The testing of distributed ledger platforms and smart contracts is emerging as one of the major challenges in software quality assurance for financial firms. To unleash the potential of blockchain, there has to be testing of the interoperability of large, heterogeneous, networks of nodes connecting complex markets.
Not only are there possibly hundreds of millions of nodal connections in the existing marketplace that have to be tested, but the assurance framework has to take account of the likely evolution of that particular blockchain network over years to come.
State-of -the-art automated testing is the only possible answer to this challenge, according to Iosif Itkin, CEO of Exactpro, the London-based firm that specialises in automated testing for firms and exchanges operating in complex financial markets. At the QA Financial Forum London on March 12th, Itkin explained how Exactpro has been working with R3, the consortium blockchain platform whose Corda platform as an “ecosystem” now encompasses more than 300 different firms. Launched in 2014, R3 is now involved in blockchain projects for markets ranging from the US cash equities markets, the FX interbank market, syndicate loans and Sukuk securities trading, in addition to working with leading markets infrastructure providers such as SIX Digital Exchange and CLS.
In his presentation, which you can see here, Itkin drills down into the specifics of functional and non-functional testing for blockchain networks, and how the requirements of testing Corda differ from the testing requirements of existing electronic exchange platforms.
