Book Image

Mastering Blockchain - Third Edition

By : Imran Bashir
Book Image

Mastering Blockchain - Third Edition

By: Imran Bashir

Overview of this book

Blockchain is the backbone of cryptocurrencies, with applications in finance, government, media, and other industries. With a legacy of providing technologists with executable insights, this new edition of Mastering Blockchain is thoroughly revised and updated to the latest blockchain research with four new chapters on consensus algorithms, Serenity (the update that will introduce Ethereum 2.0), tokenization, and enterprise blockchains. This book covers the basics, including blockchain’s technical underpinnings, cryptography and consensus protocols. It also provides you with expert knowledge on decentralization, decentralized application development on Ethereum, Bitcoin, alternative coins, smart contracts, alternative blockchains, and Hyperledger. Further, you will explore blockchain solutions beyond cryptocurrencies such as the Internet of Things with blockchain, enterprise blockchains, tokenization using blockchain, and consider the future scope of this fascinating and disruptive technology. By the end of this book, you will have gained a thorough comprehension of the various facets of blockchain and understand their potential in diverse real-world scenarios.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
23
Index

Ethereum – an overview

Vitalik Buterin (https://vitalik.ca) conceptualized Ethereum (https://ethereum.org) in November, 2013. The core idea proposed was the development of a Turing-complete language that allows the development of arbitrary programs (smart contracts) for blockchain and Decentralized Applications (DApps). This concept is in contrast to Bitcoin, where the scripting language is limited and only allows necessary operations.

The first version of Ethereum, called Olympic, was released in May, 2015. Two months later, a version of Ethereum called Frontier was released in July. Another version named Homestead with various improvements was released in March, 2016. The latest Ethereum release is called Muir Glacier, which delays the difficulty bomb (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2384). A major release before that was Istanbul, which included changes around privacy and scaling capabilities.

The difficulty bomb is a difficulty adjustment mechanism that...