Building Blockchain Apps

336 Pages·2019·8.34 MB·English

by  Michael Yuan

Building Blockchain
Apps
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Building Blockchain
Apps
Michael Juntao Yuan
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ISBN-13: 978-0-13-517232-2
ISBN-10: 0-13-517232-2
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To Tony and Ju
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Contents
Foreword xvii
Acknowledgments xix
About the Author xxi
Part I Introduction 1
1 An Introduction to Blockchain 3
The Blockchain 3
The Collaborative Ledger 4
Cryptocurrency 5
Smart Contracts 5
A Trustless Network 6
New Ways of Collaborating 7
The Fat Protocol 7
In Code We Trust 8
Conclusion 9
2 Reaching Consensus 11
What Is Blockchain Consensus? 11
Proof of Work (PoW) 12
Proof of Stake (PoS) 12
Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) 14
Conclusion 14
3 Your First Blockchain App 15
Smart Contract 16
Front-End HTML 19
JavaScript and web3.js 19
In Action 21
Share Your Dapp 22
Conclusion 22
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Part II An Introduction to Ethereum 23
4 Getting Started 25
The BUIDL Way 26
Ethereum Mainnet 26
Ethereum Classic Mainnet 28
CyberMiles Mainnet 29
The Hard Way 29
Metamask Wallet 29
Remix 32
Web3 37
Conclusion 41
5 Concepts and Tools 43
Ethereum Wallet and Basic Concepts 43
Etherscan 45
The TestRPC 46
Interacting with Ethereum via GETH 48
Interacting with Ethereum via web3 49
Running an Ethereum Node 50
Running a Private Ethereum Network 51
Conclusion 53
6 Smart Contracts 55
“Hello, World!” Again 55
Learning Smart Contract Programming 57
Consensus vs. Nonconsensus Code 57
Data Structures 58
Function Parameters and Return Values 58
Payable Functions 58
Calling Other Contracts 59
Building and Deploying the Smart Contract 59
Solidity Tools 59
The BUIDL Integrated Development
Environment (IDE) 60
The Remix IDE 61
Truffle Framework 62
Contents ix
Calling Smart Contract Functions 65
The BUIDL IDE 65
The Remix IDE 65
GETH Console 67
A New Language 68
More Smart Contract Languages 71
Conclusion 72
7 Decentralized Applications (Dapps) 73
Dapp Stack 74
The web3 Library  75
External Services 75
Dapp Showcases 76
Uniswap 76
CryptoKitties 77
Gambling Games 78
Interactive Dapps 78
Conclusion 79
8 Alternatives to Dapps 81
JavaScript 81
The Full-Node Wallet 82
Raw Transactions 83
Python and Others  85
Conclusion 86
Part III Ethereum in Depth 87
9 Inside Ethereum 89
What Is Blockchain State? 89
Ethereum State 92
Data Structure 92
Trie (or Tree) 93
Standard Trie 93
Patricia Trie 95
Similarities between the Trie and Patricia Trie 96
Main Difference between the Trie and Patricia Trie 96