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

Mining

Mining is a process by which new blocks are added to the blockchain. Blocks contain transactions that are validated via the mining process by mining nodes on the Bitcoin network. Blocks, once mined and verified, are added to the blockchain, which keeps the blockchain growing. This process is resource-intensive due to the requirements of PoW, where miners compete to find a number less than the difficulty target of the network. This difficulty in finding the correct value (also called sometimes the mathematical puzzle) is there to ensure that miners have spent the required resources before a new proposed block can be accepted. The miners mint new coins by solving the PoW problem, also known as the partial hash inversion problem. This process consumes a high amount of resources, including computing power and electricity. This process also secures the system against fraud and double-spending attacks while adding more virtual currency to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Roughly one new...