Book Image

Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition

By : Imran Bashir
Book Image

Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition

By: Imran Bashir

Overview of this book

Publisher's Note: This edition from 2018 is outdated and does not cover the latest insights on consensus algorithms, Ethereum 2.0, tokenization, and enterprise blockchains. A new and updated edition of this book that includes all the newest developments and improvements in Blockchain including the above topics is now available. A blockchain is a distributed ledger that is replicated across multiple nodes and enables immutable, transparent and cryptographically secure record-keeping of transactions. The blockchain technology is the backbone of cryptocurrencies, and it has applications in finance, government, media and almost all other industries. Mastering Blockchain, Second Edition has been thoroughly updated and revised to provide a detailed description of this leading technology and its implementation in the real world. This book begins with the technical foundations of blockchain technology, teaching you the fundamentals of distributed systems, 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 also explore different other blockchain solutions and get an introduction to business blockchain frameworks under Hyperledger, a collaborative effort for the advancement of blockchain technologies hosted by the Linux Foundation. You will also be shown how to implement blockchain solutions beyond currencies, Internet of Things with blockchain, blockchain scalability, and the future scope of this fascinating and powerful technology.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
14
Introducing Web3
17
Blockchain – Outside of Currencies
18
Scalability and Other Challenges

Namecoin

Namecoin is the first fork of the Bitcoin source code. The key idea behind Namecoin is not to produce an altcoin but instead to provide improved decentralization, censorship resistance, privacy, security, and faster-decentralized naming. Decentralized naming services are intended to respond to inherent limitations such as slowness and centralized control in the traditional Domain Name System (DNS) protocols used on the internet. Namecoin is also the first solution to Zooko's triangle, which was briefly discussed in Chapter 1, Blockchain 101.

Namecoin is used to essentially provide a service to register a key/value pair. One major use case of Namecoin is that it can provide a decentralized Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificate validation mechanism, driven by blockchain-based distributed and decentralized consensus.

It is based on the same technology introduced...