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

Innovation in Bitcoin

Bitcoin has undergone many changes and is still evolving into a more and more robust and better system by addressing various weaknesses in the system. Performance has been a topic of hot debate among Bitcoin experts and enthusiasts for many years. As such, various proposals have been made in the last few years to improve Bitcoin performance, resulting in greater transaction speed, increased security, payment standardization, and overall performance improvement at the protocol level.

These improvement proposals are usually made in the form of Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) or fundamentally new versions of Bitcoin protocols, resulting in new networks altogether. Some of the changes proposed can be implemented via a soft fork, but a few need a hard fork and, as a result, give birth to a new currency.

In the following sections, we will look at the various BIPs that can be proposed for improvement in Bitcoin. Then, we will discuss some advanced...