Book Image

Blockchain Developer's Guide

By : Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt, Narayan Prusty
Book Image

Blockchain Developer's Guide

By: Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt, Narayan Prusty

Overview of this book

Blockchain applications provide a single-shared ledger to eliminate trust issues involving multiple stakeholders. It is the main technical innovation of Bitcoin, where it serves as the public ledger for Bitcoin transactions. Blockchain Developer's Guide takes you through the electrifying world of blockchain technology. It begins with the basic design of a blockchain and elaborates concepts, such as Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), tokens, smart contracts, and other related terminologies. You will then explore the components of Ethereum, such as Ether tokens, transactions, and smart contracts that you need to build simple DApps. Blockchain Developer's Guide also explains why you must specifically use Solidity for Ethereum-based projects and lets you explore different blockchains with easy-to-follow examples. You will learn a wide range of concepts - beginning with cryptography in cryptocurrencies and including ether security, mining, and smart contracts. You will learn how to use web sockets and various API services for Ethereum. By the end of this Learning Path, you will be able to build efficient decentralized applications. This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products: • Blockchain Quick Reference by Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt • Building Blockchain Projects by Narayan Prusty
Table of Contents (37 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Miner types


There are two types of miners these days—classified on the basis of procuring the hardware themselves, or on purchasing the hashing power online.

Cloud mining

In this type of mining, the miners do not own the hardware, and instead they purchase hashing power remotely from other miners. Cloud mining has various pros over mining by procuring one's own hardware, such as low cost of entry, and minimal risks. For people who want to invest in cryptocurrency but do not want to purchase from an exchange or have enough technical knowledge, this is the best possible option for them. Now, there are various organizations that have large data centers at various places with GPU-, ASIC-, and FPGA-based miners available for people to purchase. Some of these organizations are Genesis Mining, SkyCoinLabs, Nicehash, hashflare, and so on.

Hardware mining

Enthusiasts are always interested in setting up self-hosted hardware for mining; mining can be done by a high-end home computer or acquiring an ASIC...