Blockchain Applications: A Hands-On Approach

In the US, the services sector provides employment to about 100 million, while the manufacturing sector provides employment to about 20 million. These sectors are highly automated, and driven by sophisticated business processes forming an integral part of the digital economy. While the applications themselves may be distributed over the Internet in time and space, the core business, regulatory, and financial aspects of the digital economy are still centralized, with the need for centralized agencies (such as banks, customs authorities, and tax agencies) to authenticate and settle payments and transactions. These centralized services often are manual, difficult to automate, and represent a bottleneck to facilitating a frictionless digital economy. The next revolutionary step in the services and manufacturing economy of the future is the development of automated distributed applications that do not depend on these traditional centralized agencies for controlling, facilitating and settling multi-party transactions that may themselves be subject to complex contractual constraints. The blockchain technology is an integral part of these next steps that promises a smart new world of automation of complex services and manufacturing processes. Blockchain is a distributed and public ledger which maintains records of all the transactions on a blockchain network comprising suppliers of products and services and consumers. With the blockchain's ability to establish trust in a peer-to-peer network through a distributed consensus mechanism rather than relying on a powerful centralized authority, the technology is being seen by the industry experts as one of the greatest innovations since the invention of the Internet. As per Santander, blockchain technologies can reduce annual costs for financial firms by $20b by streamlining processes and improving efficiency. In addition, investment and spending on blockchain technology is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 52% through 2019. We have written this textbook, as part of our expanding "A Hands-On Approach"(TM) series, to serve as a textbook for senior-level and graduate-level courses on financial and regulation technologies, business analytics, Internet of Things, and cryptocurrency. This book is also written for use within industries in the FinTech and RegTech space that may be interested in rolling out products and services that utilize this new area of technology. An accompanying website for this book contains additional support for instruction and learning (www.blockchain-book.com). The book is organized into three main parts, comprising a total of ten chapters. Part I provides an introduction to blockchain concepts, design patterns, and architectures for blockchain applications. A blockchain stack comprising a decentralized computation platform, a decentralized messaging platform, and a decentralized storage platform is described. Part II introduces the readers to tools and platforms for blockchain, such as Geth, PyEthApp, TestRPC, Mist Ethereum Wallet, MetaMask, Web3 JavaScript API and the Truffle Dapp framework. Implementation examples of various smart contracts and decentralized applications (Dapps) are provided. Part III focuses on advanced topics such as the security and scalability related challenges for the blockchain platforms.

在美國，服務業提供約1億個就業機會，而製造業提供約2000萬個就業機會。這些行業高度自動化，並由複雜的業務流程驅動，成為數字經濟的重要組成部分。儘管應用本身可能在時間和空間上分散在互聯網上，但數字經濟的核心業務、監管和金融方面仍然是集中的，需要集中的機構（如銀行、海關機構和稅務機構）來驗證和結算支付和交易。這些集中化的服務通常是手動的，難以自動化，並成為促進無摩擦數字經濟的瓶頸。未來服務和製造業的下一個革命性步驟是開發自動分散應用程序，這些應用程序不依賴於這些傳統的集中機構來控制、促進和結算可能受到複雜合同約束的多方交易。區塊鏈技術是這些下一步的重要組成部分，承諾實現複雜服務和製造流程的智能自動化新世界。區塊鏈是一個分散和公共的帳本，記錄了由產品和服務供應商以及消費者組成的區塊鏈網絡上的所有交易。通過區塊鏈的能力在點對點網絡中建立信任，而不是依賴強大的集中機構，該技術被行業專家視為自互聯網發明以來最重大的創新之一。根據桑坦德銀行的說法，區塊鏈技術可以通過簡化流程和提高效率，將金融公司的年度成本降低200億美元。此外，預計對區塊鏈技術的投資和支出將以每年52％的複合年增長率增加到2019年。我們撰寫了這本教科書，作為我們擴大的“A Hands-On Approach”（TM）系列的一部分，用於高年級和研究生課程，包括金融和監管技術、業務分析、物聯網和加密貨幣。這本書也適用於金融科技和監管科技領域的行業，他們可能有興趣推出利用這一新技術領域的產品和服務。本書的附帶網站提供了額外的教學和學習支持（www.blockchain-book.com）。本書分為三個主要部分，共十章。第一部分介紹了區塊鏈概念、區塊鏈應用的設計模式和架構。描述了由分散計算平台、分散消息平台和分散存儲平台組成的區塊鏈堆棧。第二部分介紹了區塊鏈的工具和平台，如Geth、PyEthApp、TestRPC、Mist Ethereum Wallet、MetaMask、Web3 JavaScript API和Truffle Dapp框架。提供了各種智能合約和分散應用程序（Dapps）的實施示例。第三部分關注區塊鏈平台的安全性和可擴展性相關挑戰的高級主題。