I want to experiment with Ethereum without having to download the entire blockchain. My ISP limits my bandwidth to 50GB and downloading the ETH chain would consume a lot of that, not to mention the time. Is there any SPV like implementation of Ethereum? With Bitcoin, I could simply download bitcoinj and start coding.
I have also considered Blockchain as a Service by Azure. Are there any alternatives? (because they need my credit card number.)
What I want to do:
- Experiment with simple transactions (sending Ether)
- Create contracts
- Store arbitrary data on blockchain.
Ideally I would prefer something that runs on JVM but that is not a hard constraint.
One method I have in mind is to run a private blockchain using Ethereum code but with my own genesis block. Will this approach work with other 3rd party Ethereum frameworks (such as Truffle)?