Book Image

Mastering Blockchain

Book Image

Mastering Blockchain

Overview of this book

Blockchain is a distributed database that enables permanent, transparent, and secure storage of data. The blockchain technology is the backbone of cryptocurrency – in fact, it’s the shared public ledger upon which the entire Bitcoin network relies – and it’s gaining popularity with people who work in finance, government, and the arts. Blockhchain technology uses cryptography to keep data secure. This book gives a detailed description of this leading technology and its implementation in the real world. This book begins with the technical foundations of blockchain, teaching you the fundamentals of cryptography and how it keeps data secure. You will learn about the mechanisms behind cryptocurrencies and how to develop applications using Ethereum, a decentralized virtual machine. You will explore different blockchain solutions and get an exclusive preview into Hyperledger, an upcoming blockchain solution from IBM and the Linux Foundation. You will also be shown how to implement blockchain beyond currencies, scability with blockchain, and the future scope of this fascinating and powerful technology.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Mastering Blockchain
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Accounts


Accounts are one of the main building blocks of the Ethereum blockchain. The state is created or updated as a result of the interaction between accounts. Operations performed between and on the accounts represent state transitions. State transition is achieved using what's called the Ethereum state transition function, which works as follows:

  1. Confirm the transaction validity by checking the syntax, signature validity, and nonce.

  2. Transaction fee is calculated and the sending address is resolved using the signature. Furthermore, sender's account balance is checked and subtracted accordingly and nonce is incremented. An error is returned if the account balance is not enough.

  3. Provide enough ether (gas price) to cover the cost of the transaction. This is charged per byte incrementally according to the size of the transaction.

  4. In this step, the actual transfer of value occurs. The flow is from the sender's account to receiver's account. The account is created automatically if the destination...