Book Image

Blockchain Quick Reference

By : Mariko Amekodommo, Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt
Book Image

Blockchain Quick Reference

By: Mariko Amekodommo, Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt

Overview of this book

Blockchain Quick Reference takes you through the electrifying world of blockchain technology and is designed for those who want to polish their existing knowledge regarding the various pillars of the blockchain ecosystem. This book is your go-to guide, teaching you how to apply principles and ideas for making your life and business better. You will cover the architecture, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), tokens, smart contracts, and terminologies of the blockchain technology, before studying how they work. All you need is a curious mind to get started with blockchain technology. Once you have grasped the basics, you will explore components of Ethereum, such as ether tokens, transactions, and smart contracts, in order to build simple Dapps. You will then move on to learning why Solidity is used specifically for Ethereum-based projects, followed by exploring different types of blockchain with easy-to-follow examples. All this will help you tackle challenges and problems. By the end of this book, you will not only have solved current and future problems relating to blockchain technology but will also be able to build efficient decentralized applications.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)

Introducing Ethereum accounts

The state in Ethereum is made up of objects, each known as an account. Each account in Ethereum contains a 20-byte address. Each state transition is a direct transaction of value and information between various accounts. Each operation performed between or on the accounts is known as a state transition. The state transition in Ethereum is done using the Ethereum state transition function.

The state change in Ethereum blockchain starts from the genesis block of the blockchain, as shown in this diagram:

Each block contains a series of transactions, and each block is chained to its previous block. To transition from one state to the next, the transaction has to be valid. The transaction is further validated using consensus techniques, which we have already discussed in previous chapters.

To avoid stale blocks in Ethereum, GHOST (Greedy Heaviest Observed...