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

Wallets


Bitcoin wallets are an important function of the Bitcoin node; they contain private and/or public keys and Bitcoin addresses. There are various types of Bitcoin wallets and each one offers a varied level of security and functions, as required.

There is a common misconception that an e-wallet can contain Bitcoins but a Bitcoin wallet will only contain keys. Each Bitcoin is recorded on the blockchain in the Bitcoin network. A Bitcoin wallet contains keys, and these keys authorize the use of Bitcoins that are associated with the keys. Users or wallet owners sign a transaction with the keys in the wallet, proving that they own the Bitcoins. In reality, these Bitcoins are stored on the blockchain in the form of transaction outputs that are denoted as txout.

Types

Primarily, there are two types of wallets, which is based on whether the keys contained by the wallets are related to one another.

Deterministic wallet

This is a type of wallet in which all the keys are derived from a single master...