Microsoft rolls out Azure Blockchain Development Kit for Ethereum Blockchain

Tech giant Microsoft has released the new Azure Blockchain Development Kit for the Ethereum blockchain.

Chris Pietschmann, Microsoft MVP and founder of BuildAzure.com, made the announcement in a blog post on May 06.

The announcement comes on the heels of the launch of Azure Blockchain Service – a fully-managed blockchain service that will help simplify the formation, management, and governance of consortium blockchain networks.

Pietschmann said that the latest offering is an extension to Visual Studio Code, Microsoft’s code editor, and will provide developers with “an enhanced experience for building Blockchain apps utilizing Azure Blockchain Service, or even the public Ethereum network.”

Developers would also be able to use popular, open source Blockchain tools such as Solidity and Truffle, he said, adding:

“Sure, there have been Solidity and other Blockchain technology extensions for Visual Studio Code published by others in the community, however now there is also an official set of tools published by Microsoft.”

The Azure Blockchain Development Kit extension for Visual Studio Code is open source and hosted on GitHub. It is compatible with both Windows 10 and macOS.

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that it is teaming up with Starbucks on its digital traceability technology, using the Microsoft Azure Blockchain platform.