What is our primary use case?
My company offers a new kind of blockchain that's based on Ethereum. We use the Ethereum code as the starting point and extend it by adding features unique to RedBelly Blockchain LP.
Ethereum is a public blockchain that doesn't require deployment. We create smart contracts and upload them to the Ethereum network. We also have projects that want a private Ethereum deployed for them. For one of our clients, we deployed multiple nodes on a Kubernetes cluster as pods.
We used a manager called Kaleido for another client. Kaleido provides us with many services to create private blockchains. It reduces much of the manual effort. We only need to input the configuration, including the number of nodes, accounts, balances, etc., and we can quickly spin up a private blockchain network.
About 40 to 50 people at my company use Ethereum. It's primarily engineers and quality testers.
What is most valuable?
Ethereum is an open-source solution, so anybody can use the specifications and implementations available.
What needs improvement?
In 2.0, Ethereum adopted a proof-of-stake algorithm. The speed of transaction processing is still slow, and the gas fees are quite high. Decentralized finance couldn't take off because of the high transaction fees. For example, if you want to transfer $1 worth of value, you might end up paying more than that for the transaction fee.
For how long have I used the solution?
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate Ethereum eight out of 10 for stability. It's stable for our purposes, but it does break down. We put in some fail-safe measures to ensure that every node restarts in a stable state after it goes down.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Ethereum wasn't scalable in version 1.0 when it used a proof-of-work consensus algorithm. It still isn't scalable in 2.0 Scalability is one of Ethereum's primary limitations because the number of transactions per node is restricted. That is one problem we're trying to solve with our blockchain product.
How are customer service and support?
There is no techical support, so we get answers from the community. You can check the Reddit forums or find code on GitHub. We can typically resolve our own problems because we have one or two blockchain experts working as contractors. They provide us with guidance when we have an issue.
How was the initial setup?
I rate Ethereum seven out of 10 for ease of deployment. It is relatively straightforward if you have experience, and the documentation is extensive. It isn't too easy or difficult. It took us around a day to set it up because we had done it before.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Ethereum is free because there is no central authority to which you must make a payment. You only pay a transaction fee. It's a distributed network, so a node processes each transaction, and you don't know who owns it. The nodes are randomly selected. If it successfully mines your transaction, the transaction fee is awarded to that node.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Ethereum nine out of 10. I recommend Ethereum because the technology is mature and it has robust community support. A lot of help is available if you run into any issues.
