Athens to Babylon — Testing Framework and Test Driven Development

Dr Steve Berryman — Tez Baker

Executive Summary

Enterprise application software solutions within the financial services industry are required to meet strict standards and regulations. Tezos has many features (on-chain governance, formal verifiable smart contracts, proof-of-stake) which would greatly benefit the largest financial services companies however the industry needs to be satisfied that the Tezos development cycle meets or exceeds its own high standards.

A mature testing framework with test driven development is required for Tezos to gain acceptance within the financial services industry and this includes the following key architecture:

• Regression Testing Pack;
• Continuous Regression Testing; and
• Testnets

Having the resources to develop enterprise quality testing comparable to the financial services industry requires a significant investment but this is required for Tezos to gain widespread enterprise adoption. Investment in an independent testing team is an essential component of the testing strategy, with a team size around 10% of the core development teams. The purpose of this paper is to identify current gaps, suggest possible solutions and how these could be funded in the long-term. Many of the ideas would initially need to be bootstrapped by the Tezos Foundation but the ultimate goal would be to fund it organically from within the Tezos system.

Background

Our background is in the financial services industry. We began our crypto journey in Ethereum as its smart contract platform interested us greatly due to the immediate benefits we could see in this technology. We had initially taken a keen interest in Bitcoin but is was the release of the Ethereum mainchain which convinced us to step outside the traditional financial services network and work in crypto on a full time basis and initially we were involved in helping financial clients navigate their way through blockchain and smart contract technology. Like many, our first big learning curve was to help secure the Ethereum network by filling a warehouse with GPU mining rigs.