by Tiana Laurence
Getting Started with Blockchain
Introducing Blockchain
Picking a Blockchain
Getting Your Hands on Blockchain
Developing Your Knowledge
Beholding the Bitcoin Blockchain
Encountering the Ethereum Blockchain
Regarding the Ripple Blockchain
Finding the Factom Blockchain
Digging into DigiByte
Powerful Blockchain Platforms
Getting Your Hands on Hyperledger
Applying Microsoft Azure
Getting Busy on IBM Bluemix
Industry Impacts
Financial Technology
Real Estate
Insurance
Government
Other Industries
The Part of Tens
Ten Free Blockchain Resources
The Ten Rules to Never Break on the Blockchain
Ten Top Blockchain Projects
Index
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Book Details
Price
|
2.00 USD |
|---|---|
Pages
| 225 p |
File Size
|
11,409 KB |
File Type
|
PDF format |
ISBN
| 978-1-119-36559-4 (pbk) 978-1-119-36561-7 (ebk) 978-1-119-36560-0 (ebk) |
Copyright
| 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc |
Welcome to Blockchain For Dummies! If you want to find out what blockchains
are and the basics of how to use them, this is the book for
you. Many people think blockchains are difficult to understand. They
might also think that blockchains are just about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but
they’re are so much more. Anyone can master the basics of blockchains.
In this book, you find helpful advice for navigating the blockchain world and
cryptocurrencies that run them. You also find practical step-by-step tutorials that
will build your understanding of how blockchains work and where they add value.
You don’t need a background in programming, economics, or world affairs to
understand this book, but I do touch on all these subjects because blockchain
technology intersects all of them.
About This Book
This book explains the basics of blockchains, smart contracts, and cryptocurrencies.
You probably picked up this book because you’ve heard about blockchains,
know they’re important, but have no idea what they are, how they work, or why you
should care. This book answers all these questions in easy-to-understand terms.
This book is a bit different than just about any other blockchain book on the market.
It provides a survey of all the key blockchains in the public market, how
they work, what they do, and something useful you can try with them today.
This book also covers the landscape of blockchain technology and points out some
of the key things to be aware of for your own blockchain projects. Here, you find
out how to install an Ethereum wallet, create and execute a smart contract, make
entries into Bitcoin and Factom, and earn cryptocurrencies.
You don’t have to read the book cover to cover.
Just flip to the subject that you’re interested in.
Finally, within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two
lines of text. If you’re reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web
pages, simply key in the web address exactly as it’s noted in the text, pretending
as though the line break doesn’t exist. If you’re reading this as an e-book, you’ve
got it easy — just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION. 1
About This Book. 1
Foolish Assumptions. 2
Icons Used in This Book. 2
Beyond the Book. 3
Where to Go from Here. 3
PART 1: GETTING STARTED WITH BLOCKCHAIN . 5
CHAPTER 1: Introducing Blockchain. 7
Beginning at the Beginning: What Blockchains Are. 7
What blockchains do. 8
Why blockchains matter. 9
The Structure of Blockchains. 10
Blockchain Applications. 11
The Blockchain Life Cycle. 11
Consensus: The Driving Force of Blockchains. 12
Blockchains in Use. 14
Current blockchain uses. 14
Future blockchain applications. 15
CHAPTER 2: Picking a Blockchain. 17
Where Blockchains Add Substance. 17
Determining your needs. 18
Defining your goal. 19
Choosing a Solution . 19
Drawing a blockchain decision tree. 21
Making a plan. 22
CHAPTER 3: Getting Your Hands on Blockchain. 25
Diving into the Bitcoin Blockchain. 25
Creating your first Bitcoin wallet. 26
Creating a second Bitcoin wallet. 27
Generating a Bitcoin vanity address. 27
Transferring your vanity address . 28
Making an entry into the Bitcoin blockchain. 29
Reading a blockchain entry in Bitcoin .29
Using Smart Contracts with Bitcoin . 30
Building your first smart bond. .31
Checking the status of your contract. 33
Building a Private Blockchain with Docker and Ethereum . 34
Preparing your computer. 34
Building your blockchain . 36
PART 2: DEVELOPING YOUR KNOWLEDGE. 39
CHAPTER 4: Beholding the Bitcoin Blockchain . 41
Getting a Brief History of the Bitcoin Blockchain. 42
Debunking Some Common Bitcoin Misconceptions. 45
Bitcoin: The New Wild West. 47
Fake sites . 47
No, you first!. 47
Get-rich-quick schemes . 48
Mining for Bitcoins . 48
Making Your First Paper Wallet. 49
CHAPTER 5: Encountering the Ethereum Blockchain . 51
Exploring the Brief History of Ethereum. 52
Ethereum: The Open-Source World Wide Computer. 53
Decentralized applications: Welcome to the future. 54
The power of decentralized autonomous organizations. 54
Hacking a Blockchain . 57
Understanding smart contracts . 58
Discovering the cryptocurrency Ether . 58
Getting Up and Running on Ethereum. 59
Mining for ether. 59
Setting up your Ethereum wallet. 60
Building Your First Decentralized Autonomous Organization. 60
Test net and congress. 61
Governance and voting 62
Uncovering the Future of DAOs . 63
Putting money in a DAO. 63
Building smarter smart contracts. 64
Finding bugs in the system . 64
CHAPTER 6: Regarding the Ripple Blockchain. 65
Getting a Brief History of the Ripple Blockchain. 66
Ripple: It’s All About Trust . 67
Seeing How Ripple Differs from Other Blockchains. 68
Unleashing the Full Power of Ripple. 71
Exercising Caution with Ripple . 72
CHAPTER 7: Finding the Factom Blockchain. 75
A Matter of Trust. 76
The purpose of the Factom blockchain: Publishing anything. 77
Incentives of federation. 78
Building on Factom. 81
Authenticating documents and building identities using APIs. 81
Getting to know the Factoid: Not a normal token . 81
Anchoring your application. 82
Publishing on Factom. 82
Building transparency in the mortgage industry . 84
Verifying physical documents: dLoc with Factom. 86
CHAPTER 8: Digging into DigiByte. 89
Getting Familiar with DigiByte: The Fast Blockchain . 90
Mining on DigiByte . 91
Signing Documents on DigiByte’s DiguSign. 94
Earning DigiBytes While Gaming. 95
PART 3: POWERFUL BLOCKCHAIN PLATFORMS. 97
CHAPTER 9: Getting Your Hands on Hyperledger. 99
Getting to Know Hyperledger: Dreams of a Hyper Future . 100
Focusing on Fabric. 101
Building your system in Fabric 102
Diving into chaincode development. 102
Investigating the Iroha Project 104
Introducing Sumeragi: The new consensus algorithm 104
Developing mobile apps. 105
Diving into Sawtooth Lake. 106
Exploring the consensus algorithm: Proof of Elapsed Time. 107
Deploying Sawtooth . 107
CHAPTER 10: Applying Microsoft Azure. 109
Bletchley: The Modular Blockchain Fabric. 109
Cryptlets for encrypting and authenticating. 111
Utility and Contract Cryptlets and CrytoDelegates. 112
Building in the Azure Ecosystem. 113
Getting Started with Chain on Azure . 114
Installing Chain’s distributed ledger. 115
Creating your own private network . 115
Using financial services on Azure’s Chain . 116
Deploying Blockchain Tools on Azure . 116
Exploring Ethereum on Azure. 116
Cortana: Your analytics machine learning tool. 117
Visualizing your data with Power BI. 117
Managing your access on Azure’s Active Directory . 118
CHAPTER 11: Getting Busy on IBM Bluemix. 119
Business Blockchain on Bluemix. 119
Your isolated environment . 120
Bluemix use cases. 121
Watson’s Smart Blockchain. 122
Building Your Starter Network on Big Blue. 124
PART 4: INDUSTRY IMPACTS. 129
CHAPTER 12: Financial Technology. 131
Hauling Out Your Crystal Ball: Future Banking Trends . 131
Moving money faster: Across borders and more. 133
Creating permanent history. 134
Going International: Global Financial Products . 135
Border-free payroll. 136
Faster and better trade. 137
Guaranteed payments. 138
Micropayments: The new nature of transactions. 138
Squeezing Out Fraud . 139
CHAPTER 13: Real Estate. 141
Eliminating Title Insurance. 141
Protected industries. 142
Consumers and Fannie Mae . 144
Mortgages in the Blockchain World. 144
Reducing your origination costs. 145
Knowing your last-known document. 145
Forecasting Regional Trends. 146
The United States and Europe: Infrastructure congestion. 147
China: First out of the gate. 148
The developing world: Roadblocks to blockchain. 148
CHAPTER 14: Insurance . 151
Precisely Tailoring Coverage. 151
Insuring the individual . 152
The new world of micro insurance. 153
Witnessing for You: The Internet of Things. 154
IoT projects in insurance . 155
Implications of actionable big data. 155
Taking Out the Third Party in Insurance . 156
Decentralized security . 156
Crowdfunded coverage . 156
The implications of DAO insurance. 157
CHAPTER 15: Government. 159
The Smart Cities of Asia. 159
Singapore satellite cities in India. 161
China’s big data problem. 162
The Battle for the Financial Capital of the World. 163
London’s early foresight. 163
The regulatory sandbox of Singapore . 164
The Dubai 2020 initiative. 165
Bitlicense regulatory framework: New York City . 167
Securing the World’s Borders . 168
The Department of Homeland Security
and the identity of things. 168
Passports of the future. 169
The new feeder document. 169
CHAPTER 16: Other Industries. 171
Lean Governments. 171
Singapore’s Smart Nation project. 172
Estonia’s e-Residency . 173
Better notarization in China. 174
The Trust Layer for the Internet. 174
Spam-free email. 175
Owning your identity. 176
Oracle of the Blockchain .176
Trusted authorship. 177
Intellectual property rights. 177
PART 5: THE PART OF TENS. 179
CHAPTER 17: Ten Free Blockchain Resources. 181
Factom University. 181
Ethereum 101 .182
Build on Ripple. 182
Programmable Money by Ripple. 182
DigiKnow. 183
Blockchain University. 183
Bitcoin Core. 183
Blockchain Alliance. 183
Multichain Blog . 184
HiveMind. 184
CHAPTER 18: The Ten Rules to Never Break on the Blockchain. 185
Don’t Use Cryptocurrency or Blockchains to Skirt the Law. 185
Keep Your Contracts as Simple as Possible. 186
Publish with Great Caution . 187
Back Up, Back Up, Back Up Your Private Keys . 187
Triple-Check the Address Before Sending Currency . 189
Take Care When Using Exchanges. 189
Beware Wi-Fi. 190
Identify Your Blockchain Dev. 190
Don’t Get Suckered. 190
Don’t Trade Tokens Unless You Know What You’re Doing. 191
CHAPTER 19: Ten Top Blockchain Projects. 193
The R3 Consortium. 193
T ZERO: Overstocking the Stock Market. 194
Blockstream’s Distributed Systems 195
OpenBazaar’s Blockchain. 196
Code Valley: Find Your Coder . 196
Bitfury’s Digital Assets. 197
Any Coin Can ShapeShift . 198
Machine-Payable Apps on 21 . 198
Anonymous Transactions on Dash. 199
ConsenSys: Decentralized Applications. 200
INDEX . 201
Bookscreen
Author’s Acknowledgments
This book is the product of many people’s ideas and work. It would not have been
possible without the open and supportive blockchain and cryptocurrency world.
I’d like to thank specifically Paul Snow, Peter Kirby, Brian Deery, and David
Johnston for the countless hours spent teaching me about blockchain and cryptography.
I’d also like to thank Abhi Dobhal, Lawrence Rufrano, Ryan Fugger,
Charley Cooper, Alyse Killeen, Jeremy Kandah, Clemens Wan, Greg Wallace, Brian
Behlendorf, Amir Chetrit, Jared Tate, Casey Lawlor, and Scott Robinson for the
direction and guidance in the evolving blockchain space and for taking time out of
their busy lives to review and sanity-check my work.
This book also took a lot of editing. I’m not kidding it really took a lot of editing.
My project editor, Elizabeth Kuball, did a great job keeping me on task and on
schedule, and Steve Hayes, my executive editor, made the whole book possible. I’d
also like to thank Scott Robinson again for his thorough technical review and
excellent suggestions, as well as editor Pat O’Brien and all the other behind-thescenes
people, who did thankless jobs to bring this book about. I’m forever in their debit.
About the Author
Tiana Laurence is a co-founder of Factom, Inc., and was an early Bitcoin enthusiast.
Her passion is growing great companies. A serial entrepreneur, Tiana started
her first business at 16. She loves helping young aspiring entrepreneurs learn
about business and technology. Tiana has a BA in Business and Leadership from
Portland State University. When Tiana is not working on her businesses or being
nerdy, she can be found running or rock climbing in Austin, Texas.