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

Low availability of blockchain skills


As with any new technology, the number of skilled personnel will be limited. In the case of blockchain, this natural order is made far worse because of the large and growing number of systems. Looking only at the major chains, systems are written in C, C++, Java, Scala, Golang, and Python. All of these systems have different architectures and protocols. The blockchains that have smart contracts have different contract models, contract APIs, and even completely different programming languages, such as Solidity and Serpent.

On the security front, each blockchain system has subtly different security models and challenges. The simpler the system, the easier those requirements are, but the less the blockchain will be able to do. Moreover, because of the recent surge of interest, blockchain skills are very expensive on the open market. In particular, top talent with a proven track record is very hard to find.