THE UNDOCUMENTED INTERNALS OF THE BITCOIN ETHEREUM AND BLOCKCHAINS

Book excerpt: Description:In the year 2017, Bitcoin touched a market capitalisation of over 100 billion dollars. In the year 2014, one Bitcoin could buy about 500 dollars, just three years later one Bitcoin buys 5,000 dollars. The Initial Coin offering is becoming the preferred method of raising money. Many countries like Dubai have announced their own crypto currency called emCash.Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain are the most difficult technologies to understand. That's why most people including technology folks cannot understand the future direction of these technologies. The only way to understand anything complex is by going back to the basics.This is what we do in this book. We explain every byte of the Bitcoin blockchain that is downloaded on your computer. only by going back to your roots can you understand anything complex.Most of the code in this book is written in Python as today, it is the easiest language to use. The Bitcoin Source is written only in C++. Most of the important Bitcoin data structures are only documented in code, a bare knowledge of reading and not writing C++ will help. Finally, the official client for Ethereum is written in the programming language Go.It is written for a programmer, We use code and not words to describe a blockchain. We believe that all kinds of people including non technology folks will need some programming knowledge to grasp the basic concepts of the blockchain. There is no other way to understand this technology.Finally, we end the book with the biggest use of smart Contracts which is raising money using a ICO. Our primary focus is on Bitcoin and Blockchains and not on Ethereum and smart contracts which comprises only 4 chapters.International Currency transfers are very expensive today. With the advent of the Lighting Network and sideshains, the Bitcoin blockchain can scale to a level where it can handle transactions faster than any credit card transaction.One of the recent bigger innovations of Blockchain technology is the Initial Coin offering or a ICO. This will enable millions of people to invest in companies using blockchain technology. This will help us understand the technologies under the hood that makes it happen.Table of contents:Chapter 1: Basics of the Bitcoin Block HeaderChapter 2: Transactions - BasicsChapter 3: Computing the Merkle HashChapter 4: Bitcoin AddressesChapter 5: Vanity Bitcoin AddressesChapter 6: Difficulty and NonceChapter 7: Storing Bitcoin Transactions using SQLChapter 8: Transactions - Inputs and OutputsChapter 9: Hiding Data in the blockchainChapter 10: Signing TransactionsChapter 11: Roll your own transactionChapter 12: Client and ServerChapter 13: Notaries and OP_RETURNChapter 14: Pay to Script Hash or Multi-Sig Bitcoin addressesChapter 15: Basic NetworkingChapter 16: More NetworkingChapter 17: Hashes SHA0 and SHA1Chapter 18: Hashes - Sha-256 and RipeMD-160Chapter 19: ECC with Sage - Part 1Chapter 20: ECC with Sage Part 2Chapter 21: Sending our own transactionChapter 22: Sending one transaction without using library functionsChapter 23: Index folderChapter 24: UTXO DatasetChapter 25: WalletsChapter 26: Rev/Undo filesChapter 27: peers.dat and banlist.datChapter 28: Miners, blocks and moreChapter 29: fee_estimates.datChapter 30: Building the Bitcoin Source codeChapter 31: Testing Bitcoin for bugsChapter 32: Ethereum SolidityChapter 33: Ethereum leveldb keys and GOLANGChapter 34: Ethereum Unravelling the State MachineChapter 35: Bitcoin Cash vs Segwit vs Segwit2xChapter 36: Bitcoin Core 0.15, UTXO and moreChapter 37: Transactions and Blocks - Error ChecksChapter 38: ICO and Smart Contract SecurityChapter 39: What is a Bitcoin and a BlockchainChapter 40: AI and Blockchain - Never The Twain Shall Meet