Blockchain Enabled Applications: Understand the Blockchain Ecosystem and How to Make it Work for You

Work with blockchain and understand its potential application beyond cryptocurrencies in the domains of healthcare, Internet of Things, finance, decentralized organizations, and open science. Featuring case studies and practical insights generated from a start-up spun off from the author’s own lab, this book covers a unique mix of topics not found in others and offers insight into how to overcome real hurdles that arise as the market and consumers grow accustomed to blockchain based start-ups.

You’ll start with a review of the historical origins of blockchain and explore the basic cryptography needed to make the blockchain work for Bitcoin. You will then learn about the technical advancements made in the surrounded ecosystem: the Ethereum virtual machine, Solidity, Colored Coins, the Hyperledger Project, Blockchain-as-a-service offered through IBM, Microsoft and more.

This book looks at the consequences of machine-to-machine transactions using the blockchain socially, technologically, economically and politically. Blockchain Enabled Applications provides you with a clear perspective of the ecosystem that has developed around the blockchain and the various industries it has penetrated.

What You’ll Learn

• Implement the code-base from Fabric and Sawtooth, two open source blockchain-efforts being developed under the Hyperledger Project.
• Evaluate the benefits of integrating blockchain with emerging technologies, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence in the cloud.
• Use the practical insights provided by the case studies to your own projects or start-up ideas.
• Set up a development environment to compile and manage projects.

Who This Book Is For

Developers who are interested in learning about the blockchain as a data-structure, the recent advancements being made and how to implement the code-base.

Decision makers within large corporations (product managers, directors or CIO level executives) interested in implementing the blockchain who need more practical insights and not just theory.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Behold the Dreamers
Chapter 2: The Gold Rush: Mining Bitcoin
Chapter 3: Foundations of Blockchain
Chapter 4: Unpacking Ethereum
Chapter 5: Decentralized Organizations
Chapter 6: The DAO Hacked
Chapter 7: Ethereum Tokens: High-Performance Computing
Chapter 8: Blockchain in Science
Chapter 9: Blockchain in Health Care
Chapter 10: The Hyperledger Project
Chapter 11: Recent Developments in Blockchain
Chapter 12: Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital
Appendix A: Building a Health Care Consortium
Appendix B: References