Ethereum Development Tutorials, Guides & Insights

• Use crypto.randomBytes when:
• You are building Node.js applications without blockchain-specific functionality.
• You want to avoid adding external dependencies.
• Use ethers.randomBytes when:
• You are developing Ethereum-related applications and already have ethers.js in your project.
• You want the flexibility of generating random bytes with minimal configuration, defaulting to 32 bytes for Ethereum addresses or private keys.

npm install ethers
npm install axios

In this step, we will use Ethers.js to query the balance of an ERC-20 token for a specific Ethereum address.

In this tutorial, we will compare Etherscan and Infura, two popular services for interacting with the Ethereum blockchain. Both provide APIs, but they serve different purposes and are suited for different types of applications. By understanding the strengths of each, you can choose the right one based on your specific use case, whether it involves querying blockchain data or interacting with the Ethereum network in real-time.

• Basic understanding of Ethereum and blockchain concepts.
• Familiarity with APIs and programming in Node.js or any other language.

If everything is set up correctly, the script will output the token balance of the specified wallet.

Token Balance: 1000000000000000000

Let’s extend the functionality by querying transaction details for a specific transaction using the Etherscan API.

const axios = require('axios');

// Replace this with your actual Etherscan API key
const apiKey = 'YOUR_ETHERSCAN_API_KEY';

// Replace this with the transaction hash you want to query
const transactionHash = '0xYourTransactionHash';

// Etherscan API URL to fetch transaction details
const url = `https://api.etherscan.io/api?module=proxy&action=eth_getTransactionByHash&txhash=${transactionHash}&apikey=${apiKey}`;

async function getTransactionDetails() {
  try {
    // Make the API request to Etherscan
    const response = await axios.get(url);
    const transactionDetails = response.data.result;

    // Log the transaction details
    console.log('Transaction Details:', transactionDetails);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error('Error fetching transaction details:', error);
  }
}

// Call the function to get the transaction details
getTransactionDetails();