Blockchain Developer's Guide

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Title Page

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Blockchain Developer's Guide

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Contributors

About the authors

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Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

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Conventions used

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Blockchain 101

Processing a financial transaction

Ledger

Concept of a trustless system

Introducing blockchain

General elements of blockchain

Peer-to-peer network

Block

Block header

Addresses

Wallets

Transaction

Nodes

What does blockchain solve?

Types of blockchains

Public blockchain

Semi-private blockchain

Private blockchain

Consortium blockchain

Byzantine generals problem

Consensus

Blockchain in a nutshell

Benefits

Banking records

Medical records

Government records

Creative and copyright records

University degree records

Challenges

Complexity

Network scalability

Speed and cost

Double spending

Summary

Components and Structure of Blockchain

Blocks

The chain between blocks

Hashing and signatures

Digital signatures

What are digital keys?

Example block data

Example Ethereum block

Bitcoin block

Global state

Block time and block size

Blockchain miners

Blockchain validators

Smart contracts

Blockchain speed

How to calculate blockchain throughput

Comparisons with traditional networks

Summary

Decentralization Versus Distributed Systems

Distributed systems

Resiliency

Fault tolerance and failure isolation

Consensus and coordination

Backups

Consistency

Peer-to-peer systems

Decentralized systems

Principles of decentralized systems

Open access

Non-hierarchical

Ecosystem diversity

Transparency

Downsides

Speed

Censorship resistance

Chaos and non-determinism

Summary

Cryptography and Mechanics Behind Blockchain

Principles of security

Historical perspective – classical cryptography

Types of cryptography

Symmetric cryptography

Asymmetric (public-key) cryptography

Signatures

Hashing

The avalanche effect

Collisions

Hashing a block