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

Alternative currency


Apart from tokens, which are built on top of existing blockchains, there are various alt currencies fueled by either having their own blockchain and/or any other improvement or differentiating factor.

Here are some of the factors that have been modified on the Altcoins, when compared to Bitcoins:

  • Monetary alternatives
  • Consensus alternatives

We will discuss each of these alternatives in detail, and then afterward we will discuss some of the widely used Altcoins and what modifications they have over Bitcoins.

Monetary alternatives

Bitcoin is limited to 21 million coins, and it has a declining issuance rate, including a 10-minute block generation time, which takes a lot of confirmation time; it also takes a lot of time in further coin generation. A lot of Altcoins have modified a number of primary parameters to achieve escalated results. Some of the prime coins that have modified monetary parameters are Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, NEO, and so on.

Consensus alternatives

A consensus...