Preface

Since you are reading this book, I will assume that you are interested in learning more about blockchain technology in the context of using it in an Oracle environment. In this book, I will try my best to provide you with this knowledge. This book will guide you through the concepts and terminology behind blockchain and how these affect Oracle developers and customers. The chapters in this book examine real-world use cases for several major industries. Apart from these informative chapters, this book also provides a sample implementation of setting up and running a private blockchain on the Oracle cloud.

When speaking about blockchain, we mean a distributed (key-value) database that enables a group of entities to share a unified digital ledger and conduct transactions rapidly and safely with each other without having to go through a central authority. Each entity controls its assets via a private key and independently verifies all transactions. Blockchains have no single point of failure, so entities can appear, disappear, or malfunction without affecting the group as a whole.

Before taking a deep dive into blockchain, we'll begin with a presentation of the broad history of blockchain and where it came from.