Ethereum represents the gateway to a worldwide, decentralized computing paradigm. This platform enables you to run decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts that have no central points of failure or control, integrate with a payment network, and operate on an open blockchain. With this practical guide, Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Gavin Wood provide everything you need to know about building smart contracts and DApps on Ethereum and other virtual-machine blockchains.
Discover why IBM, Microsoft, NASDAQ, and hundreds of other organizations are experimenting with Ethereum. This essential guide shows you how to develop the skills necessary to be an innovator in this growing and exciting new industry.
- Run an Ethereum client, create and transmit basic transactions, and program smart contracts
- Learn the essentials of public key cryptography, hashes, and digital signatures
- Understand how "wallets" hold digital keys that control funds and smart contracts
- Interact with Ethereum clients programmatically using JavaScript libraries and Remote Procedure Call interfaces
- Learn security best practices, design patterns, and anti-patterns with real-world examples
- Create tokens that represent assets, shares, votes, or access control rights
- Build decentralized applications using multiple peer-to-peer (P2P) components
Andreas is a passionate technologist, who is well-versed in many technical subjects. He is a serial tech-entrepreneur, having launched businesses in London, New York, and California. He has earned degrees in Computer Science and Data Communications and Distributed Systems from UCL. With experience ranging from hardware and electronics to high level business and financial systems technology consulting and years as CTO/CIO/CSO in many companies -- he combines authority and deep knowledge with an ability to make complex subjects easy to understand. More than 200 of his articles on security, cloud computing and data centers have been published in print and syndicated worldwide. His expertise includes Bitcoin, crypto-currencies, Information Security, Cryptography, Cloud Computing, Data Centers, Linux, Open Source and robotics software development. He also has been CISSP certified for 12 years.
As a bitcoin entrepreneur, Andreas has founded three bitcoin businesses and launched several community open-source projects. He often writes articles and blog posts on bitcoin, is a permanent host on Let's Talk Bitcoin and prolific public speaker at technology events. Andreas serves on the advisory boards of several bitcoin startups and serves as the Chief Security Officer of Blockchain.
When Gavin first read about Bitcoin in 2011, he was largely uninterested, focusing too much on the currency aspect rather than the technology. However, when he revisited it in early 2013, he began to realise new possibilities opening up between the fields of ITC and game theory, and the inevitable social change to which this would lead. A mutual friend made the introduction to Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum Founder) in late 2014 and Ethereum has dominated Gavin Wood's life since. Gavin coded the first functional implementation of Ethereum, devised the Solidity contract language and wrote the Yellow Paper, the first formal specification of any blockchain protocol and one of the key ways Ethereum distinguishes itself from other blockchain-based systems. Prior to Ethereum, Gavin earned a masters degree and doctorate in computer science. He consulted for Microsoft Research on technical aspects of embedded domain--specific languages, and was involved in several startups in the areas of realtime semantic extraction and presentation for music, visual meta--programming systems and automated legal text analysis.
