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

✍ Scribed by Akira Summers

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 251
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

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