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

Supporting protocols

Various supporting protocols are available to assist the complete decentralized ecosystem. This includes the Whisper and Swarm protocols. In addition to the contracts layer, which is the core blockchain layer, there are additional layers that need to be decentralized in order to achieve a complete decentralized ecosystem. This includes decentralized storage and decentralized messaging.

Whisper, which is being developed for Ethereum, is a decentralized messaging protocol, whereas Swarm is a decentralized storage protocol. Both of these technologies provide the basis for a fully decentralized web, and are described in the following sections.

Whisper

Whisper provides decentralized peer-to-peer messaging capabilities to the Ethereum network. In essence, Whisper is a communication protocol that DApps use to communicate with each other. The data and routing of messages are encrypted within Whisper communications. Whisper makes use of the DEVp2p wire protocol...