PHP, Laravel, And Blockchain

Access all articles in sprocket icon.
Published July 4, 2017 by Bill Keck.

PHP, Laravel, And Blockchain

Anyone following my blog knows from my previous post that I recently published Bitcoin For Beginners. That’s not a programming book, but it does go deep into the cryptocurrency ecosystem, which beginners will find helpful.

After years of scoffing at Bitcoin, I finally did some deep research on it and found that I actually liked the concept and the architecture. And let’s face it, the crazy returns that people were seeing in their investments drew me to it as well.

I watched some videos on Bitcoin and blockchain and saw some examples of code in Python. So I jumped into my codeschool account and did the courses on Python, which I enjoyed.

But then, as I started Django, the web framework for Python, I started to really appreciate Laravel again, it’s such a wonderful framework to work with.

So I started looking around for PHP code that can interact with the Bitcoin blockchain, and found a couple of resources, including a blockchain api that integrates with Blockchain.info.

I didn’t find much for use with Laravel, but I did find one package, Maurocasas/blockchain.

Anyway, my research into blockchain has convinced me that there is a huge wave of adoption coming and that it’s an area ripe for development. Ladies and gentlemen, a lot of money is going to be made with blockchain…

As a PHP developer, I’m always worried that the language can fall out of fashion and into disuse. Those fears have mostly been put aside with the Laravel framework, since it makes working with PHP such a pleasure.

But I think we are falling behind in the blockchain space and I would like to see more tools developed. I’m still doing research on this, so perhaps the work has been done, and I just don’t know it yet. I’ll keep looking.

So far, I’ve only found fragments. For example, here is a stack exchange question on a merkle tree.

If you are unfamiliar with a merkle tree, it’s a cool structure of recursive hashes that are incorporated into blockchains like the ones Bitcoin uses. Also here’s a link to the Bitcoin whitepaper, which will give you some background on the overall architecture of bitcoin. It’s 9 pages that changed the world.

If you want more gentle explanations on the tech behind Bitcoin and blockchain, hit up youtube, there are a lot of great videos that explain it better than I can.

Hopefully, we’ll soon see new blockchain tools developed in PHP, and especially in Laravel.  Who knows, maybe we’ll see an official package like Socialite or Echo, but for creating a blockchain instead.  Wouldn’t that be cool?

Thanks again to everyone who has supported my work, especially with the positive reviews on Laravel 5.4 For Beginners.