DApp Testing on Auto-Pilot. An Interview with Dipesh S., Co-Founder @ BuildBear Labs

Web3 Leader Spotlight: Dipesh Sukhani

This week, we had the pleasure of chatting with Dipesh Sukhani, Co-Founder of BuildBear Labs, a revolutionary DevTool designed from the ground up to ensure your dApp is production-ready from the get-go.

Dipesh brings extensive expertise as a seasoned Smart Contract Developer, boasting over 5 years of dedicated experience in creating dApps.

Follow him on X @dipesh_sukhani.

What initially drew you to the world of Web3, and how did your journey lead to the creation of BuildBear Labs?

Well that is a bit of a story. From an academic qualification point of view, I am a qualified Indian Chartered Accountant. I have 11 years of experience in the field of International Tax Structuring in the Financial Services Sector. I always found the “Double Entry” in the Double Entry Bookkeeping inefficient. Now considering that blockchain supports transparency, and only single entry from an accounting point of view. That was the starting point which attracted me towards web3 and made me shift my career from being an International Tax Professional to a Web3 Developer.

BuildBear Labs was born out of a single reason that developing Web3 applications is unfortunately inefficient and expensive. BuildBear Labs tackles the pressing Web3 development hurdles such as scalability constraints, smart contract vulnerabilities, and cross-chain compatibility, which can lead to operational cost spikes and project delays. Our platform notably reduces the risk of exploits potentially costing over $1 million, ensuring timely project launches and preserving both revenue and reputation. By providing a realistic testing environment, BuildBear Labs is set to boost user adoption rates and secure the success of small to medium Web3 projects.

In your experience, why is continuous automated testing crucial in the DApp production process?

To begin with, I would like to emphasise that Automated and Continuous Testing (aka ACTE) is actually a standard practice of development for Web2 applications. Logically, one cannot have a very large product or a team, for example Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, unless one does not have a very robust standard development practice across this very large team.

Now let's try to split this term:

• Automated Testing is the process by which the entire team can save time cost by not manually doing the test every time there is a change or an upgrade in the code base secondly, it also ensures that no edge cases of testing are missed because of reliance on manual labour of testing.
• Continuous Testing ensures that the application is tested for every single change in the code anywhere across the application, which also includes the third party application (code dependencies) on which the application run. A robust system that ensures continuous testing, obviously increases the reliability of the application.

As mentioned previously while ACTE is a standard for Web2 applications globally, it is rather 10x more important in Web3, for the fact that all code on Web3 has monetary worth. We can’t have a successful web3 ecosystem without it.

From a business point to you if you were to evaluate large organizations, for example PayPal or FedEx, they will not engage in Web3 unless there is a robust ACTE in place. For them, it is very high risk of attaching their Goodwill / Brand on building or experimenting an application or an industry (Web3), which is plagued with security risks. Thus, ACTE is extremely crucial, be it Web3 or not.

Are there any upcoming features in the pipeline that builders should be on the lookout for from BuildBear Labs?

We are extremely glad to say that we have a list of features that BuildBear Labs will be introducing for the course of this year. One of the most important one is BuildBear Plugins.

BuildBear Labs’ Phoenix Engine (the ACTE) by definition is the enabler. Plugins are the power-ups that the Phoenix Engine would use, and available to the Web3 Applications, for a more thorough testing pipeline. For eg, automated static analysis of smart contracts upon deployment will be a Plugin.

We are currently testing many of these features in a beta and invite only mode with couple of our clients and we want to have 100% reliability on the performance of features in production before we release them to everyone. Please follow BuildBear Labs on Twitter or LinkedIn to keep a tab on developments.

What advice would you offer to aspiring builders looking to enter the decentralized application ecosystem?

The one critical advice that we always suggest every developer is to adopt Gold Standard of Development: deterministic (aka 100% reliable) code / application development.

It is unfortunate that over the years we have witnessed various developers and development practices that are built on quick coding hacks that are learnt from YouTube Videos or Blog Posts and not with enough research.

While quick coding hacks are a good temporary fix and get the job done faster, one never knows the can of worms (literally bugs) that it can introduce in the code base. We, at BuildBear Labs are plagued with this too. However, being cognisant of this, we are taking attempts to ensure that we adopt thorough research and test driven coding practices to avoid such bugs.

For Web3 Applications, BuildBear Labs’s will help you achieve the Gold Standard of Development through deterministic testing. Please reach out to me should you need assistance in this aspect.

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