Book Image

Blockchain Developer's Guide

By : Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt, Narayan Prusty
Book Image

Blockchain Developer's Guide

By: Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt, Narayan Prusty

Overview of this book

Blockchain applications provide a single-shared ledger to eliminate trust issues involving multiple stakeholders. It is the main technical innovation of Bitcoin, where it serves as the public ledger for Bitcoin transactions. Blockchain Developer's Guide takes you through the electrifying world of blockchain technology. It begins with the basic design of a blockchain and elaborates concepts, such as Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), tokens, smart contracts, and other related terminologies. You will then explore the components of Ethereum, such as Ether tokens, transactions, and smart contracts that you need to build simple DApps. Blockchain Developer's Guide also explains why you must specifically use Solidity for Ethereum-based projects and lets you explore different blockchains with easy-to-follow examples. You will learn a wide range of concepts - beginning with cryptography in cryptocurrencies and including ether security, mining, and smart contracts. You will learn how to use web sockets and various API services for Ethereum. By the end of this Learning Path, you will be able to build efficient decentralized applications. This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products: • Blockchain Quick Reference by Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt • Building Blockchain Projects by Narayan Prusty
Table of Contents (37 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Introducing Ethereum accounts


The state in Ethereum is made up of objects, each known as an account. Each account in Ethereum contains a 20-byte address. Each state transition is a direct transaction of value and information between various accounts. Each operation performed between or on the accounts is known as a statetransition. The state transition in Ethereum is done using the Ethereum state transition function.

The state change in Ethereum blockchain starts from the genesis block of the blockchain, as shown in this diagram:

Each block contains a series of transactions, and each block is chained to its previous block. To transition from one state to the next, the transaction has to be valid. The transaction is further validated using consensus techniques, which we have already discussed in previous chapters. 

To avoid stale blocks in Ethereum, GHOST (Greedy Heaviest Observed Subtree) protocol was introduced. This was introduced to avoid random forking by any nodes and inapt verification...