Book Image

Mastering Blockchain - Fourth Edition

By : Imran Bashir
5 (3)
Book Image

Mastering Blockchain - Fourth Edition

5 (3)
By: Imran Bashir

Overview of this book

Blockchain is the backbone of cryptocurrencies, it has had a massive impact in many sectors, including finance, supply chains, healthcare, government, and media. It’s also being used for cutting edge technologies such as AI and IoT. This new edition is thoroughly revised to offer a practical approach to using Ethereum, Hyperledger, Fabric, and Corda with step-by-step tutorials and real-world use-cases to help you understand everything you need to know about blockchain development and implementation. With new chapters on Decentralized Finance and solving privacy, identity, and security issues, as well as bonus online content exploring alternative blockchains, this is an unmissable read for everyone who wants to gain a deep understanding of blockchain. The book doesn’t shy away from advanced topics and practical expertise, such as decentralized application (DApp) development using smart contracts and oracles, and emerging trends in the blockchain space. Throughout the book, you’ll explore blockchain solutions beyond cryptocurrencies, such as the IoT with blockchain, enterprise blockchains, and tokenization, and gain insight into the future scope of this fascinating and disruptive technology. By the end of this blockchain book, you will have gained a thorough comprehension of the various facets of blockchain and understand the potential of this technology in diverse real-world scenarios.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
23
Index

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)

The EVM is a simple stack-based execution machine that runs bytecode instructions to transform the system state from one state to another. The word size of the EVM is set to 256-bit. The stack size is limited to 1,024 elements and is based on the Last In, First Out (LIFO) queue. The EVM is a Turing-complete machine but is limited by the amount of gas that is required to run any instruction. This means that infinite loops that can result in denial-of-service attacks are not possible due to gas requirements. The EVM also supports exception handling should exceptions occur, such as not having enough gas or providing invalid instructions, in which case the machine would immediately halt and return the error to the executing agent.

The EVM is an entirely isolated and sandboxed runtime environment. The code that runs on the EVM does not have access to any external resources such as a network or filesystem. This results in increased security, deterministic...