Preface
Getting Started with Blockchain takes you through the electrifying world of blockchain technology. It begins with the basic design of a blockchain and elaborates concepts, such as Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), tokens, smart contracts, and other related terminologies of the blockchain technology. You will then explore the components of Ethereum, such as ether tokens, transactions, and smart contracts that you need to build simple DApps.
This Learning Path also explains why you must specifically use Solidity for Ethereum-based projects and lets you explore different blockchains with easy-to-follow examples. You will learn a wide range of concepts - beginning with cryptography in cryptocurrencies and including ether security, mining, and smart contracts. You will learn how to use web sockets and various API services for Ethereum.
By the end of this Learning Path, you will be able to build efficient decentralized applications.
This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products:
- Blockchain Quick Reference by Brenn Hill, Samanyu Chopra, Paul Valencourt
- Building Blockchain Projects by Narayan Prusty
Who this book is for
Getting Started with Blockchain is for you if you want to get to grips with the blockchain technology and develop your own distributed applications. It is also designed for those who want to polish their existing knowledge regarding the various pillars of the blockchain ecosystem. Prior exposure to an object-oriented programming language such as JavaScript is needed.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Blockchain 101, explains what blockchain technologies are and how they work. We also introduce the concept of the distributed ledger.
Chapter 2, Components and Structure of Blockchain, takes a closer look at the technical underpinnings of a blockchain and peeks under the hood to understand what a block is and how the chain is created.
Chapter 3, Decentralization Versus Distributed Systems, covers different types of decentralized and distributed systems and cover the often-overlooked differences between them.
Chapter 4, Cryptography and Mechanics Behind Blockchain, discusses the fundamentals of cryptographic systems which are critical to the proper functioning of all blockchains.
Chapter 5, Bitcoin, examine Bitcoin, the first blockchain, and it's specific mechanics in depth.
Chapter 6, Altcoins, covers the major non-bitcoin cryptocurrency projects that have gained popularity over the last few years.
Chapter 7, Achieving Consensus, looks into the different ways blockchains help achieve consensus. This is one of the most important aspects of blockchain behavior.
Chapter 8, Advanced Blockchain Concepts, covers the interactions between blockchain technology, privacy, and anonymity along with some of the legal side effects of blockchain technology.
Chapter 9, Cryptocurrency Wallets, covers the different wallet solutions that exist for keeping your cryptocurrency secure.
Chapter 10, Alternate Blockchains, examine blockchain creation technologies such as Tendermint and Graphene, and other non-currency based blockchain technologies.
Chapter 11, Hyperledger and Enterprise Blockchains, examine the Hyperledger family of distributed ledger technologies aimed at corporate and enterprise use.
Chapter 12, Ethereum 101, look at Ethereum, the second most dominant blockchain technology today.
Chapter 13, Solidity 101, cover the basics of Solidity, the Ethereum programming language.
Chapter 14, Smart Contracts, covers the smart contracts, which are enabled in different ways by different blockchain technologies.
Chapter 15, Ethereum Accounts and Ether Tokens, in this chapter, we look at the mechanics of Ethereum accounts and the token itself in the Ethereum system.
Chapter 16, Decentralized Applications, discusses decentralized applications as a whole, including ones that operate without a blockchain or in tandem with blockchain technologies.
Chapter 17, Mining, we cover blockchain mining and how this is used to secure blockchains, the different types of hardware used in mining, and the different protocols involved.
Chapter 18, ICO 101, we cover the basics of launching an Initial Coin Offering or Initial Token Offering.
Chapter 19, Creating Your Own Currency, we cover the creation of your own blockchain based cryptocurrency.
Chapter 20, Scalability and Other Challenges, covers the difficulties and limitations currently facing blockchain technology.
Chapter 21, Future of Blockchain, we examine the possible future developments of the industry technologically, legally, and socially.
Chapter 22, Understanding Decentralized Applications, will explain what DApps are and provide an overview of how they work.
Chapter 23, Understanding How Ethereum Works, explains how Ethereum works.
Chapter 24, Writing Smart Contracts, shows how to write smart contracts and use geth's interactive console to deploy and broadcast transactions using web3.js.
Chapter 25, Getting Started with web3.js, introduces web3js and how to import, connect to geth, and explains use it in Node.js or client-side JavaScript.
Chapter 26, Building a Wallet Service, explains how to build a wallet service that users can create and manage Ethereum Wallets easily, even offline. We will specifically use the LightWallet library to achieve this.
Chapter 27, Building a Smart Contract Deployment Platform, shows how to compile smart contracts using web3.js and deploy it using web3.js and EthereumJS.
Chapter 28, Building a Betting App, explains how to use Oraclize to make HTTP requests from Ethereum smart contracts to access data from World Wide Web. We will also learn how to access files stored in IPFS, use the strings library to work with strings, and more.
Chapter 29, Building Enterprise Level Smart Contracts, explains how to use Truffle, which makes it easy to build enterprise-level DApps. We will learn about Truffle by building an alt-coin.
Chapter 30, Building a Consortium Blockchain, we will discuss consortium blockchain.
To get the most out of this book
To complete this book successfully, students will require computer systems with at least an Intel Core i5 processor or equivalent, 8 GB RAM, and 35 GB available storage space. Along with this, you would require the following software:
- Operating System: Windows or above
- Windows Subsystem shell
- Litecoin
- Visual Studio
- npm
- truffle framework
- Ethereum-JS ganache-cli
- remix (remix.ethereum.org Sublime editor / Web Browser
- Node.js version 7.9.0 or higher
- Google Chrome version 55.0.2883 or higher
- Truffle version 3.1.2
- Parity version 1.7.0
- Rust version 1.16.0
Download the example code files
You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packt.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packt.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.
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The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/TrainingByPackt/Blockchain-Developers-Guide. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.
We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!
Conventions used
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.
CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "The WebDriver class provides constructors for each browser."
A block of code is set as follows:
difficulty = difficulty_1_target/current_target difficulty_1_target = 0x00000000FFFF0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
COMMANDS:
list Print summary of existing accounts
new Create a new account
update Update an existing account
import Import a private key into a new account
Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "If a user clicks on the Your Account option on the Home Webpage, the application will check whether they have already logged in."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear like this.
Note
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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