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

Issues with ICOs and blockchain projects


The ICO market is going through growing pains. As a global, mostly unregulated market, there are numerous issues and challenges that do not exist with traditional fundraising. There have been a number of criticisms of ICO projects.

Proof of product-market fit and traction

In more traditional VC-backed or bootstrapped projects, it would be necessary for a project to show value through some form of traction. Typically, this would involve having customers, revenue, and growth, if not profitability. However, with ICOs, the money is raised before most projects launch or show an MVP. In many cases, there is no proof of the team's ability to deliver whatsoever. Because of this, it is impossible for ICO buyers to be sure that the project will address a real problem in the market successfully.

The result of all these weak projects is a high rate of failure. A survey from bitcoin.com found that almost half of all projects had already failed, ceased operations...