Description
Book SynopsisLearn all about blockchain and its applications in cryptocurrency, healthcare, Internet of Things, finance, decentralized organizations, and more. Featuring case studies and practical insights, this book covers a unique mix of topics and offers insight into how to overcome hurdles that arise as the market and consumers grow accustomed to blockchain-based organizations and services.
The book is divided into three major sections. The first section provides a historical background to blockchain technology. You will start with a historical context to financial capital markets when Bitcoin was invented, followed by mining protocols, the need for consensus, hardware mining, etc. Next, a formal introduction to blockchain is provided covering transaction workflow, role of decentralized network, and payment verification. Then, we dive deep into a different implementation of a blockchain: Ethereum. The main technical features, such as Ethereum Virtual Machine, are presented a
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Behold the Deamers
Chapter Goal: Provide a backdrop for introducing blockhain and the basics of a decentralized app
Sub -Topics:
1. Financial crisis of 2008, the origins of bitcoin
2. Basics of private-public keys
3. What is a block, how is a block created
4. What's a blockchain-enabled application? What is a decentralized application?
Chapter 2: Gold Rush: Mining Bitcoin
Chapter Goal: Provide a technical introduction to mining and the mathematical background to hashes, block headers, and consensus
Sub -Topics:
1. Overview of mining, why is mining necessary for Bitcoin
2. What is consensus
3. Components of a block and a block header (mining components)
4. What are hashes and how are they used in Bitcoin
5. Hardware for mining (the gold rush part refers to the arms race that happened in hardware mining field).
Chapter 3: Foundations of a Blockchain
Chapter Goal: Provide a technical introduction to transaction workflow, a blockchain network, simple payment verification, merkel roots, and block identifiers
Sub -Topics:
1. What is a block header (block identifiers)
2. How does the network participate
3. A transaction workflow
4. Unspent transaction outputs, transaction propagation
5. Simple payment verification
6. Merkel roots, blockchain forks
Chapter 4: Unpacking Ethereum
Chapter Goal: Provide a technical introduction to Ethereum, the differences between a Bitcoin blockchain and Ethereum blockchain, internal states, Ethereum Virtual Machine, and dApps
Sub -Topics:
1. Overview of Ethereum
2. Proof of stake
3. Accounts and contract model in Ethereum
4. Global state, gas, internal storage
5. Ethereum Virtual Machine
6. Solidity programming language + Smart Contracts
7. World Computer Model and components
8. Blockchain as a service
9. Decentralized apps
10. Geth, Mist
Chapter 5: Decentralized Organizations (DAOs)
Chapter Goal: Provide a technical introduction to DAOs and Aragon for setting up a DAO, including updates to new implementations of decentralized organizations in 2020.
Sub -Topics:
1. What is a DAO
2. What is a blockchain organizations/companies
3. Aragon-core and Kernel
4. How do you make DAOs and other blockchain organizations using Aragon?
5. How do you operate DAOs?
Chapter 6: The DAO Hacked
Chapter Goal: Provide an overview to the vulnerabilities in the original DAO model, the conditions that led up to the hack, and the consequences to security hardening since.
Sub -Topics:
1. Concept of a DAO building on Vitalik’s concepts
2. Slock.it and its involvement in making the DAO
3. The Smart Contract for DAO
4. The code vulnerability responsible for the hack
5. Consequences of the hack
6. Ethereum splitting into ETC
Chapter 7: Ethereum Tokens: High Performance Computing (HPC)Chapter Goal: Provide an introduction to token in Ethereum by highlighting applications in HPC. Particularly, focus on Golem, SONM, and iEx.ec grid computing for off-chain computations and conflict resolution.
Sub -Topics:
1. Why tokens and what’s the value of using tokens
2. Introduction to tokens, ERC 20 compatibility
3. Token layer and an app layer
4. Prototype for tokens and HPC – Ethereum Computation Markets
5. Golem network, app registry, transaction framework, use-cases initially, and how the Smart Contract system ties them together
6. SONM network and fog computing, use-cases, Smart Contract system, buyer-miner-hub interactions, purchasing computational power, Superglobal architecture, and OS
7. iEx.ec, grid computing, sidechains, and how iEx.ec works
Chapter 8: Blockchain in Healthcare
Chapter Goal: Provide an introduction to areas in healthcare where using a blockchain can provide benefit - Patient workflows, insurance claims processing, lightning network, verifiable data audit
Sub -Topics:
1. Payer-provider-patient model, how claims work within this framework, and how will that change in the future
2. Patient workflow based on permissions, blockchain-based workflow of a simple EHR, how permissions are passed as a patient moves from a general physician to a specialist
3. Show how permissions work in blockchain insurance claims processing
4. Waste management in healthcare and claims processing
5. Concept of hotswitching, mentioning lightning network
6. How can blockchain be used to reduce economic waste
7. DeepMind’s Verifiable Data Audit as an alternative to blockchain
8. Blockchain to streamline business processes
Chapter 9: Blockchain in Science
Chapter Goal: Provide an introduction to major topics in science where blockchain can be beneficial – Reputation markets, reproducibility crisis, drug tracking, digital clinical trials
Sub -Topics:
1. Reproducibility crisis in science
2. Prediction markets in science – Augur and Gnosis
3. Initiatives to fix reproducibility traditionally
4. Clinical trials using the blockchain, colored coins to demonstrate workflow
5. Reputation systems using Blockchain
6. Pharma drug tracking using blockchain
Chapter 10: Building Healthcare Companies on Blockchain
Chapter Goal: Interview with John Bass on how to build a healthcare company on the blockchain and lessons learned along the way.
Sub -Topics:
1. The makings of Hashed Health
2. Collaborative and consortium models
3. Working groups for high-risk, high-reward technologies
4. Governance models for Hashed Health consortia
5. Member participation
Chapter 11: Rise of Consortiums
Chapter Goal: Provide an overview of consortium models that have become popular in the blockchain industry, the challenges consortiums hope to solve, and advantages to individual members
Sub -Topics:
1. Collaborative and consortium models
2. Working groups for high-risk, high-reward technologies
3. Governance models for Hashed Health consortia
Chapter 12: The Hyperledger Project
Chapter Goal: Provide a broad overview of the Hyperledger Project and cover the rapid pace of developments since 2018 to the new products launched.
Sub -Topics:
1. Updates to all the components under Hyperledger umbrella including Fabric and Sawtooth
2. New consensus algorithm (PBFT)
3. Demo of Hyperledger Fabric Constructor
4. Does your business need a blockchain (flowcharts)?
5. Security in enterprise-grade Blockchains
6. Smart Contracts in Fabric
Chapter 13: Recent Advances in Blockchain
Chapter Goal: Provide a review of three major networks shaping the future of Blockchain – EOS.io with parallel processing virtual machine, chain-core with asset management, and Ivy Playground and Quorum with private–public transaction interfaces
Sub -Topics:
1. EOS.io, how the tech works, the new advances such as parallel processing of smart contracts and instructions
2. Chain Core, managing assets on blockchain, Ivy Playground as the new programming language to manage assets
3. Quorum by JP Morgan, how the consensus works, how private transactions work, zero-knowledge proofs, Ethereum Enterprise Alliance
Chapter 14: Blockchain Games
Chapter Goal: Provide a review of the educational games and APIs that have been released to teach the basic concepts of a blockchain network
Sub -Topics:
1. Components of a blockchain game
2. Formal education and training in blockchain
3. Formalization of blockchain study with journals and research articles
4. Review of major blockchain games (3)
Chapter 15: Cloud Blockchains
Chapter Goal: Provide an overview of how to click and deploy a blockchain using cloud services and give a visual tutorial on how to set it up
Sub -Topics:
1. Demo of Hyperledger Fabric Constructor on IBM Bluemix
2. Azure blockchain deployment
3. Amazon ECS cloud blockchain deployment
4. Setting up your own blockchain test-lab and budget it
Chapter 16: Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital
Chapter Goal: Provide an overview of the financial markets and ICOs, focusing particularly on how to set up ICOs, how to manage them, advances to financial regulation technology based on blockchain
Sub -Topics:
1. Dr. Hooper’s chapter focused on ICOs and financial capital markets
2. Setting up ICOs, major pitfalls to avoid, and challenges to overcome during an ICO
3. Major tech advances in financial markets using blockchain
4. Reg Tech
Afterword – Call to Action and The Future of Blockchain
