AutomationStar Conference 2024

My best talk so far !

This talk was especially important to me, even though it was the one I practiced the least. My mom was there for the first time to support me! After spending a month with me, she has already gone back to Brazil 🇧🇷 🙏

She also gave me feedback that I should look around the room more instead of focusing on just one side! 😄

She probably didn’t understand anything, but she was there 😊

But this time I missed all the other talks 😔 I have been working on my startup: The Chaincademy most of my days I am going to sleep around 3am and on the day before my talk I went to sleep at 1am 🙏 . Gladly, nobody noticed that I was a corpse mopping the floor on that day.

Back to what matters! Unfortunately, I don’t have much to share about the other talks this time.
However, at the speakers’ dinner, I had the pleasure of chatting with some amazing speakers:
René Rohner (robot framework and playwright), Mazin Inaad (food and rock bands), Jonathon Wright (the AI guy) , Ana Duarte (why Porto is the best city in Portugal) and Gerard van Engelen (a variety of topics)

This time, I also decided to start a bit differently by being honest about my habit of talking fast at the beginning of sessions. I asked everyone to help pace me if I started speaking too quickly—sorry in advance! 😬

Everyone stayed engaged, even during a 1-hour-and-30-minute session. I felt the hands-on part was a bit rushed and could have been extended, so I’ll keep that in mind for next time.

Just sharing some additional content after my talk: I’ve updated the resources to include some Web3 hackathons and a Web3 Test Mindmap.

Here’s the feedback from this session—apparently, I did well, but not quite well enough to win the award! Maybe that’s why I left right after my talk 😂

It’s okay, though—my mom got emotional and teared up when I started reading the positive feedback, so I’ll count that as a win, even if it’s a bit biased!

Apart from my talk, I also joined Señor Performo in his AutomationStar interview sessions!

Finally met Leandro Melendez.

I’ve known his work for ages, and I also use Grafana a lot at work these days. It was great to exchange tips on public speaking and chat about mutual friends. During the interview, I shared what we’re doing at The Chaincademy, my journey in tech, and how I ended up where I am today.


“As usual, the best part of my talk is testing whether people were really paying attention or if ADHD is getting the best of the crowd. It’s also my favorite part—I love a good competition! 🥋

And that’s a wrap! See you at the next conference or meetup! I’m actually planning to host a webinar on my own soon, so hopefully, you’ll be able to join from anywhere in the world!

Dappeteer vs Synpress

You asked you got it !! JK 😂 , this was in my backlog for a long time and finally had time to write something about it. This literally summarises my life:

Not many people out there talking about Blockchain Tests, maybe Oleksandr Romanov and Rhian Lewis, so I usually resource to communities (Web3Tests, Synpress…) to see what others are doing.

It is a bit shocking as there are many well-known attacks in this technology and on top of that after deploying something to the Blockchain you can’t go back (immutability feature), so how come this phase is so neglected as making sure everything is alright is so crucial ?

I am doing a quick benchmark about the End-to-End Tests Web3 Frameworks that are out there, and yes you can always mock the Web3 and then you don’t rely on third party integrations, which you would do any Web2 application already. But hey, this is one option to use when you need it !

Here it is what I got from the two major and most popular tools to test Web3 Apps (DApps):

CriteriaSynpressDappeteer
Platform & Application SupportWeb3 applications (Dapps)Web3 applications (Dapps)
Supported TechnologiesTypeScript, JavascriptTypeScript, Javascript
Wallets supportedMetaMaskMetaMask snaps, but probably is outdated.
Testing ScopeE2E TestsE2E Tests
Testing Framework IntegrationPlaywright (as a plugin)
Support for Cypress is coming soon.
Playwright (as a plugin)
Puppeteer (as a plugin)
Ease of Use & Learning CurveEasy learning curve, requires JavaScript/Typecript knowledgeRequires JavaScript/Typescript knowledge
Reporting & AnalyticsDetailed reports with dashboards and integrationsBasic reporting, may require additional tools
Ease of setupEasy to set up with Node.js, yarn and npmEasy to set up with Node.js, yarn and npm
Browsers– Chrome/Chromium (+ Edge, Opera, Brave, Chromium-based browsers)
– Firefox
– Webkit (Safari)
– Chrome/Chromium (+ Edge, Opera, Brave, Chromium-based browsers)
– Webkit (Safari)
Community & SupportLarge and active community, extensive documentation and supportSmaller community, growing resources and documentation
Cost & LicensingOpen source and free to useOpen source and free to use
Scalability & IntegrationHighly scalable, integrates with CI/CD pipelinesLess information available, may require custom integrations
AccessibilitySupports accessibility testing with pluginsInformation not available.
CustomizationHighly customizable with plugins and extensionsHighly customizable with plugins and extensions

Let me know in the comments which option you went for and how was your experience with it 😃