Book Image

Advanced Blockchain Development

By : Imran Bashir, Narayan Prusty
Book Image

Advanced Blockchain Development

By: Imran Bashir, Narayan Prusty

Overview of this book

Blockchain technology is a distributed ledger with applications in industries such as finance, government, and media. This Learning Path is your guide to building blockchain networks using Ethereum, JavaScript, and Solidity. You will get started by understanding the technical foundations of blockchain technology, including distributed systems, cryptography and how this digital ledger keeps data secure. Further into the chapters, you’ll gain insights into developing applications using Ethereum and Hyperledger. As you build on your knowledge of Ether security, mining, smart contracts, and Solidity, you’ll learn how to create robust and secure applications that run exactly as programmed without being affected by fraud, censorship, or third-party interference. Toward the concluding chapters, you’ll explore how blockchain solutions can be implemented in applications such as IoT apps, in addition to its use in currencies. This Learning Path also highlights how you can increase blockchain scalability, and discusses the future scope of this fascinating and powerful technology. By the end of this Learning Path, you'll be equipped with the skills you need to tackle pain points encountered in the blockchain life cycle and confidently design and deploy decentralized applications.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
15
Blockchain - Outside of Currencies
16
Scalability and Other Challenges
Index

Primecoin


Primecoin is the first digital currency on the market that introduced a useful PoW, as opposed to Bitcoin's SHA256-based PoW. Primecoin uses searching prime numbers as a PoW. Not all types of prime number meet the requirements to be selected as PoW. Three types of prime numbers (known as Cunningham chain of the first kind, Cunningham chain of the second kind, and bi-twin chains) meet the requirements of a PoW algorithm to be used in cryptocurrencies.

The difficulty is dynamically adjusted via a continuous difficulty evaluation scheme in Primecoin blockchain. The efficient verification of PoW based on prime numbers is also of high importance, because if verification is slow, then PoW is not suitable. Therefore, prime chains are selected as a PoW because finding prime chains gets difficult as the chain increases in length whereas verification remains quick enough to warrant being used as an efficient PoW algorithm.

It is also important that once a PoW has been verified on a block,...