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Blockchain development

We design and build blockchain systems — and we begin by testing whether you need one, because most problems presented as blockchain problems are solved better and more cheaply by a database.

A blockchain earns its cost in one situation: several parties who do not fully trust one another need to agree on a shared record, and there is no neutral party all of them will accept as its custodian. Supply chain provenance across independent companies, multi-party settlement, and registries where the operator must not be able to alter history quietly are the real cases. If one organisation owns the data and the others are content for it to do so, a conventional database with an append-only audit log does the same job at a fraction of the cost.

We will tell you which of those you are in the first conversation, at no charge. Being told that the thing you asked for is not the thing you need is worth more than being sold it, and we would rather lose the engagement than build something that adds permanent operational cost for no benefit.

Where a ledger is warranted, the risk moves to the smart contracts, because code deployed to a public chain is difficult or impossible to change and holds value directly. We write contracts to be minimal and auditable, test them against adversarial cases rather than only the intended path, and arrange an independent audit before anything reaches mainnet. We do not treat our own review as sufficient.

What is included

Feasibility assessment

Whether a distributed ledger is warranted at all, and what a conventional system would cost instead. Delivered as a recommendation you can act on either way.

Architecture and network selection

Public, private or permissioned, and which network, chosen against your requirements for finality, cost per transaction, privacy and long-term viability.

Smart contract development

Contracts written to be small and readable, with the upgrade path — or the deliberate absence of one — decided before deployment rather than after.

Independent audit coordination

An external security audit arranged before mainnet deployment, with the findings and our remediation given to you in full.

Integration

The interfaces between the ledger and the systems you already run, which is where most of the actual work turns out to be.

How it is delivered

Feasibility first. We will recommend against a blockchain where one is not warranted, and put that in writing.
Contracts are tested against adversarial cases — reentrancy, arithmetic edges, access control and the behaviour of every external call — not only the path you intend.
Nothing reaches mainnet without an independent audit by a party that is not us, and you read the report before deployment.
Key management and custody arrangements are documented and agreed before anything holds value.

What you receive

Feasibility assessment with a written recommendation
Architecture decision record covering network, consensus and privacy choices
Smart contract source, tests and deployment scripts, in your repository
Independent audit report and documented remediation
Runbook for key management, upgrades and incident response

What is not included

Stated plainly, because unstated exclusions are where disputes begin.

Issuing tokens, coins or anything that may constitute a financial product. Token issuance in Australia engages the Corporations Act and ASIC regulation, and belongs with a financial services lawyer before an engineer
Custody of private keys or of client assets
Financial, investment or tax advice of any kind
Trading systems, market making and exchange operation
Any assurance about the value, liquidity or continued existence of a network or asset

Common questions

How often do you recommend against building on a blockchain?

More often than not. The usual finding is that the real requirement is auditability rather than decentralisation, and an append-only log in a conventional database delivers it without the operational burden. We say so, and we charge for the assessment rather than for a build nobody needed.

Will you issue a token for us?

No. A token may be a financial product under the Corporations Act, and offering one can require a licence and a disclosure document. That is a question for a financial services lawyer before it is a question for us, and we will not take it on.

Who audits the contracts?

An independent firm engaged for the purpose, never us reviewing our own work. You receive the report unedited, including whatever it says about code we wrote.