Mastering blockchain : distributed ledgers, decentralization and smart contracts explained / Imran Bashir.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bashir, Imran, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Electronic data processing.

Punched card systems.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (531 pages)

Edition:

1st edition

Place of Publication:

Birmingham, [England] ; Mumbai, [India] : Packt, 2017.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Distributed ledgers, decentralization and smart contracts explained About This Book Get to grips with the underlying technical principles and implementations of blockchain. Build powerful applications using Ethereum to secure transactions and create smart contracts. Explore cryptography, mine cryptocurrencies, and solve scalability issues with this comprehensive guide. Who This Book Is For This book appeals to those who wish to build fast, highly secure, transactional applications. This book is for those who are familiar with the concept of blockchain and are comfortable with a programming language. What You Will Learn Master the theoretical and technical foundations of blockchain technology Fully comprehend the concept of decentralization, its impact and relationship with blockchain technology Experience how cryptography is used to secure data with practical examples Grasp the inner workings of blockchain and relevant mechanisms behind Bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrencies Understand theoretical foundations of smart contracts Identify and examine applications of blockchain technology outside of currencies Investigate alternate blockchain solutions including Hyperledger, Corda, and many more Explore research topics and future scope of blockchain technology In Detail Blockchain is a distributed database that enables permanent, transparent, and secure storage of data. The blockchain technology is the backbone of cryptocurrency – in fact, it's the shared public ledger upon which the entire Bitcoin network relies – and it's gaining popularity with people who work in finance, government, and the arts. Blockhchain technology uses cryptography to keep data secure. This book gives a detailed description of this leading technology and its implementation in the real world. This book begins with the technical foundations of blockchain, teaching you the fundamentals of cryptography and how it keeps data secure. You will learn about the mechanisms behind cryptocurrencies and how to develop applications using Ethereum, a decentralized virtual machine. You will explore different blockchain solutions and get an exclusive preview into Hyperledger, an upcoming blockchain solution from IBM and the Linux Foundation. You will also be shown how to implement blockchain beyond currencies, scability with blockchain, and the future scope of this fascinating and powerful technology. Style and approach This comprehensive guide allows you to build smart blockchain appl...

Contents:

Cover

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

Customer Feedback

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Blockchain 101

Distributed systems

CAP theorem

Byzantine Generals problem

Consensus

Consensus mechanisms

Types of consensus mechanism

The history of blockchain

Electronic cash

The concept of electronic cash

Introduction to blockchain

Various technical definitions of blockchains

Generic elements of a blockchain

Addresses

Transaction

Block

Peer-to-peer network

Scripting or programming language

Virtual machine

State machine

Nodes

Smart contracts

Features of a blockchain

Distributed consensus

Transaction verification

Platforms for smart contracts

Transferring value between peers

Generating cryptocurrency

Smart property

Provider of security

Immutability

Uniqueness

Applications of blockchain technology

How blockchains accumulate blocks

Tiers of blockchain technology

Blockchain 1.0

Blockchain 2.0

Blockchain 3.0

Generation X (Blockchain X)

Types of blockchain

Public blockchains

Private blockchains

Semi-private blockchains

Sidechains

Permissioned ledger

Distributed ledger

Shared ledger

Fully private and proprietary blockchains

Tokenized blockchains

Tokenless blockchains

Consensus in blockchain

Proof of Work

Proof of Stake

Delegated Proof of Stake

Proof of Elapsed Time

Deposit-based consensus

Proof of importance

Federated consensus or federated Byzantine consensus

Reputation-based mechanisms

Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance

CAP theorem and blockchain

Benefits and limitations of blockchain

Decentralization

Transparency and trust

High availability

Highly secure.

Simplification of current paradigms

Faster dealings

Cost saving

Challenges and limitations of blockchain technology

Summary

Chapter 2: Decentralization

Decentralization using blockchain

Methods of decentralization

Disintermediation

Through competition

Routes to decentralization

How to decentralize

Examples

Blockchain and full ecosystem decentralization

Storage

Communication

Computation

Smart contract

Decentralized organizations

Decentralized autonomous organizations

Decentralized autonomous corporations

Decentralized autonomous societies

Decentralized applications

Requirements of a decentralized application

Operations of a DAPP

KYC-Chain

OpenBazaar

Lazooz

Platforms for decentralization

Ethereum

Maidsafe

Lisk

Chapter 3: Cryptography and Technical Foundations

Introduction

Mathematics

Set

Group

Field

A finite field

Order

Prime fields

Ring

A cyclic group

An abelian group

Modular arithmetic

Cryptography

Confidentiality

Integrity

Authentication

Entity authentication

Data origin authentication

Non-repudiation

Accountability

Cryptographic primitives

Symmetric cryptography

Stream ciphers

Block ciphers

Block encryption mode

Keystream generation modes

Message authentication modes

Cryptographic hashes

Electronic code book

Cipher block chaining

Counter mode

Data Encryption Standard (DES)

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

AES steps

An OpenSSL example of how to encrypt and decrypt using AES

Asymmetric cryptography

Integer factorization

Discrete logarithm

Elliptic curves

Public and private keys

RSA

Encryption and decryption using RSA

Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)

Mathematics behind ECC

Point addition.

Point doubling

Discrete logarithm problem

How to generate public and private key pairs

Private key

Generate public key

How to encrypt and decrypt using RSA with OpenSSL

Encryption

Decrypt

ECC using OpenSSL

ECC private and public key pair

Private key generation

Hash functions

Compression of arbitrary messages into fixed length digest

Easy to compute

Pre-image resistance

Second pre-image resistance

Collision resistance

Message Digest (MD)

Secure Hash Algorithms (SHAs)

Design of Secure Hash Algorithms (SHA)

SHA-256

Design of SHA3 (Keccak)

OpenSSL example of hash functions

Message Authentication codes (MACs)

MACs using block ciphers

HMACs (hash-based MACs)

Merkle trees

Patricia trees

Distributed hash tables (DHTs)

Digital signatures

Sign then encrypt

Encrypt then sign

Elliptic Curve Digital signature algorithm (ECDSA)

How to generate a digital signature

ECDSA using OpenSSL

Homomorphic encryption

Signcryption

Zero knowledge proofs

Blind signatures

Encoding schemes

Financial markets and trading

Trading

Exchanges

Orders and order properties

Order management and routing systems

Components of a trade

General attributes

Economic

Sales

Counterparty

Trade life cycle

Order anticipators

Market manipulation

Chapter 4: Bitcoin

Bitcoin

Bitcoin definition

Keys and addresses

Public keys in bitcoin

Private keys in bitcoin

Bitcoin currency units

Base58Check encoding

Vanity addresses

Transactions

The transaction life cycle

The transaction structure

The script language

Commonly used Opcodes

Types of transaction

Coinbase transactions

What is UTXO?

Transaction fee

Contracts

Transaction malleability.

Transaction pools

Blockchain

The structure of a block

The structure of a block header

The genesis block

Mining

Task of miners

Synching up with the network

The mining algorithm

The hashing rate

Mining systems

CPU

GPU

FPGA

ASICs

Mining pools

The bitcoin network

Wallets

Wallet types

Non-deterministic wallets

Deterministic wallets

Hierarchical deterministic wallets

Brain wallets

Paper wallets

Hardware wallets

Online wallets

Mobile wallets

Bitcoin payments

Bitcoin investment and buying and selling bitcoins

Bitcoin installation

Setting up a bitcoin node

Setting up the source code

Setting up bitcoin.conf

Starting up a node in testnet

Starting up a node in regtest

Starting up a node in live mainnet

Experimenting with bitcoin-cli

Bitcoin programming and the command-line interface

Bitcoin improvement proposals (BIPs)

Chapter 5: Alternative Coins

Theoretical foundations

Alternatives to Proof of Work

Proof of Storage

Proof of coinage

Proof of deposit

Proof of burn

Proof of activity

Non-outsourceable puzzles

Difficulty adjustment and retargeting algorithms

Kimoto Gravity Well

Dark Gravity Wave

DigiShield

MIDAS

Bitcoin limitations

Privacy and anonymity

Mixing protocols

Third-party mixing protocols

Inherent anonymity

Extended protocols on top of bitcoin

Colored coins

Development of altcoins

Consensus algorithms

Hashing algorithms

Difficulty adjustment algorithms

Inter-block time

Block rewards

Reward halving rate

Block size and transaction size

Interest rate

Coin age

Total supply of coins

Namecoin

Trading Namecoins

Obtaining Namecoins.

Generating Namecoin records

Litecoin

Primecoin

Trading Primecoin

Mining guide

Zcash

Trading Zcash

Address generation

GPU mining

Downloading and compiling nheqminer

Chapter 6: Smart Contracts

History

Definition

Ricardian contracts

Smart contract templates

Oracles

Smart Oracles

Deploying smart contracts on a blockchain

The DAO

Chapter 7: Ethereum 101

Ethereum clients and releases

The Ethereum stack

Ethereum blockchain

Currency (ETH and ETC)

Forks

Gas

The consensus mechanism

The world state

The account state

Nonce

Balance

Storageroot

Codehash

gasPrice

gasLimit

To

Value

Signature

Init

Data

Contract creation transaction

Message call transaction

Elements of the Ethereum blockchain

Ethereum virtual machine (EVM)

Execution environment

Machine state

The iterator function

Runtime byte code

Opcodes and their meaning

Arithmetic operations

Logical operations

Cryptographic operations

Environmental information

Block Information

Stack, memory, storage and flow operations

Push operations

Duplication operations

Exchange operations

Logging operations

System operations

Precompiled contracts

The elliptic curve public key recovery function

The SHA-256 bit hash function

The RIPEMD-160 bit hash function

The identity function

Accounts

Types of accounts

Block header

Parent hash

Ommers hash

Beneficiary

State root

Transactions root

Receipts root

Logs bloom

Difficulty

Number

Gas limit

Gas used

Timestamp

Extra data

Mixhash

Transaction receipts

The post-transaction state

Set of logs

The bloom filter.

Transaction validation and execution.

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed April 5, 2017).

ISBN:

9781787129290

1787129292

OCLC:

981928401