Blockchain For Dummies, 2ed
ISBN: 9788126527755
264 pages

Description
Blockchain has become the buzzword in the world of financial technology and transaction security. Blockchain For Dummies provides a fast way to catch up with the essentials of this quickly evolving tech. Written by an author involved in founding and analyzing blockchain technologies, this book serves to help those who need to understand what a blockchain can do (and can't do), how it drives the world of smart contracts and cryptocurrencies, and how blockchain is disrupting huge industries.
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Part 1: Getting Started with Blockchain
Chapter 1: Introducing Blockchain
- Beginning at the Beginning: What Blockchains are
- What blockchains do
- Why blockchains matter
- The Structure of Blockchains
- Blockchain Applications
- The Blockchain Life Cycle
- Consensus: The Driving Force of Blockchains
- Blockchains in Use
- Current blockchain uses
- Future blockchain applications
Chapter 2: Picking a Blockchain
- Where Blockchains Add Substance
- Determining your needs
- Defining your goal
- Choosing a Solution
- Drawing a blockchain decision tree
- Making a plan
Chapter 3: Getting Your Hands on Blockchain
- Diving into Blockchain Technology
- Creating a secure environment
- Buying your first Bitcoin
- Securing and Exchanging Your Cryptocurrency
- Downloading Jaxx
- Securing your Jaxx wallet
- Transferring Bitcoin to Jaxx
- Trading Bitcoin for Ether
- Loading up your MetaMask account
- Setting up a CryptoKitties account
- Building a Private Blockchain with Docker and Ethereum
- Preparing your computer
- Building your blockchain
Part 2: Developing Your Knowledge
Chapter 4: Beholding the Bitcoin Blockchain
- Getting a Brief History of the Bitcoin Blockchain
- The New Bitcoin: Bitcoin Cash
- Debunking Some Common Bitcoin Misconceptions
- Bitcoin: The New Wild West
- Fake sites
- No, you first!
- Get-rich-quick schemes
- Mining for Bitcoins
- Making Your First Paper Wallet
Chapter 5: Encountering the Ethereum Blockchain
- Exploring the Brief History of Ethereum
- Ethereum: The Open-Source World Wide Computer
- Decentralized applications: Welcome to the future
- The power of decentralized autonomous organizations
- Hacking a Blockchain
- Understanding smart contracts
- Discovering the cryptocurrency Ether
- Getting Up and Running on Ethereum
- Mining for ether
- Setting up your Ethereum wallet
- Building Your First Decentralized Autonomous Organization
- Test net and congress
- Governance and voting
- Uncovering the Future of DAOs
- Putting money in a DAO
- Building smarter smart contracts
- Finding bugs in the system
- Creating Your Own ERC20 Tokens
- Seeing up your GitHub account
- Requesting KETH on the Gitter Faucet
- Creating your tokens
Chapter 6: Riding the Waves Blockchain
- Seeing How the Waves Blockchain Differs from Other Blockchains
- Unleashing the Full Power of Waves
- Setting up your Waves wallet
- Backing up your wallet
- Uncovering Your Wallet's Features
- Transferring crypto assets
- Using a decentralized exchange
- Creating and Leasing Out Your Own Cryptocurrency
Chapter 7: Finding the Factom Blockchain
- A Matter of Trust
- The purpose of the Factom blockchain: Publishing anything
- Incentives of federation
- Building on Factom
- Authenticating documents and building identities using APIs
- Getting to know the Factoid: Not a normal cryptocurrency
- Anchoring your application
- Publishing on Factom
- Building transparency in the mortgage industry
- Verifying physical documents: dLoc with Factom
Chapter 8: Examining the EOS Blockchain
- Getting Familiar with EOS
- New mining versus old mining
- The 21 block producers
- Setting Up EOS Voting for Block Producers
- Setting up the Greymass voting tool
- Voting for a block producer
- Introducing the EOS Decentralized Application Collection
- Everipedia: The next-generation encyclopedia
- Decentralized EOS games
Part 3: Powerful Blockchain Platforms
Chapter 9: Getting Your Hands on Hyperledger
- Getting to Know Hyperledger
- Identifying Key Hyperledger Projects
- Focusing on Fabric
- Investigating the Iroha project
- Diving into Sawtooth Lake
- Building Your System in Fabric
- Building asset tracking with Hyperledger Composer
- Working with Smart Contracts on Hyperledger
- Step 1: Setting up an auction network
- Step 2: Setting up auction windows
- Step 3: Creating an auctioneer
- Step 4: Creating two participants
- Step 5: Creating a new asset
- Step 6: Creating a new listing
- Step 7: Auctioning off the car
- Step 8: Closing your auction
Chapter 10: Applying Microsoft Azure
- Bletchley: The Modular Blockchain Fabric
- Cryptlets for encrypting and authenticating
- Utility and Contract Cryptlets and CrytoDelegates
- Building in the Azure Ecosystem
- Getting Started with Chain on Azure
- Installing Chain's distributed ledger
- Creating your own private network
- Using financial services on Azure's Chain
- Deploying Blockchain Tools on Azure
- Exploring Ethereum on Azure
- Cortana: Your analytics machine learning tool
- Visualizing your data with Power BI
- Managing your access on Azure's Active Directory
Chapter 11: Getting Busy on IBM Bluemix
- Business Blockchain on Bluemix
- Your isolated environment
- Bluemix use cases
- Watson's Smart Blockchain
- Building Your Starter Network on Big Blue
Part 4: Industry Impacts
Chapter 12: Financial Technology
- Hauling Out Your Crystal Ball: Future Banking Trends
- Moving money faster: Across borders and more
- Creating permanent history
- Going International: Global Financial Products
- Border-free payroll
- Faster and better trade
- Guaranteed payments
- Micropayments: The new nature of transactions
- Squeezing Out Fraud
Chapter 13: Real Estate
- Eliminating Title Insurance
- Protected industries
- Consumers and Fannie Mae
- Mortgages in the Blockchain World
- Reducing your origination costs
- Knowing your last-known document
- Forecasting Regional Trends
- The United States and Europe: Infrastructure congestion
- China: First out of the gate
- The developing world: Roadblocks to blockchain
Chapter 14: Insurance
- Precisely Tailoring Coverage
- Insuring the individual
- The new world of micro insurance
- Witnessing for You: The Internet of Things
- IoT projects in insurance
- Implications of actionable big data
- Taking Out the Third Party in Insurance
- Decentralized security
- Crowdfunded coverage
- The implications of DAO insurance
Chapter 15: Government
- The Smart Cities of Asia
- Singapore satellite cities in India
- China's big data problem
- The Battle for the Financial Capital of the World
- London's early foresight
- The regulatory sandbox of Singapore
- The Dubai 2020 initiative
- Bitlicense regulatory framework: New York City
- Friendly legal structure of Malta
- Securing the World's Borders
- The Department of Homeland Security and the identity of things
- Passports of the future
- The new feeder document
Chapter 16: Other Industries
- Lean Governments
- Singapore's Smart Nation project
- Estonia's e-Residency
- Better notarization in China
- The Trust Layer for the Internet
- Spam-free email
- Owning your identity
- Oracle of the Blockchain
- Trusted authorship
- Intellectual property rights
Part 5: The Part of Tens
Chapter 17: Ten (or So) Free Blockchain Resources
- Ethereum
- DigiKnow
- Blockchain University
- Bitcoin Core
- Blockchain Alliance
- Multichain Blog
- HiveMind
- Smith + Crown
- Unchained and Unconfirmed Podcasts
Chapter 18: The Ten Rules to Never Break on the Blockchain
- Don't Use Cryptocurrency or Blockchains to Skirt the Law
- Keep Your Contracts as Simple as Possible
- Publish with Great Caution
- Back Up, Back Up, Back Up Your Private Keys
- Triple-Check the Address Before Sending Currency
- Take Care When Using Exchanges
- Beware Wi-Fi
- Identify Your Blockchain Dev
- Don't Get Suckered
- Don't Trade Tokens Unless You Know What You're Doing
Chapter 19: Ten Top Blockchain Projects
- The R3 Consortium
- T ZERO: Overstocking the Stock Market
- Blockstream's Distributed Systems
- MadHive
- Blockdaemon
- Gemini Dollar and Exchange
- Decentraland
- TransferWise
- Lightning Network
- Bitcoin Cash
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