android compatible (v1.0.5+)

14. web3j artefacts
• Maven’s Nexus & Bintray's JFrog repositories
• Java 8: org.web3j:core
• Android: org.web3j:core-android
• web3j releases page:
• Command line tools: web3j-<version>.zip

15. web3j transactions

16. Getting started with
Ethereum
Free cloud clients @ https://infura.io/
Run a local client (to generate Ether):
$ geth --rpcapi personal,db,eth,net,web3
--rpc --testnet
$ parity --chain testnet

17. Create a wallet
$ ./web3j-1.0.6/bin/web3j wallet create
_ _____ _ _
| | |____ (_) (_)
__ _____| |__ / /_ _ ___
/ / / _ '_ | | | / _
V V / __/ |_) |.___/ / | _ | || (_) |
_/_/ ___|_.__/ ____/| |(_)|_| ___/
_/ |
|__/
Please enter a wallet file password:
Please re-enter the password:
Please enter a destination directory location [/Users/Conor/
Library/Ethereum/testnet/keystore]: ~/testnet-keystore
Wallet file UTC--2016-11-10T22-52-35.722000000Z--
a929d0fe936c719c4e4d1194ae64e415c7e9e8fe.json successfully
created in: /Users/Conor/testnet-keystore

18. Wallet file{
"address":"a929d0fe936c719c4e4d1194ae64e415c7e9e8fe",
"id":"c2fbffdd-f588-43a8-9b0c-facb6fd84dfe",
"version":3,
"crypto":{
"cipher":"aes-128-ctr",
"ciphertext":"27be0c93939fc8262977c4454a6b7c261c931dfd8c030b2d3e60ef76f99bfdc6",
"cipherparams":{
"iv":"5aa4fdc64eef6bd82621c6036a323c41"
},
"kdf":"scrypt",
"kdfparams":{
"dklen":32,
"n":262144,
"p":1,
"r":8,
"salt":"6ebc76f30ee21c9a05f907a1ad1df7cca06dd594cf6c537c5e6c79fa88c9b9d1"
},
"mac":"178eace46da9acbf259e94141fbcb7d3d43041e2ec546cd4fe24958e55a49446"
}
}

19. View transactions

20. Using web3j
• Create client
Web3j web3 = Web3j.build(new HttpService());
// defaults to http://localhost:8545/
• Call method
web3.<method name>([param1, …, paramN).
[send()|sendAsync()]

21. Display client version
Web3j web3 = Web3j.build(new HttpService());
Web3ClientVersion clientVersion =
web3.web3ClientVersion()
.sendAsync().get();
System.out.println(“Client version: “ +
clientVersion.getWeb3ClientVersion());
Client version: Geth/v1.4.18-stable-c72f5459/
darwin/go1.7.3

22. Sending Ether
Web3j web3 = Web3j.build(new HttpService());
Credentials credentials = WalletUtils.loadCredentials(
"password", "/path/to/walletfile");
TransactionReceipt transactionReceipt =
Transfer.sendFundsAsync(
web3,
credentials, “0x<to address>",
BigDecimal.valueOf(0.2),
Convert.Unit.ETHER).get();
System.out.println(“Funds transfer completed…” + …);
Funds transfer completed, transaction hash:
0x16e41aa9d97d1c3374a4cb9599febdb24d4d5648b607c99e01a8
e79e3eab2c34, block number: 1840479

24. Block #1840479

25. Ethereum Smart Contracts
• Usually written in Solidity
• Statically typed high level language
• Compiled to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) byte
code
• Create Java wrappers with web3j

26. Greeter.sol
contract mortal {
address owner;
function mortal() { owner = msg.sender; }
function kill() { if (msg.sender == owner) suicide(owner); }
}
contract greeter is mortal {
string greeting;
// constructor
function greeter(string _greeting) public {
greeting = _greeting;
}
// getter
function greet() constant returns (string) {
return greeting;
}
}

27. Smart Contract Wrappers
• Compile
$ solc Greeter.sol --bin --abi --optimize
-o build/
• Generate wrappers
$ ./web3j-1.0.6/bin/web3j solidity
generate build/greeter.bin build/
greeter.abi -p
org.web3j.example.generated -o src/main/
java/

28. Greeter.java
public final class Greeter extends Contract {
private static final String BINARY = “6060604052604....";
...
public Future<Utf8String> greet() {
Function function = new Function<Utf8String>("greet",
Arrays.<Type>asList(),
Arrays.<TypeReference<Utf8String>>asList(new
TypeReference<Utf8String>() {}));
return executeCallSingleValueReturnAsync(function);
}
public static Future<Greeter> deploy(Web3j web3j, Credentials
credentials, BigInteger gasPrice, BigInteger gasLimit, BigInteger
initialValue, Utf8String _greeting) {
String encodedConstructor =
FunctionEncoder.encodeConstructor(Arrays.<Type>asList(_greeting));
return deployAsync(Greeter.class, web3j, credentials,
gasPrice, gasLimit, BINARY, encodedConstructor, initialValue);
}
...

29. Hello Blockchain World!
Web3j web3 = Web3j.build(new HttpService());
Credentials credentials =
WalletUtils.loadCredentials(
"my password",
"/path/to/walletfile");
Greeter contract = Greeter.deploy(
web3, credentials, BigInteger.ZERO,
new Utf8String("Hello blockchain world!"))
.get();
Utf8String greeting = contract.greet().get();
System.out.println(greeting.getTypeAsString());
Hello blockchain world!

30. Smarter Contracts

31. Smarter Contracts
• Asset tokenisation
• Hold Ether
• EIP-20 smart contract token standard
• See web3j examples

32. web3j + Ethereum
• web3j simplifies working with Ethereum
• Plenty of documentation
• Smart contract integration tests

33. Further Information
• Project home http://web3j.io
• Mining http://docs.web3j.io/
transactions.html#obtaining-ether
• Useful resources http://docs.web3j.io/links.html
• Chat https://gitter.im/web3j/web3j
• Blog http://conorsvensson.com/