August 9, 2018 4 Reasons Why ConsenSys Diligence Chooses Topcoder

We’re in a new age of decentralized innovation and technology, and we have largely blockchain to thank for that — starting perhaps with Ethereum, a decentralized platform that allows for the deployment of smart contracts. And today, ConsenSys Diligence, a branch of ConsenSys, is helping people do more (and more securely) in the Ethereum ecosystem.

As experts in blockchain, the team at Diligence provides businesses with security services, best practices, and tools for Ethereum applications. They use Topcoder to accelerate their go-to-market strategy with crowdsourced developers and our Contractor as a Service offering. We spoke with Bernhard Mueller, Security Engineer at ConsenSys, about the benefits of getting development work done with crowdsourcing and the added technical expertise Topcoder provides.

4 advantages to crowdsourcing

When compared to leveraging internal resources or external models other than crowdsourcing (e.g., individual freelancers or an agency), how does Topcoder stack up? Bernhard says that there are four main benefits to using the Topcoder Community to get work done for Diligence:

• • Resources are available immediately, and on an as-needed basis.

• • There’s great flexibility in both skill and timing. Community members on Topcoder can handle any type of task and/or programming language.

• • Additional capacity. That translates to an accelerated go-to-market strategy and an overall shorter time to market.

• The crowdsourcing model is particularly great for rapid prototyping of ideas.

What type of work does Topcoder do for Diligence?

Currently, Diligence gets quite a bit of development work done through Topcoder. More specifically, our community has been especially successful with the following types of work and technologies:

• • Building new features.

• • Fixing bugs, writing tests, and “refactoring challenges” — the latter of which are bundled bug fixes and issues — all of which have helped to increase the quality of the code over time.

• • Building the Mythril API and web app.

• • Continuous repository and release management. Sergey, a Topcoder copilot, set up continuous integration and automatic deployment and coordinates things, as Bernhard says, “on the big-picture level.” And Nikhil, another copilot manages the GitHub repository.

• A variety of technologies and platforms have been used, ranging from Python to Node.js, CircleCI, JavaScript (for web), Heroku, AWS, and beyond.

Crowdsourcing for capacity, cost, and faster outcomes

“The additional expertise in software testing, continuous integration, and development processes was especially useful, as it helped us to be more efficient,” Bernhard says. “I’m very happy — particularly with Sergey’s level of commitment and the level of flexibility that Topcoder provides. So far, there’s been nothing we couldn’t make happen.”

While Diligence depends on Topcoder to get much of their development work done, businesses looking to deploy a decentralized app or do a crypto token launch can rely on Diligence. They provide comprehensive assessments of code and general readiness, in addition to rigorous security audits and thorough education around security. As we’ve seen with our own expert Blockchain Community, Ethereum is the future — and businesses would do well to get ahead in terms of innovation and security.