How to create a “Hello World” smart contract using Solidity?

Maciej Zieliński

29 Sep 2022
How to create a “Hello World” smart contract using Solidity?

To become a smart contract specialist and blockchain technology developer, you must take the first step. This tutorial shows how to build a "Hello World" contract using the Solidity programming language. It is worth noting that it is not necessary to have specialized knowledge to perform this activity. A person who is not a professional programmer following our steps will create his smart contract using the Solidity language. 

What are smart contracts?

Smart contract is a computer program published and executed on blockchain technology. Because it runs on the blockchain, it can be run without a server or central site. Once we create a smart contract, it is impossible to update it or make changes. This is due to the immutability of the blockchain. There is an option that the smart contract can be programmed with functions to change the data. This means that information can be saved in one block but deleted in another. Such behavior does not preclude tracing the history of changes.

What is the Solidity programming language?

Solidity is the first language that creates smart contracts. One of the most important things to remember when learning Solidity is that it is a language designed specifically for the Ethereum Virtual Machine, or EVM. Solidity is similar to JavaScript. It is worth pointing out at this point that Solidity will be easier to learn if you can program in Java. True, there are differences in syntax, but looking at the commands and concepts - the two languages are similar. Ethereum's native language has built-in commands. This is made for Solidity to access the blockchain, for example, a timestamp or a block address. Such features help to program Solidity's smart contracts easily. Moreover, a contract-oriented language will definitely differ from object-oriented ones, e.g

  • Java,
  • C++, 

however, the emphasis here is mainly on contracts and functions. Solidity is statically typed. It also supports libraries and other user-defined functions, which tend to be complex. The language compiles all instructions to bytecode, which makes it possible to read and interpret information on the network of Ethereum.

Smart contracts in Solidity

The goal of Ethereum is to solve and execute human-level transactions, much like the ambition of a full Turing machine. This requires, on the one hand, the adoption of human-level logic with programmer-friendly simplicity, and on the other, the implementation of Solidity's smart contracts in a complete system called a Turing Virtual Machine, allowing for unprecedented complexity and determinism. The computational power of this "virtual" machine is built into the node implementation, a remarkable achievement of decentralization and a product of the innovation of the blockchain movement. Solidity's smart contracts programmatically set the rules for business transactions and do so in a simplified machine-readable language. This unprecedented decentralized concept is automated and can operate 24/7 worldwide without human supervision or trusted parties. Why is it worth knowing the Solidity language? Because it is more advanced and effective in creating Smart Contracts, it tries something that no language has ever attempted before - namely, it uses a combination of human and machine reasoning. In addition, Solidity makes it easier to express ourselves in code and to turn our human-readable code into business functionality. 

Remix - an implementation for Solidity 

A remix is a web-based tool used to write, compile, deploy, and debug Solidity code. The remix includes a JavaScript VM environment that acts as a blockchain simulator running in the browser. Below is a practical tutorial on how smart contracts are created using Solidity. You are welcome! 

How to create a smart contract? 

For now, we will use the aforementioned remix to compile and deploy our code. So we fire up the remix and create a new file. I'll call it Hello World, but you can call it whatever you want. Let's start by defining the version of Solidity we will use. I will use version 0.8.0 upwards in this tutorial, so at the top of the file, write : pragma solidity ^0.8.0;

Solidity

After defining the version, we can start writing our first smart contract. 

We define a contract called HelloWorld Contract; it is where our smart contract's functionality will be located.

In the middle of our smart contract, we create a function, say Hello World; it will be public, meaning that anyone can call it pure, meaning that the process will not read or modify any data from the blockchain and will return a string. 

Solidity

We want the function to return the string "Hello World!" so we need to type inside the process: return "Hello World."

To deply our smart contract to the local blockchain, we need to compile it first. 

We click on the solidity compiler section and click on the compile HelloWorld.sol button.

Once we have compiled our file, we can deploy our smart contract.

We click on the Deploy & Run Transactions section.

Solidity
Solidity

When we select our smart contract, we click deploy and are done! Our smart contract has been deployed! The Deployed Contracts section should show you your smart contract with the ability to call the sayHello World function, which will return "Hello World."

Advantages of Solidity programming

Leaving aside the basic functionality of Solidity programming, several additional elements give it an advantage over other Ethereum languages. It can be pointed out that the advantages are as follows:

  • The programming accepts complex member variables and complex data.
  • The program has an application binary interface to ensure adequate security - If the compiler discovers a mismatched data type for any variable, the ABI generates an error. 
  • The program compares to natural language construction, which is used to convert user-oriented specifications into a language that is easy for machines to understand.

Summary 

Solidity is a tool that facilitates the creation of smart contracts. It makes blockchain programming simple, transparent, and helpful. In addition, the programming accepts complex variable data, has a binary interface, and is close to natural language. 

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Aethir Tokenomics – Case Study

Kajetan Olas

22 Nov 2024
Aethir Tokenomics – Case Study

Authors of the contents are not affiliated to the reviewed project in any way and none of the information presented should be taken as financial advice.

In this article we analyze tokenomics of Aethir - a project providing on-demand cloud compute resources for the AI, Gaming, and virtualized compute sectors.
Aethir aims to aggregate enterprise-grade GPUs from multiple providers into a DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network). Its competitive edge comes from utlizing the GPUs for very specific use-cases, such as low-latency rendering for online games.
Due to decentralized nature of its infrastructure Aethir can meet the demands of online-gaming in any region. This is especially important for some gamer-abundant regions in Asia with underdeveloped cloud infrastructure that causes high latency ("lags").
We will analyze Aethir's tokenomics, give our opinion on what was done well, and provide specific recommendations on how to improve it.

Evaluation Summary

Aethir Tokenomics Structure

The total supply of ATH tokens is capped at 42 billion ATH. This fixed cap provides a predictable supply environment, and the complete emissions schedule is listed here. As of November 2024 there are approximately 5.2 Billion ATH in circulation. In a year from now (November 2025), the circulating supply will almost triple, and will amount to approximately 15 Billion ATH. By November 2028, today's circulating supply will be diluted by around 86%.

From an investor standpoint the rational decision would be to stake their tokens and hope for rewards that will balance the inflation. Currently the estimated APR for 3-year staking is 195% and for 4-year staking APR is 261%. The rewards are paid out weekly. Furthermore, stakers can expect to get additional rewards from partnered AI projects.

Staking Incentives

Rewards are calculated based on the staking duration and staked amount. These factors are equally important and they linearly influence weekly rewards. This means that someone who stakes 100 ATH for 2 weeks will have the same weekly rewards as someone who stakes 200 ATH for 1 week. This mechanism greatly emphasizes long-term holding. That's because holding a token makes sense only if you go for long-term staking. E.g. a whale staking $200k with 1 week lockup. will have the same weekly rewards as person staking $1k with 4 year lockup. Furthermore the ATH staking rewards are fixed and divided among stakers. Therefore Increase of user base is likely to come with decrease in rewards.
We believe the main weak-point of Aethirs staking is the lack of equivalency between rewards paid out to the users and value generated for the protocol as a result of staking.

Token Distribution

The token distribution of $ATH is well designed and comes with long vesting time-frames. 18-month cliff and 36-moths subsequent linear vesting is applied to team's allocation. This is higher than industry standard and is a sign of long-term commitment.

  • Checkers and Compute Providers: 50%
  • Ecosystem: 15%
  • Team: 12.5%
  • Investors: 11.5%
  • Airdrop: 6%
  • Advisors: 5%

Aethir's airdrop is divided into 3 phases to ensure that only loyal users get rewarded. This mechanism is very-well thought and we rate it highly. It fosters high community engagement within the first months of the project and sets the ground for potentially giving more-control to the DAO.

Governance and Community-Led Development

Aethir’s governance model promotes community-led decision-making in a very practical way. Instead of rushing with creation of a DAO for PR and marketing purposes Aethir is trying to make it the right way. They support projects building on their infrastructure and regularly share updates with their community in the most professional manner.

We believe Aethir would benefit from implementing reputation boosted voting. An example of such system is described here. The core assumption is to abandon the simplistic: 1 token = 1 vote and go towards: Votes = tokens * reputation_based_multiplication_factor.

In the attached example, reputation_based_multiplication_factor rises exponentially with the number of standard deviations above norm, with regard to user's rating. For compute compute providers at Aethir, user's rating could be replaced by provider's uptime.

Perspectives for the future

While it's important to analyze aspects such as supply-side tokenomics, or governance, we must keep in mind that 95% of project's success depends on demand-side. In this regard the outlook for Aethir may be very bright. The project declares $36M annual reccuring revenue. Revenue like this is very rare in the web3 space. Many projects are not able to generate any revenue after succesfull ICO event, due to lack fo product-market-fit.

If you're looking to create a robust tokenomics model and go through institutional-grade testing please reach out to contact@nextrope.com. Our team is ready to help you with the token engineering process and ensure your project’s resilience in the long term.

Nextrope Partners with Hacken to Enhance Blockchain Security

Miłosz

21 Nov 2024
Nextrope Partners with Hacken to Enhance Blockchain Security

Nextrope announces a strategic partnership with Hacken, a renowned blockchain security auditor. It marks a significant step in delivering reliable decentralized solutions. After several successful collaborations resulting in flawless smart contract audits, the alliance solidifies the synergy between Nextrope's innovative blockchain development and Hacken's top-tier security auditing services. Together, we aim to set new benchmarks, ensuring that security is an integral part of blockchain technology.

Strengthening Blockchain Security

The partnership aims to fortify the security protocols within blockchain ecosystems. By integrating Hacken's comprehensive security audits with Nextrope's cutting-edge blockchain solutions, we are poised to offer unparalleled security features in our projects.

"Blockchain security should never be an afterthought"

"Our partnership with Hacken underscores our dedication to embedding security at the core of our blockchain solutions. Together, we're building a safer future for the industry."

said Mateusz Mach, CEO of Nextrope

About Nextrope

Nextrope is a forward-thinking blockchain development house specializing in creating innovative solutions for businesses worldwide. With a team of experienced developers and blockchain experts, Nextrope delivers high-quality, scalable, and secure blockchain applications tailored to meet the unique needs of each client.

About Hacken

Hacken is a leading blockchain security auditor known for its rigorous smart contract audits and security assessments. With a mission to make the industry safer, Hacken provides complex security services that help companies identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in their applications.

Looking Ahead

As a joint mission, both Nextrope and Hacken are committed to continuous innovation. We look forward to the exciting opportunities this partnership will bring and are eager to implement a more secure blockchain environment for all.

For more information, please contact:

Nextrope

Hacken

Join us on our journey to deliver top-notch blockchain tech and a safer future for the industry!