Foundations of Blockchain

"The pathway to cryptocurrencies and decentralized blockchain applications"

Embark on your blockchain journey with a hands-on guide to learn the underlying protocols, and build the foremost foundation to create decentralized applications

Book Description

Blockchain technology is a combination of three popular concepts: cryptography, peer-to-peer networking, and game theory. This book is for anyone who wants to dive into blockchain from first principles and learn how decentralized applications and cryptocurrencies really work.

This book begins with an overview of blockchain technology, including key definitions, its purposes and characteristics, so you can assess the full potential of blockchain. All essential aspects of cryptography are then presented, as the backbone of blockchain. For readers who want to study the underlying algorithms of blockchain, you’ll see Python implementations throughout.

You’ll then learn how blockchain architecture can create decentralized applications. You’ll see how blockchain achieves decentralization through peer-to-peer networking, and how a simple blockchain can be built in a P2P network. You’ll learn how these elements can implement a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, and the wider applications of blockchain work through smart contracts. Blockchain optimization techniques, and blockchain security strategies are then presented. To complete this foundation, we consider blockchain applications in the financial and non-financial sectors, and also analyze the future of blockchain. A study of blockchain use cases includes supply chains, payment systems, crowdfunding, and DAOs, which rounds out your foundation in blockchain technology.

Key Features

Explains all networking and cryptography inherent in blockchain by creating simple applications

Talks about the theory as well as the nuts and bolts of cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (DApps)

Addresses several security and scalability concerns in the blockchain applications

Leads to the frontiers of blockchain extensions and new application areas by identifying and exploring several use cases

What you will learn?

The role of cryptographic primitives and distributed computing in blockchain

Understanding the basics of blockchain, transactions, and decentralization in cryptocurrency

Architecting and implementing decentralized applications (DApps) using blockchain platforms such as MultiChain, NEO and Ethereum

Analyzing and addressing the scalability and security concerns of blockchain applications

Introduction to a few of the exciting topics such as sharding, zk-SNARKS, off-chain transactions, and cross-chain protocols.

Depth comparison of blockchain application categories and how to choose a blockchain use case

Who this book is for?

This book is designed for anyone who is looking to dive into the blockchain technology space. Although this book builds a foundation for blockchain technology for beginners, it can also be used by blockchain developers as a quick reference guide and also to gain deeper insights on few of the exciting topics in blockchain technology.

Although the book doesn’t assume readers' expertise in any particular domain, hands-on python programming, and theoretical networking knowledge, would speed up the reading process.

Foundations of Blockchain helps you to understand the concepts of blockchain technology. This book introduces you to cryptocurrency and several blockchain platforms. It also gives an in-depth analysis of the potential and concerns of the technology so that blockchain can be adopted where its implementation actually adds value.