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

Development of altcoins

Altcoin projects can be started very quickly from a coding point of view by simply forking the Bitcoin or another coin's source code, but this probably is not enough. When a new coin project is started, several things need to be considered to ensure a successful launch and the coin's longevity. Usually, the code base is written in C++, as was the case with Bitcoin, but almost any language can be used to develop coin projects; for example, Golang or Rust.

Writing code or forking the code for an existing coin is the easy part. The challenging issue is how to start a new currency so that investors and users can be attracted to it.

From a technical point of view, in the case of forking the code of another coin, for example, Bitcoin, there are various parameters that can be changed to effectively create a new coin. These parameters are required to be tweaked or introduced in order to create a new coin. These parameters can include, but are...