Drupal and the Ethereum Blockchain

#DrupalEthereum @digitaldonkey09

New York

About me

• 20 years ​​web development  
• 10 years with Drupal
• 1.5 years in Ethereum 
• Developer at ConsenSys 

Overview

• What is a Blockchain
• Ethereum Blockchain
• Blockchain Applications
• Drupal Ethereum Module & Roadmap

• Banks trying to improve their interbank settlement
• Governments exploring paperless e-government and registries
• Healthcare - sharing evidence, verified prescriptions
• Law - investigating the legal side of "smart contracts"
• Energy - incentivizing energy efficiency and trading
• IoT - Internet of things, sensors, appliances
• NGOs - transparency in international aid & outcomes

Who cares about Blockchain?

Blockchain Applications

Examples from ConsenSys projects

Authentick / VIANT

Asset tracking
https://supplychain.consensys.net

Peer-to-peer Music markets 

Decentralizing Energy infrastructure

Blockchain

Imagine the Blockchain as a
"Decentralized & Distributed Consensus Database"

"0xd62e7da1d30af2abed70f0ec677fefe0a0db5774  owns 5 Bitcoin"

agree

agree

agree

agree

Blockchain's promises

"Sharing Economy" of
Uber, Airbnb

Centralized User Data,
Facebook, Google

Reduce costs of
middlemen

Self-sovereign
user identity

Internet of
Information

Don Tapscott: "How the Blockchain is changing money and business"

Internet of
Trust and Value

Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform featuring smart contract functionality

Ethereum Blockchain

Decentralized
P2P consensus

No central authority
 

Any state change requires a cryptographically signed Transaction

Global ledger with immutable records

Programmable money:
Smart Contracts

Ethereum

• Ether is the currency in Ethereum
• Programs cost ether to run - anti-spam and incentivizes miners in the network
• Data changes to a blockchain create immutable audit trails
• Blockchain data is public! (on public chains, if not encrypted)
• Smart Contracts: Code deployed to the blockchain that can control funds
• Private-/public key cryptography like in PGP 

Ethereum - Global or Private

Private Consortium
Blockchain
(permissions, privacy)
 

Global Public
Blockchain

Smart Contracts in Ethereum

• can run automatically when certain conditions are met
• Addressable, can handle money / escrow, Turing-complete
• Crowd founding as a Smart Contract:

Contract crowdFound
 if (account_balance) > $10,000
   move account_balance to founded_account
 else
   move donation_account to original_donor

(pseudocode)

Smart contracts are programs with a state stored on the blockchain

Data on Blockchain is public.

"Writing to Blockchain" requires:

• the private key of the from address to sign the transaction
• some fee for computation/data storage in Ether (public chain)

time

• Public and private keys like in PGP
• Signing requires user interaction (if you don't host the keys        )
• Ethereum Address is derived from the private key
• Signing Transactions (writing anything to the blockchain is a transaction, also sending money, deploying code)
• Signing text (Signatures)
• Encryption (Similar to PGP)

Transaction Signers

• Mist browser   (Full Blockchain / Ethereum foundation)
• Metamask   (Browser extension)
• MetaMascara (Metamask in Browser)
• uPort   (Identity provider)
• MyEthereumWallet   (Online or Offline Browser)
• Jaxx (Mobile App & Browser extension)
• Hardware based signing (Ledger wallet)

Ethereum wallets, Identity providers ... 

Literally the key for the user 

Ethereum building blocks

Drupal Ethereum Module

• Founded and abandoned in 2014
• New approach started 2016
• Ethereum PHP library abstraction
• POC for signup with registry
• Currently:
  Focus on infrastructure modules
• Later:
  maybe out-of-the-box like
  http://bit.ly/drupalvoting

Drupal Ethereum Module

a few potential use cases

Current web

Ideal decentralization

How to connect Drupal and Ethereum?

Semi-decentralization

Client side signing using Transaction-signers

Server just pulls data

(no private key on Server)

Architecture challenges

Mapping Ethereum to Drupal

Infrastructure modules

Servers (Ethereum-nodes)

List Servers, gather information (Server Entity)


Accounts

Ethereum Addresses
Map Accounts to Drupal Accounts
➡ Identity for known user group

          Transactions

               Read (own contracts/known ABI)

               ​Log TX based on Contract interaction

               Process TX data in Drupal
 

          Smart Contracts

               Manage deploy as Drupal Admin

               Provide ABI to process data in Drupal

               Let Users interact (→ TX data)

Two signup modules?

Ethereum Signup

• Challenge/response authentication
• No Blockchain interaction - no fee
  Just Elliptic Curve cryptography

Ethereum user connector

• Smart contract with registry
• May be changed to a paywall
• Transaction require little payment in Ether

State and Roadmap

Current: POC

• Identity: "User connector" connects Ethereum accounts and user profiles via registry contract
  See Video https://youtu.be/Y5Sa7QtpXSE 
• Identity: "Signup" (currently in github only)
  https://github.com/digitaldonkey/docker-drupal-ethereum

Finalizing infrastructure modules (MVP)

• PHP library support of complex data types
• Testing framework for PHP library for various Ethereum clients
• Make Transaction-signers pluggable & add more 
• Contract management & deployment from Drupal backend            
• Server Entities

Drupal Ethereum module

Reach out to end-users

• Availability and acceptance of TX signers for all browsers
• Identity attestation
  Trusted entities like banks or states confirm user data by signing
• Regulatory, laws
  Legal entities start caring about crypto space

Why should Drupal care about Blockchain?

• Blockchain provides adds a new trust layer to the internet
• Drupal can provide Identity in context of limited user groups
• Implement enterprise level workflows, required for Document signing, Peer-to-peer platforms, Asset tracking ...
• Explore new ways of NGO founding, budgeting, voting.

Questions & Thank You

• Evaluate use cases, join discussion
  https://groups.drupal.org/ethereum
• Tweet about #DrupalEthereum

thorsten.krug@consensys.net
       @digitaldonkey09

The development of Drupal Ethereum Module
Has been sponsored by ConsenSys
       @ConsenSys

https://consensys.net

slides.com/digitaldonkey/drupal-ethereum-openCamp2017