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

Hyperledger as a protocol


Hyperledger is aiming to build a new blockchain platform that is driven by industry use cases. As there have been number of contributions made to the Hyperledger project by the community, Hyperledger blockchain platform is evolving into a protocol for business transactions. Hyperledger is also evolving into a specification that can be used as a reference to build blockchain platforms as compared to earlier blockchain solutions that address only a specific type of industry or requirement. In the following section, a reference architecture is presented that has been published by the Hyperledger project. As this work is under continuous and rigorous development some changes are expected in this, but core services are expected to remain unchanged.

Reference architecture

Hyperledger has published a white paper with reference architecture that can serve as a guideline to build permissioned distributed ledgers. The reference architecture consists of two main components:...