Preface

Blockchain is a disruptive technology that promises to disrupt many sectors of the global economy. This innovative technology aims to revolutionize those industries that rely on intermediation and trust by shifting the paradigm away from the currently dominant centralized architectures and toward decentralization.

The past couple of years have seen the exponential growth of blockchain, which has evolved into multiple forms and currently comprises many different technologies and tools, some mature, others relatively new, all of which makes understanding and mastering the key ideas and concepts a difficult task.

This is where this book enters the picture. There are many books out there aiming to capitalize on blockchain's current popularity, but, in our opinion, a vast majority of them concentrate on blockchain's theoretical or speculative aspects: in other words, what blockchain could be used for in future, without providing any concrete details on how these things can be achieved in practice. This book is different: it's more pragmatic. From the outset, this book details what can be done with blockchain technology now, and how to do it, by guiding the reader through a series of in-depth, hands-on implementations.

The book is organized into several main parts. It starts by providing an introduction and high-level overview of blockchain's concepts, before moving on to present different use cases and practical implementations based on the Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Hyperledger blockchains.