Table of Contents

Stage 1: Terminology and Technical Foundations.-

Step 1: Thinking in Layers and Aspects.-

Step 2: Seeing the Big Picture.-

Step 3: Recognizing the Potential.-

Stage 2: Why the Blockchain Is Needed.-

Step 4: Discovering the Core Problem.-

Step 5: Disambiguating the Term.-

Step 6: Understanding the Nature of Ownership.-

Step 7: Spending Money Twice.-

Stage 3: How the Blockchain Works.-

Step 8: Planning the Blockchain.-

Step 9: Documenting Ownership.-

Step 10: Hashing Data.-

Step 11: Hashing in the Real World.-

Step 12: Identifying and Protecting User Accounts.-

Step 13: Authorizing Transactions.-

Step 14: Storing Transaction Data.-

Step 15: Using the Data Store.-

Step 16: Protecting the Data Store.-

Step 17: Distributing the Data Store Among Peers.-

Step 18: Verifying and Adding Transactions.-

Step 19: Choosing a Transaction History.-

Step 20: Paying for Integrity.-

Step 21: Bringing the Pieces Together.-

Stage 4: Limitations and Their Solutions.-

Step 22: Seeing the Limitations.-

Step 23: Reinventing the Blockchain.-

Stage 5: Using the Blockchain, Summary, and Outlook

Step 24: Using the Blockchain.-

Step 25: Summarizing and Going Further.-

Bibliography.-

About the Author

Daniel Drescher is an experienced banking professional who has held positions in electronic security trading in a range of banks. His recent activities have focused on automation, machine learning and big data in the context of security trading. Amongst others, Daniel holds a Doctorate in Econometrics from the Technical University of Berlin and an MSc in Software Engineering from the University of Oxford.

Reviews

"The book is really what is says to be - it introduces the "Blockchain Basics" without formulas or programming. And still, does it in a serious way, which allows you to "take home" the knowledge after reading it." (vitoshacademy.com , May, 2018)

"The book could be used as a textbook or simply to help structure a presentation on blockchain. ... I think that the book achieves its objectives: to explain to a nontechnical audience what the blockchain is, how it works, and where it can be applied. It should also allow the reader to understand a lot of the hype that surrounds blockchain and to differentiate the ways in which the term is used." (Computing Reviews, October, 2017)