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

Ongoing fragmentation and specialization


Blockchain began with only a single implementation: Bitcoin. Now there are thousands of blockchains and hundreds of blockchain technologies. In such a crowded marketplace, it is only natural that the technology will begin to have more purpose-driven implementations. Many of the drawbacks of blockchain systems, such as the speed, ease of use, and so on, are easier to solve with a purpose-specific blockchain system.

We've already seen the beginnings of this. Steemit is a blockchain-based social network built from bitshares/graphene technology. It has a consensus algorithm based on witnesses and voting, and the whole operation is designed around hosting social and blogging content. While still having many of the features of a public blockchain, by being purpose specific, the Steem blockchain is better able to function in its desired ecosystem.

We expect more purpose-specific chain technologies to emerge. Forks of blockchain specifically aimed at logistics...