Book Image

Foundations of Blockchain

By : Koshik Raj
Book Image

Foundations of Blockchain

By: Koshik Raj

Overview of this book

Blockchain technology is a combination of three popular concepts: cryptography, peer-to-peer networking, and game theory. This book is for anyone who wants to dive into blockchain from first principles and learn how decentralized applications and cryptocurrencies really work. This book begins with an overview of blockchain technology, including key definitions, its purposes and characteristics, so you can assess the full potential of blockchain. All essential aspects of cryptography are then presented, as the backbone of blockchain. For readers who want to study the underlying algorithms of blockchain, you’ll see Python implementations throughout. You’ll then learn how blockchain architecture can create decentralized applications. You’ll see how blockchain achieves decentralization through peer-to-peer networking, and how a simple blockchain can be built in a P2P network. You’ll learn how these elements can implement a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, and the wider applications of blockchain work through smart contracts. Blockchain optimization techniques, and blockchain security strategies are then presented. To complete this foundation, we consider blockchain applications in the financial and non-financial sectors, and also analyze the future of blockchain. A study of blockchain use cases includes supply chains, payment systems, crowdfunding, and DAOs, which rounds out your foundation in blockchain technology.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Keys and addresses

We have covered all the concepts of cryptography that will be required in order to understand the keys, addresses, and wallets used in cryptocurrency. In this section, we will get a thorough grounding of how keys and addresses are used to control the ownership of funds through cryptographic primitives.

We have covered how asymmetric cryptography is used to create public/private keys, which identify the user accounts in the blockchain network. Bitcoin generates public/private key pairs that identify users and help them to claim ownership of funds through digital signatures. The private key is also called the secret key in cryptocurrency because it is kept secret from the public. Digital signatures are a prevalent concept in cryptography that allows the owner of the secret key to create a signature for a transaction and allow anyone to verify a transaction. Secret...