Blockchain Applications: A Hands-On Approach

Description

In the US, the services sector provides employment to about 100 million, while the manufacturing sector provides employment to about 20 million. These sectors are highly automated, and driven by sophisticated business processes forming an integral part of the digital economy. While the applications themselves may be distributed over the Internet in time and space, the core business, regulatory, and financial aspects of the digital economy are still centralized, with the need for centralized agencies (such as banks, customs authorities, and tax agencies) to authenticate and settle payments and transactions. These centralized services often are manual, difficult to automate, and represent a bottleneck to facilitating a frictionless digital economy. The next revolutionary step in the services and manufacturing economy of the future is the development of automated distributed applications that do not depend on these traditional centralized agencies for controlling, facilitating and settling multi-party transactions that may themselves be subject to complex contractual constraints. The blockchain technology is an integral part of these next steps that promises a smart new world of automation of complex services and manufacturing processes. Blockchain is a distributed and public ledger which maintains records of all the transactions on a blockchain network comprising suppliers of products and services and consumers. With the blockchain's ability to establish trust in a peer-to-peer network through a distributed consensus mechanism rather than relying on a powerful centralized authority, the technology is being seen by the industry experts as one of the greatest innovations since the invention of the Internet. As per Santander, blockchain technologies can reduce annual costs for financial firms by $20b by streamlining processes and improving efficiency. In addition, investment and spending on blockchain technology is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 52% through 2019. We have written this textbook, as part of our expanding "A Hands-On Approach"(TM) series, to serve as a textbook for senior-level and graduate-level courses on financial and regulation technologies, business analytics, Internet of Things, and cryptocurrency. This book is also written for use within industries in the FinTech and RegTech space that may be interested in rolling out products and services that utilize this new area of technology. An accompanying website for this book contains additional support for instruction and learning (www.blockchain-book.com). The book is organized into three main parts, comprising a total of ten chapters. Part I provides an introduction to blockchain concepts, design patterns, and architectures for blockchain applications. A blockchain stack comprising a decentralized computation platform, a decentralized messaging platform, and a decentralized storage platform is described. While in this book we describe a specific realization of the blockchain stack based on the Ethereum blockchain platform, the same blockchain concepts can be applied to other blockchain platforms as well, such as Eris and Multichain. The blockchain stack and application design methodology form the pedagogical foundation of this book. Part II introduces the readers to tools and platforms for blockchain, such as Geth, PyEthApp, TestRPC, Mist Ethereum Wallet, MetaMask, Web3 JavaScript API and the Truffle Dapp framework. Implementation examples of various smart contracts and decentralized applications (Dapps) are provided. An in-depth study of the consensus mechanism in a blockchain network, the steps involved in mining, mining proof of work algorithm, and state storage in Ethereum are provided. The reader is introduced to the Whisper decentralized messaging platform and Swarm decentralized storage platform. Part III focuses on advanced topics such as the security and scalability related challenges for the blockchain platforms. Review: Excellent book for practical learning - When I got the book, I got astonished at what the book has to offer. The first impression is excellent as it is full of examples, images, and explanation. So, does it gives you what it promises? Let's find out. Who is this book for? The book is aimed at students and professionals. Anyone interested in learning about blockchain technology and hands-on experience can benefit from the book. All the code is made available online which makes it easier to work with. Who should not get this book? The book is not for those who are looking for theoretical explanation. It covers some aspects in theory but quickly jumps to the practical aspects with code. Key topics discussed in the book dApps Smart contracts Solidity - The programming language used to develop dApps and smart contracts Mining Whisper protocol and Swarm It also covers advanced topics on the blockchain. Overall, it is a good read for me, and I would recommend the book to anyone who wants hands-on experience with blockchain technology. Review: Highly recommendable - For thise willing to get their hands on Blockchain applications, this book serves the purpose. The writer has used simple understandable language with proper and relevant examples which makes the reader understand each and every thing, the writer want to convey. Expecting more books from Sir Arshdeep, great book for gaining knowledge. Highly recommendable.