Blockchains are the distributed ledger technology that powers Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But blockchains can be used for more than the transfer of tokens – they are a significant new economic infrastructure. This book offers the first scholarly analysis of the economic nature of blockchains and the shape of the blockchain economy. By applying the institutional economics of Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson, this book shows how blockchains are poised to reshape the nature of firms, governments, markets, and civil society.

The book offers a succinct overview of the technical components of blockchain networks, also known as distributed digital ledger networks. Written from an academic perspective, it surveys ongoing research challenges as well as existing literature. Several chapters illustrate how the mathematical tools of game theory and algorithmic mechanism design can be applied to the analysis, design, and improvement of blockchain network protocols. Using an engineering perspective, insights are provided into how the economic interests of different types of participants shape the behaviors of blockchain systems. Readers are thus provided with a paradigm for developing blockchain consensus protocols and distributed economic mechanisms that regulate the interactions of system participants, thus leading to desired cooperative behaviors in the form of system equilibria. This book will be a vital resource for students and scholars of this budding field.

CryptoEcon 2020 Edition

This practical introduction explains the field of Blockchain Economics, the economic models emerging with the implementation of distributed ledger technology. These models are characterized by three factors: open platform business models, cryptotoken money supplies, and Initial Coin Offerings as a new and official form of financing. The book covers a variety of approaches from a business and academic perspective, ranging from financial theory, complexity, and open innovation networks to behavioral economics, self-determination theory, public policy, and financial inclusion.Unlike existing titles, this book draws on worldwide blockchain industry experts to define the new discipline of Blockchain Economics and provide novel theoretical and conceptual resources for the future of this fast-developing economy. The primer also highlights the wider theme of blockchain as an institutional technology, in that many value transfer interactions might be shifted to automated networks, decreasing the number of human-operated institutions.As well as stimulating further research, and implementation by business innovators and public policy strategists, the book can also be used as a foundational textbook in courses on Blockchain Economics.

Learn how to use Solidity and the Ethereum project – second only to Bitcoin in market capitalization. Blockchain protocols are taking the world by storm, and the Ethereum project, with its Turing-complete scripting language Solidity, has rapidly become a front-runner. This book presents the blockchain phenomenon in context; then situates Ethereum in a world pioneered by Bitcoin. See why professionals and non-professionals alike are honing their skills in smart contract patterns and distributed application development. You'll review the fundamentals of programming and networking, alongside its introduction to the new discipline of crypto-economics. You'll then deploy smart contracts of your own, and learn how they can serve as a back-end for JavaScript and HTML applications on the Web. Many Solidity tutorials out there today have the same flaw: they are written for “advanced” JavaScript developers who want to transfer their skills to a blockchain environment. Introducing Ethereum and Solidity is accessible to technology professionals and enthusiasts of all levels. You’ll find exciting sample code that can move forward real world assets in both the academic and the corporate arenas. Find out now why this book is a powerful gateway for creative technologists of all types, from concept to deployment. What You’ll Learn See how Ethereum (and other cryptocurrencies) work Compare distributed apps (dapps) to web apps Write Ethereum smart contracts in Solidity Connect Ethereum smart contracts to your HTML/CSS/JavaScript web applications Deploy your own dapp, coin, and blockchain Work with basic and intermediate smart contracts Who This Book Is For Anyone who is curious about Ethereum or has some familiarity with computer science Product managers, CTOs, and experienced JavaScript programmers Experts will find the advanced sample projects in this book rewarding because of the power of Solidity

Blockchains & smart contracts have made it easy for anyone to create a token with just a few lines of code. The book gives an intro to tokens and the underlying technology, the socio-economic implications, and selected use cases. It is written for a general audience, features many graphics, and could be a useful textbook for university students.

This Open Access book outlines ideas for a novel, scalable and, above all, sustainable financial system. We all know that today’s global markets are unsustainable and global governance is not effective enough. Given this situation, could one boost smart human coordination, sustainability and resilience by tweaking society at its core: the monetary system? A Computational Social Science team at ETH Zürich has indeed worked on a concept and little demonstrator for a new financial system, called “Finance 4.0” or just “FIN4”, which combines blockchain technology with the Internet of Things (“IoT”). What if communities could reward sustainable actions by issuing their own money (“tokens”)? Would people behave differently, when various externalities became visible and were actionable through cryptographic tokens? Could a novel, participatory, multi-dimensional financial system be created? Could it be run by the people for the people and lead to more societal resilience than today’s financial system (which is effectively one-dimensional due to its almost frictionless exchange)? How could one manage such a system in an ethical and democratic way? This book presents some early attempts in a nascent field, but provides a fresh view on what cryptoeconomic systems could do for us, for a circular economy, and for scalable, sustainable action.

Become a Blockchain developer and design, build, publish, test, maintain and secure scalable decentralized Blockchain projects using Bitcoin, Ethereum, NEO, EOS and Hyperledger. This book helps you understand Blockchain beyond development and crypto to better harness its power and capability. You will learn tips to start your own project, and best practices for testing, security, and even compliance. Immerse yourself in this technology and review key topics such as cryptoeconomics, coding your own Blockchain P2P network, different consensus mechanisms, decentralized ledger, mining, wallets, blocks, and transactions. Additionally, this book provides you with hands-on practical tools and examples for creating smart contracts and dApps for different blockchains such as Ethereum, NEO, EOS, and Hyperledger. Aided by practical, real-world coding examples, you’ll see how to build dApps with Angular utilizing typescript from start to finish, connect to the blockchain network locally on a test network, and publish on the production mainnet environment. Don’t be left out of the next technology revolution – become a Blockchain developer using The Blockchain Developer today. What You’ll Learn Explore the Blockchain ecosystem is and the different consensus mechanisms Create miners, wallets, transactions, distributed networks and DApps Review the main features of Bitcoin: Ethereum, NEO and EOS, and Hyperledger are Interact with popular node clients as well as implementing your own Blockchain Publish and test your projects for security and scalability Who This Book Is For Developers, architects and engineers who are interested in learning about Blockchain or implementing Blockchain into a new greenfield project or integrating Blockchain into a brownfield project. Technical entrepreneurs, technical investors or even executives who want to better understand Blockchain technology and its potential.

Discover Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that has the finance world buzzing Bitcoin is arguably one of the biggest developments in finance since the advent of fiat currency. With Understanding Bitcoin, expert author Pedro Franco provides finance professionals with a complete technical guide and resource to the cryptography, engineering and economic development of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This comprehensive, yet accessible work fully explores the supporting economic realities and technological advances of Bitcoin, and presents positive and negative arguments from various economic schools regarding its continued viability. This authoritative text provides a step-by-step description of how Bitcoin works, starting with public key cryptography and moving on to explain transaction processing, the blockchain and mining technologies. This vital resource reviews Bitcoin from the broader perspective of digital currencies and explores historical attempts at cryptographic currencies. Bitcoin is, after all, not just a digital currency; it's a modern approach to the secure transfer of value using cryptography. This book is a detailed guide to what it is, how it works, and how it just may jumpstart a change in the way digital value changes hands. Understand how Bitcoin works, and the technology behind it Delve into the economics of Bitcoin, and its impact on the financial industry Discover alt-coins and other available cryptocurrencies Explore the ideas behind Bitcoin 2.0 technologies Learn transaction protocols, micropayment channels, atomic cross-chain trading, and more Bitcoin challenges the basic assumption under which the current financial system rests: that currencies are issued by central governments, and their supply is managed by central banks. To fully understand this revolutionary technology, Understanding Bitcoin is a uniquely complete, reader-friendly guide.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, FC 2020, held in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, in February 2020. The 34 revised full papers and 2 short papers were carefully selected and reviewed from 162 submissions. The papers are grouped in the following topical sections: attacks; consensus; cryptoeconomics; layer 2; secure computation; privacy; crypto foundations; empirical studies; and smart contracts.