JavaScript Developer Case Study : Ethereum Visualisation Tools

As part of work carried out for the creative design agency Studio Simpatico I was tasked as a JavaScript developer to construct a couple of front-end vis tools for a leading blockchain infrastructure platform, Blockdaemon.

This was a really interesting opportunity, as it gave me the chance to dig deeper into the world of blockchain and explore how this fascinating technology works in more detail.

It also let me flex my JavaScript developer muscles and apply my many years of experience working with this powerful front-end language.

The client required two calculators:

1. Ethereum Validator Queue Tracker

   Showing the lengths of the activation and exit queues for two Ethereum networks (time and number of validators)

2. Ethereum Withdrawal Simulator

   A realtime calculator providing detailed information about the withdrawal queue for Ethereum staking rewards.

Both of these tools needed to communicate with external API services.

An Interesting JavaScript Developer Challenge

The Blockdaemon site itself is built with Webflow, so I initially assessed what the optimal solution would be to integrate a front-end tool with this no-code website builder.

Webflow offers the ability for a JavaScript developer to add embed elements into page layouts.

This allows for enhanced, embeddable web tools such as these calculators to be easily inserted into the templates.

Additionally, we required a secondary external server to host the scripts that would perform the API lookup operations.

Since Webflow is a front-end web editor with no server access possible, JavaScript developers like myself have to get creative!

These API access scripts were written in Python and hosted on a remote client-owned cloud server. The front-facing JavaScript code then references these remote scripts, along with security measures to ensure no unauthorised cross-domain access is possible.

The functionality for both calculators was embedded within the Webflow template and published once all checks and validation reviews were completed.

Overall, this was a great project to be involved in as a JavaScript developer and I picked up a lot of fascinating insights into how the Ethereum chain functions and the various technical challenges involved in working with it