Understanding Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies : A Primer for Implementing and Developing Blockchain Projects

Whether you are a project manager looking to lead blockchain projects, a developer who would like to create blockchain-based applications, or a student with an interest, this book will provide you with the foundational understanding that you need. You have probably noticed that blockchains are growing in popularity. Governments are investigating Digital Currencies, supply chains are adopting Digital Ledgers, games makers and artists are developing NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), and new use-cases are emerging regularly. With such growth, many people will find themselves needing to understand how these technologies work. There will be new project teams, with technical leads managing blockchain projects and developers creating distributed applications. This book is great for them as it explains the concepts on which blockchain technologies are based, in simple terms. We will discuss and explain topics such as hashing, Merkle trees, nodes, mining, proof of work and proof of stake, consensus mechanisms encryption, vulnerabilities, and much more. The structures and principles described will be relevant for developers and managers alike, and will be demonstrated through relevant examples throughout the text. If you are looking to understand this exciting new technology, this is the book for you. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Figures About the Author Preface Who Is this Book For? Acknowledgement Notes What Should You Know Before Reading this Book? Key Terms to Know Before Reading Why Learn About Blockchains? Chapter 1 What Are Blockchains For? Provenance and Trust Downtime Not for Everything Chapter 2 Basic Principles of Blockchain Block Structure Hashing Hash Represented as Hexadecimal and Decimal Numbers Collisions Hashing in Blockchains Merkle Tree Difficulty and Nonce The Nonce The Difficulty Target Chapter 3 Decentralized Computing Partial Nodes References Chapter 4 Forks Accidental Forks Example Update Fork Soft Fork Hard Fork Relationship to Hash Power References Chapter 5 Cryptocurrencies What Are the Benefits of Cryptocurrencies? Fees Control More Confidential Transactions Protection Against Fraud Secure Flexible Transparency Easy to Carry What Are Wallets? Encryption Shared Key Encryption Asymmetric Encryption Signatures Elliptic Curve Cryptography Wallets and Keys Base-58 Wallet Types Hosted Wallets Collisions Chapter 6 Coins and Transactions Fungible and Non-Fungible Assets UTXO Model Account Model Mixers Mempool References Chapter 7 Mining Consensus Mechanisms Proof of Work (PoW) Proof of Stake (PoS) Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) Other Consensus Mechanisms Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) Proof of Authority and Proof of Reputation (PoA AND PoR/PoRe) Mixed Methods Miner Capitulation Miner Capitulation By Price Drop Miner Capitulation Through Competition Mining Pools Halvings and the Halvening Previous Bitcoin Halvings References Chapter 8 Summary of Blockchain So Far In the Previous Chapters Chapter 9 Blockchain 2.0 Smart Contracts Virtual Machines Junk Data, Computational Costs and Gas DApps Summary of DApp Structure Smart Contracts Vulnerabilities and Security Overflow Re-entrancy Attack Testnets Local Testing Tokenization Stable Coins Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) References Chapter 10 Public and Private Blockchains Certification and PKI Overview Digital Certificates Certificate Authorities Root Certificate Authorities (RCAs) and Intermediate Certificate Authorities (ICAs) Certificate Revocation Lists Membership Service Providers (MSPs) Ordering Services Channels World State Blocks and Transactions Block Header Structure From the Hyperledger Documentation Transactions Consensus Mechanisms References Chapter 11 Privacy Coins Why Is Privacy Important? KYC Legislation On-chain Analysis Anonymity Set HD Wallets An Example CoinJoin Dash Coin Monero and CryptoNote Stealth Addresses Ring Signatures Confidential Transactions Flooding, Gossip Protocol and TX Transmission IP Addresses Dandelion Reference Chapter 12 Blockchains and Cryptocurrency Issues and Answers Adoption Scaling Layer Two Solutions Lightning Network Sharding Chapter 13 Attacks Private Key/wallet Attack 51 Per Cent Attack Selfish Mining/shadow Mining Censoring Transactions SINGLE-SHARD-TAKEOVER Attack Sybil Attack Crypto-jacking IP Address Mapping Denial of Service, DoS Attack Closing Words Index Whether you are a project manager looking to lead blockchain projects, a developer who would like to create Blockchain based applications, or a student with an interest, this book will provide you with the foundational understanding that you need. You have probably noticed that Blockchains are growing in popularity. Governments are investigating Digital Currencies, supply chains are adopting Digital Ledgers, games makers and artists are developing NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and new use-cases are emerging regularly. With such growth, many people will find themselves needing to understand how these technologies work. There will be new project teams, with technical leads managing blockchain projects and developers creating distributed applications. This book is great for them as it explains the concepts on which Blockchain technologies are based, in simple terms. We will discuss and explain topics such as hashing, Merkle trees, nodes, mining, proof of work, and proof of stake, consensus mechanisms encryption, vulnerabilities and much more. The structures and principles described will be relevant for developers and managers alike, and will be demonstrated through relevant examples throughout the text. If you are looking to understand this exciting new technology, this is the book for you