Chapter 1: An Introduction to Blockchain, Ethereum, and Smart Contracts
The last decade has already seen an extraordinary evolution of the technology and computing ecosystem. Technological innovation and its impact have been noticeable across the spectrum, from the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to blockchains. Each of them has had a disruptive force within multiple industries, and blockchains are one of the most disruptive technologies today – so much so that blockchains have the potential to change almost every industry. Blockchains are revolutionizing almost all industries and domains while bringing forward newer business models. Blockchain is not a new technology; however, it has gained momentum over the last couple of years. It is a big leap forward in terms of thinking about decentralized and distributed applications. It is about the current architectural landscape and strategies for moving toward immutable distributed databases.
In this chapter, you will quickly learn and understand the basic and foundational concepts of blockchains and Ethereum. We will also discuss some of the important concepts that make blockchains and Ethereum work. Also, we will touch briefly on the topic of smart contracts and how to author them using Solidity.
Please note that this chapter explains important blockchain concepts briefly. It does not explain all concepts in great detail, as that would require a complete book by itself. Since Ethereum is an implementation of a blockchain, both the terms will be used interchangeably in this book.
This chapter will focus on introducing the following topics:
- What a blockchain is and why it is used
- Understanding cryptography
- Blockchain and Ethereum architecture
- Ether, gas, and transactions
- Consensus
- Nodes
- Mining
- Understanding accounts, transactions, and blocks
- Smart contracts
By the end of this chapter, you will know all about the basics of blockchain, Ethereum, and smart contracts, which will prepare the base for the next chapters.