Today Truffle Suite announced plans to support blockchain platforms beyond its original Ethereum user base. The blockchains include Hyperledger Fabric, R3’s Corda and Tezos. Truffle, a ConsenSys company, provides a suite of blockchain developer tools which were initially targeted at the Ethereum community. That included developers of JP Morgan’s Quorum, a private version of Ethereum.
Truffle has been downloaded more than three million times. Earlier this year the company was spun out of ConsenSys with $3 million in funding. It’s now targeting enterprise blockchain developers across the spectrum.
Anecdotally we believe the vast majority of developers, including enterprise blockchain developers, start their blockchain experience by trying out Ethereum. Given Truffle is the most popular Ethereum developer tool suite, many developers on other blockchain platforms will have used Truffle already.
“We are empowering developers to build enterprise-grade solutions on any network of their choosing, creating a path for future cross-network collaboration,” said Truffle founder Tim Coulter.
In the case of Hyperledger, the modular Hyperledger Fabric platform already supports smart contracts written in Ethereum’s Solidity language. Now Fabric developers using Solidity can develop smart contracts using Truffle. Earlier this week it was announced that Truffle has now become a member of Hyperledger.
Making it easier to try out smart contract code
The Truffle Suite consists of three components. These include smart contract developer tools, ‘Drizzle’ front end tools, and a personal Ethereum blockchain called ‘Ganache’.
The latter is important for developers as it enables them to test their smart contract code as they go along easily. Otherwise, they would have to deploy it to a remote test blockchain. Or alternatively, manually setup a blockchain on their laptop. Both options are painful.
In today’s announcement, Truffle has formed a partnership with R3 to provide a similar personal blockchain for R3’s Corda within Ganache. “One of the great strengths of Corda is the diverse ecosystem of developers building applications on top of it,” said R3 Chief Product Officer Todd McDonald. “With Truffle, we are streamlining CorDapp deployment to local testing environments, making it easier for developers to validate their applications.”
It’s unclear whether the rest of the Truffle suite will be available for Corda. We’ve asked the Truffle team about this, the expected timeline and whether Truffle will be available for the open source version of Corda.
The third blockchain platform to be supported is Tezos. Truffle will support the Tezos network, its smart contract languages, automatic test validation, and application deployment.
Two months ago, Truffle announced that Microsoft is its preferred cloud solution provider. Truffle tools are already integrated with Visual Studio Code. And today’s TruffleCon is being held at Microsoft’s Redmond campus.
