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 12
The Blockchain Life Cycle 12
Consensus: The Driving Force of Blockchains 13
Blockchains in Use 15
Current blockchain uses 16
Future blockchain applications 16
Chapter 2: Picking a Blockchain 19
Where Blockchains Add Substance 19
Determining your needs 20
Defining your goal 21
Choosing a Solution 22
Drawing a blockchain decision tree 23
Making a plan 24
Chapter 3: Getting Your Hands on Blockchain 27
Diving into Blockchain Technology 28
Creating a secure environment 28
Buying your first Bitcoin 31
Securing and Exchanging Your Cryptocurrency 32
Downloading Jaxx 33
Securing your Jaxx wallet 33
Transferring Bitcoin to Jaxx 34
Trading Bitcoin for Ether 35
Loading up your MetaMask account 35
Setting up a CryptoKitties account 36
Building a Private Blockchain with Docker and Ethereum 38
Preparing your computer 39
Building your blockchain 41
Part 2: Developing Your Knowledge 43
Chapter 4: Beholding the Bitcoin Blockchain 45
Getting a Brief History of the Bitcoin Blockchain 46
The New Bitcoin: Bitcoin Cash 48
Debunking Some Common Bitcoin Misconceptions 50
Bitcoin: The New Wild West 51
Fake sites 52
No, you first! 52
Get-rich-quick schemes 52
Mining for Bitcoins 53
Making Your First Paper Wallet 54
Chapter 5: Encountering the Ethereum Blockchain 57
Exploring the Brief History of Ethereum 58
Ethereum: The Open-Source World Wide Computer 59
Decentralized applications: Welcome to the future 60
The power of decentralized autonomous organizations 61
Hacking a Blockchain 64
Understanding smart contracts 64
Discovering the cryptocurrency Ether 65
Getting Up and Running on Ethereum 65
Mining for ether 66
Setting up your Ethereum wallet 66
Building Your First Decentralized Autonomous Organization 67
Test net and congress 68
Governance and voting 69
Uncovering the Future of DAOs 69
Putting money in a DAO 70
Building smarter smart contracts 70
Finding bugs in the system 71
Creating Your Own ERC20 Tokens 71
Seeing up your GitHub account 71
Requesting KETH on the Gitter Faucet 72
Creating your tokens 73
Chapter 6: Riding the Waves Blockchain 77
Seeing How the Waves Blockchain Differs from Other Blockchains 78
Unleashing the Full Power of Waves 79
Setting up your Waves wallet 80
Backing up your wallet 80
Uncovering Your Wallet's Features 81
Transferring crypto assets 82
Using a decentralized exchange 82
Creating and Leasing Out Your Own Cryptocurrency 85
Chapter 7: Finding the Factom Blockchain 87
A Matter of Trust 88
The purpose of the Factom blockchain: Publishing anything 89
Incentives of federation 90
Building on Factom 93
Authenticating documents and building identities using APIs 93
Getting to know the Factoid: Not a normal cryptocurrency 93
Anchoring your application 94
Publishing on Factom 94
Building transparency in the mortgage industry 96
Verifying physical documents: dLoc with Factom 98
Chapter 8: Examining the EOS Blockchain 101
Getting Familiar with EOS 102
New mining versus old mining 104
The 21 block producers 104
Setting Up EOS Voting for Block Producers 105
Setting up the Greymass voting tool 106
Voting for a block producer 107
Introducing the EOS Decentralized Application Collection 108
Everipedia: The next-generation encyclopedia 108
Decentralized EOS games 109
Part 3: Powerful Blockchain Platforms 111
Chapter 9: Getting Your Hands on Hyperledger 113
Getting to Know Hyperledger 114
Identifying Key Hyperledger Projects 115
Focusing on Fabric 115
Investigating the Iroha project 115
Diving into Sawtooth Lake 117
Building Your System in Fabric 119
Building asset tracking with Hyperledger Composer 119
Working with Smart Contracts on Hyperledger 123
Step 1: Setting up an auction network 123
Step 2: Setting up auction windows 124
Step 3: Creating an auctioneer 124
Step 4: Creating two participants 124
Step 5: Creating a new asset 125
Step 6: Creating a new listing 126
Step 7: Auctioning off the car 127
Step 8: Closing your auction 128
Chapter 10: Applying Microsoft Azure 129
Bletchley: The Modular Blockchain Fabric 129
Cryptlets for encrypting and authenticating 130
Utility and Contract Cryptlets and CrytoDelegates 132
Building in the Azure Ecosystem 133
Getting Started with Chain on Azure 135
Installing Chain's distributed ledger 135
Creating your own private network 135
Using financial services on Azure's Chain 136
Deploying Blockchain Tools on Azure 136
Exploring Ethereum on Azure 137
Cortana: Your analytics machine learning tool 137
Visualizing your data with Power BI 138
Managing your access on Azure's Active Directory 138
Chapter 11: Getting Busy on IBM Bluemix 139
Business Blockchain on Bluemix 140
Your isolated environment 140
Bluemix use cases 141
Watson's Smart Blockchain 142
Building Your Starter Network on Big Blue 144
Part 4: Industry Impacts 147
Chapter 12: Financial Technology 149
Hauling Out Your Crystal Ball: Future Banking Trends 149
Moving money faster: Across borders and more 151
Creating permanent history 152
Going International: Global Financial Products 153
Border-free payroll 155
Faster and better trade 155
Guaranteed payments 156
Micropayments: The new nature of transactions 156
Squeezing Out Fraud 157
Chapter 13: Real Estate 159
Eliminating Title Insurance 160
Protected industries 160
Consumers and Fannie Mae 162
Mortgages in the Blockchain World 162
Reducing your origination costs 163
Knowing your last-known document 163
Forecasting Regional Trends 164
The United States and Europe: Infrastructure congestion 165
China: First out of the gate 166
The developing world: Roadblocks to blockchain 166
Chapter 14: Insurance 169
Precisely Tailoring Coverage 169
Insuring the individual 170
The new world of micro insurance 171
Witnessing for You: The Internet of Things 172
IoT projects in insurance 173
Implications of actionable big data 173
Taking Out the Third Party in Insurance 174
Decentralized security 174
Crowdfunded coverage 175
The implications of DAO insurance 175
Chapter 15: Government 177
The Smart Cities of Asia 177
Singapore satellite cities in India 179
China's big data problem 180
The Battle for the Financial Capital of the World 181
London's early foresight 182
The regulatory sandbox of Singapore 183
The Dubai 2020 initiative 184
Bitlicense regulatory framework: New York City 185
Friendly legal structure of Malta 186
Securing the World's Borders 187
The Department of Homeland Security and the identity of things 188
Passports of the future 188
The new feeder document 188
Chapter 16: Other Industries 191
Lean Governments 191
Singapore's Smart Nation project 192
Estonia's e-Residency 193
Better notarization in China 194
The Trust Layer for the Internet 194
Spam-free email 195
Owning your identity 196
Oracle of the Blockchain 196
Trusted authorship 197
Intellectual property rights 197
Part 5: The Part of Tens 199
Chapter 17: Ten (or So) Free Blockchain Resources 201
Ethereum 201
DigiKnow 202
Blockchain University 202
Bitcoin Core 202
Blockchain Alliance 202
Multichain Blog 203
HiveMind 203
Smith + Crown 204
Unchained and Unconfirmed Podcasts 204
Chapter 18: The Ten Rules to Never Break on the Blockchain 205
Don't Use Cryptocurrency or Blockchains to Skirt the Law 205
Keep Your Contracts as Simple as Possible 206
Publish with Great Caution 207
Back Up, Back Up, Back Up Your Private Keys 207
Triple-Check the Address Before Sending Currency 209
Take Care When Using Exchanges 209
Beware Wi-Fi 210
Identify Your Blockchain Dev 210
Don't Get Suckered 210
Don't Trade Tokens Unless You Know What You're Doing 211
Chapter 19: Ten Top Blockchain Projects 213
The R3 Consortium 213
T ZERO: Overstocking the Stock Market 215
Blockstream's Distributed Systems 215
MadHive 216
Blockdaemon 217
Gemini Dollar and Exchange 217
Decentraland 218
TransferWise 218
Lightning Network 219
Bitcoin Cash 219
Index 221
