"Oh my gosh! I am going to become a blockchain expert". That was me after reading the first two chapters of Blockchain in Action. Well, after finishing the book, I haven't become an expert just yet, but I was grounded with the knowlegde and inspiration to become one.
Bina Ramamurthy, the author of Blockchain in action started with explaining the concept of blockchain in simple terms and with relatable examples. Then she took me on a step by step journey of building smart contracts and Decentralized Applications (DApps) using standard engineering design principles.
Blockchain seats on over four decades of research in mathematics, and majorly cryptography. She explained the concept of cryptography and how they are used to enforce security and privacy in blockchain. She explain symmetric and asymmetric encryption keys and how asymmetric encryption is used to generate the public-private key pair used in blockchain to create accounts and signing transactions.
With the help of the book, I built smart contracts addressing real world scenarios such as electronic voting, micropayment channels and electronic educational certification. Each of these examples were progressively converted to a full Decentralized Application. During building, the book introduced me to tools such as Truffle for compliling and testing smart contracts and MetaMask for crypto account management. These smart contracts were deployed on Ganache, a local blockchain network, and a public blockchain networks like the ropsten ethereum network.
The book also explored Fungible and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Fungible tokens are tokens that are not individually unique and are exchangeable with units of the same kind. Examples are cryptocurrency tokens(Bitcoin, Ethereum). While Non-Fungible tokens are tokens that represent assests that can appreciate or depreciate in value such as lands, art pieces etc. She went further to explaining how to create a fugible tokens and Non-fugible tokens using ethereum standards (ERC20 and ERC721 respectively).
Bina explored the concept of on-chain and off-chain data, explaining that on-chain data are data stored on the blockchain while off-chain data are data in a decentralized application that are stored outside the blockchain. She emphazied the importance of designing a decentralized application with minimal on-chain data so as not to overload the blockchain.
The book explored the decentralized identity of blockchain and the different types of concensus e.g proof of work, proof of authority, and proof of stake. It explained how the concensus used in bitcoin and ethereum are affecting their efficiency and what steps have been taken to solve these problems. She ended with analysing the future of blockchain technology and the different aspects of blockchain that needs innovations from people like you and me.
Bina Ramamurthy is a professor in the university of Buffalo, and she has successfully converted me into the blockchain ecosystem with her work. Like a great teacher, she brought her experience in building distributed systems and demonstrated how to build a scalable blockchain application using design principles.
I will read this book as many times as possible and use it as a reference throughout my career in blockchain. It is a book that demystifies the most advance concepts in blockchain and gives a template of how to build any decentralized application. If you are a developer looking to learn about blockchain technology and also develop smart contracts, this book is for you.
You can get your own copy of Blockchain in Action with 35% discount. Use the discount code: bldrayfocus.
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