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

DeFi

DeFi stands for decentralized finance, which is the largest application of tokenization. It is an ecosystem that has emerged as a result of the development of many different types of financial applications built on top of blockchains. With blockchains being decentralized and the applications being related to finance, the term emerged as decentralized finance, or DeFi for short.

DeFi is an umbrella term used to describe a financial services ecosystem that is built on top of blockchains. Centralized finance, or CeFi for short, is a term now used to refer to the traditional financial services industry, which is centralized in nature, while DeFi is a movement to decentralize the traditional centralized financial services industry.

We covered the concept of decentralization in Chapter 2, Decentralization, which readers can refer to for review.

Tokenization plays a vital role in the DeFi ecosystem, which is the largest use of tokenization. DeFi is a vast subject...