Mastering Blockchain: A deep dive into distributed ledgers, consensus protocols, smart contracts, DApps, cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, and more, 3rd Edition

I don't know where they find their authors, but they get the best ones. And Mastering Blockchain is gold. I can see for myself why the reviews are so high. It makes perfect sense.

2 inches thick and very well organized. Recommend highly as an in depth guide to blockchain at all skill levels.

This was an amazing book, must read!

This is a very good, well-written, informative technical introduction. If your background is Computer Science and you have some cryptography knowledge, this is a good book to start with.Some things have been left opened, glossed over or not properly defined. These should be accepted and researched in other books. Not everything can be covered in a single book.If you are new to this space, this is not a starter book. Read Daniel Drescher's "Blockchain Basics" to get a good overview of blockchain technology and how it works. For an even higher level, broader introduction to the entire space, read "NFT" by Ben Stephen. The latter 2 books are non-technical but do require some tech and crypto knowledge to get a good understanding of what is happening.

An excellent coverage of many latest and relevant topics. Would definitely recommend it.

I don’t understand it my son can’t read it. Oh well we’re not fair judges

I am new to Blockchain, and I looked at this book to get an introduction. The first chapter, Blockchain 101, provides an excellent start and quickly presents a graph from which a prediction can be extrapolated, "blockchain will progress to become a mature technology by 2025". It answers the questions: why blockchain?"decentralized trust, security, cost savings, transparency, and efficiency" And, what are the challenges being researched? "scalability and privacy". Simply, it states: blockchain is a "decentralized-distributed system". An interesting history is given, blockchain was introduced with Bitcoin in 2008, and a long list of technologies, starting in the 1960's, is given which contributed to the development of Bitcoin. An improvement on the earlier technologies, the Bitcoin blockchain provides the ability to "prevent double spending in a completely trustless or permissionless environment", and it also "solves the SMR problem (probabilistically)". This is a great chapter, a very nice set-up! Further details are given, including of consensus, which provides the "decentralization of control through mining", and mining is used to "add more blocks to the blockchain".I enjoyed the chapter, Blockchain - Outside of Currencies. IoT is described as the "most prominent and most ready candidate for adapting blockchain technology". Interestingly, it is mentioned that the finance sector is exploring uses of blockchain with "high energy and enthusiasm"; however, "it is still far away from production-ready, blockchain-based systems".One of the chapters new to this edition of the book, Enterprise Blockchains, informs that "current public blockchains are not necessarily a suitable choice for enterprise use cases". Enterprise blockchains need faster performance, access governance, privacy, deterministic rather than probabilistic consensus algorithms, and to eliminate the need to have cryptocurrency on hand for transaction fees. It is mentioned that Corda (which is not really a blockchain) and Quorum are production-ready projects built on enterprise blockchains.The chapter on "Scalability and Challenges" addresses changes that need to be made to make the technology more adoptable, with the two most important being: performance on a large scale and privacy. Other issues include regulation, integration, interoperability, adaptability, and security, even though security is quite good already with Bitcoin.In the final chapter on the Current Landscape and What's Next, it is mentioned that there is a current inclination towards making use of an existing blockchain platform with only one application in mind for a specific industry, and these are called: application-specific blockchains (ASBCs). Currently, many start-ups are working on blockchain projects, and research is taking place in both academia and industry, in software and hardware. When it was discovered that methods were no longer efficient, focus shifted to optimizing and developing hardware. New programming languages are being developed for developing smart contracts. Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) is being offered in the cloud by Microsoft and IBM. Blockchain can beneficially converge with other technologies such as IoT and AI. It's mentioned that there are some debatable issues: public vs. private on the blockchain and central bank digital currency. There are some areas to address: regulation, illegal activity, and privacy or transparency. A really interesting list of 16 predictions expected to occur between 2020-2050 is given; for example, 1) The IoT will run on multiple blockchains and will give rise to an M2M economy. This will include energy devices, autonomous cars, and household accessories. 2) Central bank-issued digital currencies will become a reality, and will be applied in day-to-day use within the next two to five years. ...As a final note, it is mentioned that "blockchains are becoming intertwined with our lives just as the internet has been for decades" and "blockchain can arguably be considered the most innovative technology of this decade".This is a very nice, high quality book, which can help you jump on board.

For someone who is new to the Blockchain technology and is eager to learn about it, choosing a proper introductory book is, by no means, an easy task given so many available books on the market. The book entitled “Mastering Blockchain” and authorized by Imran Bashir is no doubt a good and safe choice. The book, a bit bulky (over 800 pages) is suitable for experienced Blockchain technologists as well thanks to the book’s comprehensive coverage on advanced as well as trendy topics.The Blockchain technology and its original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, are about decentralization achieved via a consensus mechanism. Imran did a good job of introducing Blockchain by covering these key topics in the first two chapters with in-depth discussions on the Consensus Algorithms in Chapter 5 and Bitcoin in Chapter 6. For safely exchanging information among nodes, a Blockchain platform adopts the cryptographic technology, which was invented and used initially for remotely secured communications. For instance, it is well known to technical users that a pair of public and private keys are used for secured file transfer (SFTP). The author spends two chapters (Chapter 3 and 4) explaining the concepts of cryptographic technology meticulously. These two chapters help to lay a solid foundation for a reader to grasp the ideas behind the Bitcoin and its Consensus Algorithm. I, however, think the author can improve the depiction of the algorithm via an hypothetical example. The book continues its discussion on how Bitcoin can be applied in payment, its initially intended use case. Key concepts like wallets, the Clients and APIs are discussed fully in Chapters 7 and 8. Chapter 9 serves to be a transitional chapter for advancing the discussion to the next breakthrough in Blockchain technology by covering the topics on the alternative crypto currencies.The introduction of the smart contract concept revolutionized the Blockchain technology since this innovative idea introduces use cases of the technology well beyond the payment case virtually to any fields. Due to the importance of the concept, the book talks about smart contracts in detail in Chapter 10. Ethereum is the first Blockchain platform, on which the idea of smart contracts is implemented. Therefore, the author introduces the basic concepts on Ethereum in Chapter 11 and covers advanced Ethereum topics in Chapter 12. To help Ethereum developers, the book uses one chapter (Chapter 13) discussing the common Ethereum development environments (IEDs). Since Solidity is the most commonly used programming language for the development of Ethereum applications, Chapter 14 covers Solidity along with useful tools to assist programmers in development of Solidity based applications. While Bitcoin and Ethereum platforms provide a solid foundation for Blockchain applications, these platforms alone cannot provide an end-to-end solution to a business problem since these are backend platforms only. To close the gap, a frontend platform is needed. Web3 and JavaScript are the popular choices for developing front applications linking crypto coin wallets and users with the Blockchain platforms for executing coin transactions. The purpose of Chapter 16 is to help readers grasping the basic understanding of these concepts. Ethereum evolves rapidly. Many new ideas and variations have occured since its initial introduction. To help readers gaining an overview on these developments, the author dedicates the Chapter 16 on Ethereum 2.0 etc.Both Bitcoin and the original form of Ethereum are created for public use. There is no restriction imposed to prevent a participant joining in the network and issuing a transaction. However, many existing business models are based on private transactions; that is, transactions can only take place among pre-approved participants. Well known examples are stock markets, OTC derivatives or FX trades etc. Variations of Ethereum are developed for creating platforms suitable for enterprise uses. Hyperledger consisting of a collection of platforms contributed by IBM and other well established large firms is another set of platforms catering to enterprises’ needs. The topics on Hyperledger can be found in Chapter 17. The non-Hyperledger enterprise platforms such as R3’ Corda and Quorum initially created by JP Morgan developers are discussed in Chapter 20.Back in 2017 and early 2018, the world has experienced a hyper on issuing of new cryptocurrencies and its subsequently dramatic downfall. Behind the issuing crypto coins is the tokenization. Chapter 19 focuses on this concept and explains the common token standards. It briefly touches trendy concepts like stable token which is the foundation for stable coin, a popular type of crypto coin post the 2018 crash in cryptocurrency. Chapter 19 goes beyond the use cases in the financial industry by citing possible applications of The Blockchain technology in other industries.Overall, “Mastering Blockchain” is a great book to start with for learning the basic concepts on the Blockchains technology. It provides comprehensive coverage on Blockchain related topics. It is useful for experienced Blockchain readers as well due to the inclusion of some advanced topics on the technology. I highly recommend it.