Building real applications on ropsten?

Question

Hi guys I am still quite new in web3.

So there is this client that require us to store some hash of their documents on Ethereum blockchain for tamper-proof verification purpose.

So that we can also have another verifier that can easily compare the hash of a document to the hash stored on blockchain.

Naturally we setup a prototype on the Ropsten network and it works.

Looking at the transaction, it could cost us 0.1 to 0.2 eth for every document hash.

That made me wonder, what will be the unforeseen problem if we actually use Ropsten network in the production app? So we can mine fake eth to funds the applications for the client? And it is still 100% blockchain based?

I had this fear that data on Ropsten network may be wiped out at any point of time, but I don't see this could be happening from any documentation. I maybe very wrong here but can someone advise me what could go wrong if we build production apps on ropsten?

Answer 1

In general, building production apps on a testnet is a rather bad idea.

Ropsten is called a test net for a few reasons:

1. Anything can happen to it
2. All sorts of new stuff is being tested there. For example it will undergo The Merge first, just to see how it works (and it gets broken: https://twitter.com/functi0nZer0/status/1529954510810013703 )
3. There are times when it simply doesn't work, for various reasons

It's simply not reliable, and it's not even meant to be. There are no economic incentives for anyone to keep it running, so its miners may just disappear tomorrow.

If you're afraid of gas costs, you have a few better alternatives:

1. Reconsider your business case and/or re-architect the project structure to not use so much gas
2. Use another production network - either another Layer 1 or some Layer 2